Hyde Park Gardens, Lancaster Gate

Hyde Park Gardens - a watercolour exhibited at the RA in 1836 (no. 1008) showing the architect's own impression of the terrace of houses he designed the same year to stand between Albion and Lancaster Gate, on the north side of Hyde Park. An interesting record of an otherwise almost unknown architect's work. Inspired no doubt by the example of Barry, Crake devised a sober but still palatial block in an Italianate style which owes nothing to the panache of Nash and Belgravia, then the dominant influence in London domestic architecture. The very formal layout of the gardens is also in complete contrast to Nash. The Uxbridge stage coach is shown passing in Bayswater Road - omnibuses were not yet generally introduced in the 1830s.