Details
BRIDGE STREET
(South side)
Victoria Art Gallery and Library
11/08/72
GV II*
Art gallery and Public Library, now Art gallery. 1897-1900 and 1912, converted C1990. By John McKean Brydon.
MATERIALS: Limestone ashlar, roofs not visible from street except for lead covered dome.
STYLE: Baroque Revival using many of the design features of the adjoining Guildhall.
PLAN: Main rectangular room on two floors, parallel with street, with Public Library below and top lit Art gallery above.
EXTERIOR: Two storeys, nine bays to Bridge Street, two storeys and attic corner tower with entrance, single bay return to Grand Parade. Rusticated ground floor has round headed window openings with glazing in tripartite form, impost band and central doorway which breaks forward slightly with panelled double doors and rusticated surround leading to full entablature, keystone with head of Minerva. First floor has range of nine coved niches with alternate triangular and segmental pediments on consoles, with balustraded aprons. Central niche larger with flanking Ionic columns and pilasters plus statue of Queen Victoria by Andrea Lucchese, presented by the women of Bath. Crowning cornice, balustraded parapet. Main entrance at north-east corner, Upper floor is semicircular in three bays with entablature and parapet on paired Ionic columns, surmounted by large dome with oculi in base. Entrance doorway breaks forward and has open pediment on Roman Doric half columns with square block rustication, set within secondary arch with swagged head and cornice. Panelled double doors. Doorway flanked by six/nine sash windows. Grand Parade elevation as Bridge Street, but higher due to falling ground. Single bay, six panel door with keyed head, and relief panel over, above four/four sash with segmental pediment on consoles and balustraded apron. Cornice, balustraded parapet, stack with pots.
INTERIOR: Circular entrance vestibule. Fine entrance staircase of Hopton Wood stone with wrought iron balustrade and mahogany handrail. Ground floor, former library, converted to modern gallery space in 1990 with the loss of all library fittings. Main stair through arch: a heavy mahogany C17 revival stair with bulbous balusters, square section newels, with a barrel vault above. Tribune at first floor landing with six Bassae order Ionic columns of Devonshire marble, coffered dome over with signs of the Zodiac in relief. Main chamber is the top-lit picture gallery, opened in 1900, with a coved ceiling, a rectangular pitched skylight of five bays, a plaster copy of the Parthenon frieze, and a panelled dado with triglyphs of American walnut. The pedimented oak doorcase is dated 1899.
HISTORY: The building was begun in Jubilee Year in 1897 and it was opened in 1900. The Lending Library was opened in 1912. The library moved out in 1990 and the building is now wholly used as the Victoria Art Gallery. A notable late Victorian public building, forming part of the outstanding civic complex together with the Guildhall in the High Street (Grade I, q.v.), with which this forms the northern adjunct. The north-east corner closes effectively the view from Laura Place across Great Pulteney Bridge.
SOURCES: The Bath Chronicle: Images of Bath (1994); N. Jackson, Nineteenth Century Bath - Architects and Architecture (1991), 250.
Listing NGR: ST7515064914
