The Architect who transformed London
Nash's imaginative town-planning was much admired in his own day. Puckler-Muskau wrote that:
"The town...has greatly gained from the new Regent Street, Portland Place and the Regents Park. For the first time it seems like a royal residence, and no longer simply a boundless capital for shopkeepers - in Napoleon's immortal words".6
Nash did not do as well with Buckingham Palace, regarded as 'the most notorious architectural failure of its time".7 Although Nash put much effort into the design, planning to give London something similar to Paris' splendid Palais Royal he failed to complete his ambitious idea. Between the projecting wings he placed a triumphal arch built to celebrate Nelson's victory over Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile. This magnificent arch, Summerson writes: "with the pleasant carved panels by Westmacott and Bailey, and the rich ironwork, show the standard at which Nash aimed; and the same excellences occur in parts of the palace. But, alas! The architect was old, he was surrounded by enemies, and he was in the service of the most temperamental as well as the most spendthrift patron in England".8 Buckingham Palace remained unfinished at Nash's death in 1830 and the work taken out of Nash's hands.
His failure to complete the Palace cost Nash a baronetcy. Wellington, the Prime Minister, refused to allow the King to create Nash a baronet, suggesting that the completion of the Palace was the time for the honour and that there were a hundred men, in the army, navy and civil service, with better claims.
The other great building for which Nash is especially noted is, of course, the Brighton Pavilion, that strange, oriental-style mansion placed so incongruously in a very English seaside town. Dorothea de Lieven described the Pavilion succintly in a letter to her lover Prince Metternich: "How can one describe such a piece of architecture (as) the King's palace here? The style is a mixture of Moorish, Tartar, Gothic and Chinese, and all in stone and iron. It is a whim which has already cost 700,000 pounds; and it is still not fit to live in."9
This strangely attractive building owes much more to the intentions of the Prince Regent and is not typical of Nash's architecture, except perhaps for his two great new apartments, the Music Room and the Banqueting Room with their magnificent chandeliers and gorgeous paintings.
Nash is remembered 'above all as
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