Philip Hardwick

Birth date    15 June 1792
Death date    28 December 1870
Burial        Kensal Green Cemetery.

We regret having to announce the death of Bro. Philip Hardwick, R.A.  He was the architect and designer of the warehouses and large buildings of the St.  Katherine's Dock Company, the new hall of the Goldsmiths’ Company, the entrance of the Euston Station of the London and North-Western Railway, and in conjunction with his son, Mr C P Hardwick, of the new hall and library of Lincoln’s-inn.  He was for many years architect to the Duke of Wellington, and to the Greenwich Hospital Commissioners.  He received the gold medal of the Institute of British Architects, and was awarded the gold medal of the Paris Exhibition of 1855.  He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, of which he has been vice-president.  Bro.  Hardwick was an eminent member of the Masonic Order, and for a long period filled the post of Grand Superintendent of Works in Grand Lodge. [The Freemason Vol IV  7 January 1871 page 13]

Hardwick was born at 9 Rathbone Place (since demolished) in Westminster, London. He was educated at Dr Barrow's school in Soho Square and trained as an architect under his father, Thomas Hardwick (junior) (1752–1829), who was in turn the son of architect Thomas Hardwick Sr. (1725–1798). The Hardwick family name spans over 150 years in the history of British architecture.  Philip Hardwick entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1808 and then studied in France and Italy from 1815 to 1819. After travelling Europe, he took over from his father as Surveyor to St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. This post later passed on to Philip's son – Philip Charles Hardwick, meaning that three successive generations of the family held the post.

In 1825 he was appointed architect to the St Katherine's Dock Company, for whom he designed the dock buildings, Thomas Telford designing the docks themselves. In 1829 he became architect to the Goldsmiths' Company, designing a new hall for them which was opened in 1835.[1] In 1836 Hardwick became architect to the London and Birmingham Railway. He built a great Doric propylaeum, which became known as the "Euston Arch", as an entrance to the railway's Euston Station. In 1838 he built the Curzon Street Station as the railway's Birmingham terminus. It is an austere cubic three-story building in the Ionic style, with a portico of four giant Ionic columns.  At Babraham Hall in 1822-3, on the site of a long-demolished sixteenth-century house, Hardwick adopted a Jacobean style, using red brick with limestone dressings. Brick was used again at Lincoln's Inn, when, in 1843-5, Hardwick, in collaboration with his son, built a new hall and library. They used a Tudor style, the red brick varied with black brick decoration, and pale stone trim, foreshadowing the later fashion for polychrome brickwork.[5] For churches, Hardwick used both the classical style, as at Christ Church, Cosway Street, Marylebone (1824–25),[6] and the Gothic, as at Holy Trinity, Bolton (1823–25),[7] St John's, Catford (1854)[8] and the Royal Garrison Church, Aldershot (1863).  Hardwick gained a reputation as a surveyor and was employed by the Westminster Bridge estates, the Portman London estate, Greenwich Hospital, and the estate of the 2nd Marquess of Salisbury (1829–1835). He was also surveyor to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (from 1842) and assisted Sir Francis Smith in designing Wellington Barracks next to Buckingham Palace in 1833.

In 1831 his father in law, architect John Shaw Senior, helped elect Hardwick as a fellow of the Royal Society. Hardwick was a founding member of the Institute of British Architects (1834) – later (1837) the RIBA – and was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. In 1839 he was one of the judges for the new Royal Exchange building in the City of London, and was appointed to select the design for the Oxford Museum in 1854. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1839, and became a Royal Academician in 1841.

In 1854, he received the seventh Royal Gold Medal for architecture.

Obituary    The Freemason Vol IV  7 January 1871 page 13
Reference    Oxford Dictionary of National Biography