Patrons, clients, designers and developers: the Jewish contribution to secular building in England

<plain_text><page sequence="1">Patrons, clients, designers and developers: the Jewish contribution to secular building in England* EDWARD JAMILLY Lewis Mumford, the American architectural critic, once remarked that the influence exercised by Jews, as by Huguenots, was out of all proportion to their numbers.1 He was of course repeating a truth noted by many. Although the Jewish minority in the United Kingdom amounts to a mere half per cent of the population, we have seen Jewish MPs in excess of 5 per cent returned to postwar parliaments. The Daily Telegraph, Reuter's despatches, belisha beacons, the Shell logo and the regimental march of the Royal Marines are now deemed thoroughly British, their Jewish origins forgotten. While the contributions of English Jews in the fields of public life, phi? lanthropy, medicine, science, philosophy, literature, scholarship, industry, banking and commerce are well documented, their influence on the built environment of English towns and on individual buildings (and some of their contents) is perhaps not so well known. Such influence may be exer? cised in several ways: as designer, patron, client, promoter, developer or financier of buildings or groups of buildings. In this paper I exclude the specifically Jewish built heritage dealt with in my previous publications since 1954.2 Clients Jews were wary of putting their money into buildings from the time of their resettlement under Cromwell until the late Regency, for the legality of an alien owning freeholds was untested, and many immigrants did not even * Paper presented to the Society on 10 January 2002. An earlier version was presented on 5 April 1967. 1 Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (3rd ed. London 1986) 294. 2 Edward Jamilly, 'Synagogue Art and Architecture', in S. S. Levin (ed.) A Century of Anglo-Jewish Life (London 1973) 75-91; Edward Jamilly, 'An Introduction to Victorian Synagogues' Victorian Society Annual (1991) 22-35; and idem, The Georgian Synagogue (London 1999). 75</page><page sequence="2">Edward Jamilly take out papers of naturalization or endenization. However, from the end of the seventeenth century synagogue building proceeded with circumven? tions of what was thought to be the law. But it was not until fifty years later that one finds the architect's private Jewish patron or client beginning to emerge, as wealthier Jews started to build for themselves. When they did, it was for their own town houses, country mansions or business premises. Although a few Jews had acquired country seats3 during the eighteenth century, not much new building was undertaken. Part of Moses Hart's Wrenish extensions to Gordon (later Seaton) House, Isleworth, dating from the first quarter-century survive;4 Samson Gideon in the second half of the eighteenth century had James Stuart (and possibly Isaac Ware) build Belvedere House near Erith, Kent, a fine mansion housing his collection of paintings (now at Bedwell Park, Hertfordshire). The house passed to his son, created Lord Eardley, and eventually became a merchant seamen's home before being demolished in the 1960s. Around the turn of the nineteenth century Benjamin Goldsmid employed James Spiller, architect of the Great Synagogue of 1790, to rebuild a house for him at Roehampton (Elm Grove). His brother Abraham's house, Mordon Hall at Morden, by J. T. Groves of about the same date, was also an ample but not extravagant house, remarked on for its good gardens, as one would expect a country gentleman to build at that time.5 Such Jews went to the best-known architects, anxious to live up to the circles in which they mixed, or to which they were trying to gain entry. One feels they were large? ly guided by them as to what they should have. Hence there were commis? sions later in the century from Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, Moses Montefiore and the Ricardos to Charles Barry (St John's Lodge in Regent's Park and Kiddington Hall, Oxfordshire), Decimus Burton (Furze Hall and East Cliffe House, Ramsgate) and George Basevi (Bromsberrow Place and Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire and Titness Park in Berkshire). The Salomons were made of different mettle. The first Sir David employed Decimus Burton to design two houses during the 1830s: Burrswood, criticized for its hotch-potch of elements, suggests client inter? ference, while Broomhill in Kent, later a county council convalescent home, was substantially extended between 1874 and 1914 to his own designs by the second Sir David, engineer, electrician and motor pioneer.6 3 See Alfred Rubens, Anglo-Jewish Portraits, Appendix.V (London 1935), and Malcolm Brown, 'Anglo-Jewish country houses from the Resettlement to 1800' Trans JHSE XXVIII (1984) 20-38. 4 I am indebted to R. Savinson for drawing this to my attention. 5 The third brother, Asher, purchased Lord Nelson's former residence (Merton Place) from Lady Hamilton. 6 M. D. Brown, David Salomon s House (privately printed 1968). 76</page><page sequence="3">Patrons, clients, designers and developers Plate i Belvedere House, Kent. One also finds an increasing number of celebrated houses being pur? chased by Jews, including Asgill House in Surrey, built by Sir Robert Taylor for a former Lord Mayor of London, which became the seat of Benjamin Cohen, a deputy lieutenant of the county, before 1840.7 Until this time Jewish clients had not built more spectacularly than the norm, although perhaps given to outward display. The Regency money? lender Jacob Ry, known as cJew King', had a well-appointed house in Clarges Street, Mayfair, and a villa on the Thames in Oriental style where he gave excellent dinners to aristocratic clients; he also ran a coach with armorial bearings, coachman in powdered wig and liveried footmen.8 Another money-lender, Samuel Lewis,9 lived at 23 Grosvenor Square with unusual stables at the back on two floors. The Rothschilds opened a new chapter in commissioned building. Their counting house, New Court in London, had been built for them in 1836 by John Davies, an architect who has suffered from undeserved neglect and who is known in the Jewish community mainly for his winning design in the competition for the New Synagogue in Great St. Helens. When New Court became entirely used for offices, Nathan Meyer Rothschild moved his fam? ily, which included seven children, to a mansion at 107 Piccadilly (now demolished) and, shortly before his death in 1836, bought Gunnersbury Park as a suburban pleasance. He consulted J. C. Loudon about the park 7 E. W. Brayley, Topographical History of Surrey (i 841) 3:104. 8 Captain Gronow, Reminiscences (London 1964). 9 Harry Furness, Some Victorian Men (London 1924) 100-4. 77</page><page sequence="4">Edward Jamilly Plate 2 New Court counting house. and had Sidney Smirke draw up designs for an orangery and stables and George Somers Clarke to design a Turkish bath - never built but perhaps intended as a mikveh.10 When his son Lionel inherited this Italian villa with its gardens he 'decked it out with splendours such as were unknown in England outside the Royal palaces', and threw magnificent banquets and garden parties for the aristocracy and diplomatic corps. Given to the local authority as a museum and public park, Gunnersbury still displays N. M. Rothschild's initials and the family crest in the drawing room. By mid-century the Rothschilds had risen from merchant bankers to gentry and were about to commence their assault on parliament and the peerage; at the same time family building projects expanded. They took over the Vale of Aylesbury and built or altered a series of extravagant man? sions which Pevsner judged to be 'the most conspicuous and significant aspect of Victorian architecture in Bucks'. Meyer, the youngest son of Nathan, who had moved into his father's Piccadilly house, commissioned Paxton, architect of the Crystal Palace, to design Mentmore, majestically sited in parkland near Leighton Buzzard (1850-5). Though criticized as a mere imitation of the Jacobean Wollaton Hall near Nottingham, the interior is spacious and light, with breathtaking views of the Chilterns from its lofty 10 Country Life n November 1982,1480-2. 78</page><page sequence="5">Patrons, clients, designers and developers windows. Particularly notable was its immense central hall (50 x 40 and 40 feet high), lit by a glass ceiling and with tall plate-glass doors and windows. Paxton and his son-in-law Stokes built the mansion around Meyer's collec? tion of pictures, furniture and ornaments: the great hall had to accommo? date huge gilt lanterns from the barge of the Doge of Venice and a chimney-piece designed by Rubens which had been in his Antwerp home. These and other treasures, including some of Marie Antoinette's furniture, magnificent tapestries, Limoges enamels, Sevres porcelain and paintings by Rembrandt, Murillo and Turner, required a suitably magnificent setting. The baron had started collecting fifty years before it became fashionable. Lord Rosebery, who married Meyer's daughter Hannah, continued a tradi? tion of princely hospitality at the mansion. Meyer's elder brother Anthony bought and developed Aston Clinton near Aylesbury (later a hotel and recently demolished) and also maintained a ducal household at Grosvenor Place, London. Lionel, the eldest brother, built 148 Piccadilly (by Nelson &amp; Innes) in 1865, a six-storeyed mansion next to Apsley House, demolished in the 1960s for the Hyde Park road improvements. This famous house, containing a lift, an enormous ballroom and magnificent public rooms, was decked out with flags on public occa? sions and commanded a view of the Royal Parks. Following the example of his brothers, Lionel also bought an estate near Tring in 1851, comprising a reputedly Wren manor house (now a museum) that he Frenchified with pavilion roofs and 3500 acres for a quarter of a million pounds. Afterwards he bought seats at Halton (later an RAF training centre) and Ascot, Buckinghamshire (enlarged in 1874 by Devey and now made over to the National Trust). As if these were not enough, in the next generation Ferdinand had a French palace inside 143 Piccadilly and his sister lived next door, while Lionel's sons were beginning to build just off Piccadilly. When Ferdinand de Rothschild became MP for Aylesbury he bought 2700 acres in Buckinghsmshire, imported a French architect, Destailleur, and conjured up a French chateau of more than 200 rooms in Renaissance style out of a wilderness: it could well lay claim to be the most magnificent Rothschild palace in England (even Queen Victoria came to see it to satisfy her curiosity). Waddesden Manor, built in 1875-80, already lavishly fitted by Ferdinand with furniture and panelling from Paris, Savonneries, Beauvais tapestries and Sevres porcelain, was further adorned by James, who inherited it and left it to the National Trust. Disraeli's house too is a National Trust property: Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire, has now been restored to its state in Disraeli's time (1847-81), with most of his furni? ture, books and pictures.11 11 Ibid. ii February 1993, 40-3. 79</page><page sequence="6">Edward Jamilly Lionel Rothschild's son Alfred, who inherited and embellished Halton House in Buckinghamshire in 1884 with a winter garden the size of a French casino, built as his London residence 1 Seymour Place (now demol? ished), which Disraeli thought 'the most charming house in London, the magnificence of its decoration and furniture equalled by their good taste'. Alfred's brother Nathaniel, the first MP and the first English baron, seems content to have lived in his father's house at 148 Piccadilly, but the youngest brother Leo, not satisfied with inheriting Gunnersbury Park and Ascot (Wing), acquired Palace House near Newmarket, where he could indulge his enthusiasm for horse racing, and also built a splendidly extrava? gant town house at 5 Hamilton Place (later a club) which incorporated a hydraulic lift and a kitchen large enough to roast an ox whole. The Rothschilds' building adventures were prominently reported and illustrated, but they could not claim a monopoly on extravagance. Their palatial residences - for which they employed lesser-known architects (apart from Paxton) who could be relied on to do as they were told, since I believe these Jewish clients had a large hand in the creation of their houses - were being built at a time when Jews were rising to high places in society. The first Jewish QC, Sir Francis Goldsmid MP, had P. C. Hardwick design for him a mansion called Rendcomb near Cheltenham in 1865. (Hardwick assessed the Berkeley Street Synagogue competition in 1867.) With its tower, porch and three-storeyed main building decorated in an Italianate manner, Rencomb (later a private school) looked big enough and certainly important enough to be a town hall, but cost what was a modest ?40,000 in those days.12 The Bischoffsheim house, built during the 1870s in South Audley Street, London, caused much excitement in 1969 in the sale rooms when its Tiepolo ceiling was discovered by Christie's and sold by its then owners, the Egyptian embassy, to the National Gallery for ?409,500. I have always been intrigued by David Mocatta's drawings for a mansion in the Azores, allegedly for a mysterious senor but apparently never built; they were displayed at the Royal Academy in 1847. In view of his almost exclusively Jewish clientele, the house might perhaps have been for some magnate like Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, for whom he added a conservatory to his London house, St John's Lodge in Regent's Park, or the Uzziellis, who, like the Rothschilds, built a mansion in Piccadilly. Later, H. H. Collins (originally from Frankfurt), who built houses for Jewish clients such as Callis Court at Broadstairs for Harry Marks MP, was responsible for the splendid late-Renaissance-style house commissioned in the 1880s by the British consul-general Sir Charles Oppenheimer in Frankfurt. This 12 The Builder 10 June 1865, 412-13. 8o</page><page sequence="7">Patrons, clients, designers and developers Plate 3 Aldford House, 26 Park Lane. mansion had a baronial interior with somewhat oppressive Victorian deco? ration, but great splendour. It was also in advance of its time, containing as it did central heating, inside plumbing, a telephone and electric lighting.13 The house was the subject of a long haggle after the First World War for compensation from the German government who seized it. It was demol? ished in a bombing raid during the Second World War. The arrival of the 'Randlords'14 in London signals another wave of extravagance. The house designed by Balfour &amp; Turner for Sir Alfred Beit at 26 Park Lane in 1897 (with the blessing of the Grosvenor Estate) was criticized as the incongruous transplant of an African lodge,15 but it had more character than the block of flats (Aldford House) that now occupies the site. Sir Edmund Davis, with an artistic wife, employed William Flockhart to unite 11 and 13 Lansdowne Road in around 1900, Frank Brangwyn to decorate and furnish rooms and Charles Conder to paint silk panels; his art collection went to the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. Another South African millionaire, Barney Barnato, in 1895 commenced building a gaudy house at 25 Park Lane (by T. H. Smith) which he did not live to see completed. Sir Philip Sassoon later bought the house, described as 'typical of that overloaded rigidity of stone mouldings and pilaster that 13 Sir Francis Oppenheimer, Stranger Within (London i960). 14 Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Randlords (London 1985). 15 Hermione Hobhouse, Lost London (London 1976) 42. 8i</page><page sequence="8">Edward Jamilly was considered to be the refinement of good taste in the eighties and nineties'.16 Barnato's nephew and successor Solly Joel lived from 1903 on at a house in Great Stanhope Street, entertaining lavishly there and at his country seats Maiden Erleigh near Reading and Moulton Paddocks near Newmarket, where he could indulge his sporting interests. His brother Jack B. Joel also lived the latter part of his life in England, where he bought Childwickbury House at St Albans and a racing stud from Sir John Maple on the latter's death. Three new baronets bought and altered mansions: Lionel Phillips virtually rebuilt Tylney Hall in Hampshire, a Jacobean style mansion, with R. S. Wornum as architect (1898-1902; later a borstal).17 Otto Beit took over the Duke of Richmond's house at 49 Belgrave Square. Friedrich Eckstein had a house at 15 Park Lane and rebuilt Ottershaw Park, Surrey (now a school), erasing from 1908 to 1910 the accumulated work of three famous architects (Sir Robert Taylor, James Wyatt and William Burn) and substituting two relative unknowns (Niven and Wigglesworth). With the turn of the century came a heyday for English Jews, counted in Court circles as personal friends of the Prince of Wales. A dozen or more MPs sat in the House of Commons. Herzl was impressed when lunching at the house of Sir Samuel Montagu MP in 1895: 'English elegance in grand style ? Kosher food served by three liveried footmen'.18 The Times's famous correspondent in Paris was Blowitz; in the arts there were six musical knights - Benedict, Costa, Cowen, Henschel, de Lara and Ronald; Pinero wrote The Second Mrs Tanqueray while the Prince of Wales paid court to Sarah Bernhardt, whom Oscar Wilde met with armfuls of lilies on her arrival19 for a triumphant tour only a few years after the great Rachel had been enthusiastically received in London. With wealth and public position, they built homes and launched architectural enterprises that varied from the splendid to the bizarre. Sir Ernest Cassel spent hundreds of thousands of pounds improving Brook House, Park Lane,20 importing 800 tons of Italian marble for the great hall, staircase and galleries. Sir Albert Sassoon built a mausoleum of oriental design behind his house at 1 Eastern Terrace, Brighton, where he and his son Sir Edward were buried in 1896 and 1912 respectively.21 In London the St John's Wood villa taken by the great Bernhardt - whose work as a playwright, sculptor and architect is less well 16 Stanley Jackson, The Great Barnato (London 1970) 262; Sassoon alterations in Country Life 17 November 1994. 17 Clive Aslet, The Last Country Houses (New Haven and London 1982). 18 Diaries of Theodor Herzl (London 1958). 19 Sheridan Morley, Oscar Wilde (London 1976). 20 Left to his daughter Lady Louis Mountbatten, it was demolished in 1933. 21 Subsequently absorbed into Charrington's Hanbury Arms in Paston Place. 82</page><page sequence="9">Patrons, clients, designers and developers known than her stage presence ? fast gained a name for the eccentricity of its decoration, ornaments and menagerie.22 Rachel's ostentatious taste was exercised at 15 Half Moon Street when she stayed in London. In 1903 Solomon J. Solomon, later President of the Royal Society of British Artists, built on to his house at 18 Hyde Park Gate23 a studio designed by Delissa Joseph to house his big biblical canvases; it became more famous as the workshop of Jacob Epstein from 1928 to 1959. Sir Edgar Speyer's house at 46 Grosvenor Street (1910, by Blow &amp; Billerey) contained a mixture of his? torical styles within an important looking Renaissance front of dressed stone, between its Georgian brick neighbours. The Rothschilds continued building into the twentieth century. Ashton Wold, Northamptonshire, was built in 1903 by Lord Rothschild as a wed? ding present for his son Charles, a keen naturalist who rebuilt the village of Ashton.24 Barney Barnato's youngest son Woolf, the racing driver, had Ardenrun Place, Surrey, built for him by Ernest Newton in 1906-9, and when it burnt down, spent ?100,000 on a Lutyens house near Englefield Green with twenty-five bedrooms and its own cinema.25 Jews now went to the most eminent architects of their day. Edwin Montagu, in his official capacity as Secretary of State for India in Lloyd George's government, met Edwin Lutyens over the planning of New Delhi, and though at first somewhat inclined to deride him, later proved one of his strongest supporters against the Viceroy's vacillations. His rec? ommendation to the Prime Minister resulted in Lutyens's knighthood in 1918. Montagu commissioned Lutyens to alter his country house, Breccles Hall in Norfolk, where by all accounts this strange and moody man was happiest. Sir Alfred Mond created two lovely houses filled with things of beauty and interest ? one in the country (Melchett Court) and the other, with Lutyens's help, at 35 Lowndes Square in London. When Minister of Health he inspired the doggerel: 'The Minister bland who rules pro tern, out of Swansea via Jerusalem'. As First Commissioner of Works he had official dealings with Lutyens: he invited him to design war memorials and strongly resisted cross elements in the design, an attitude Lutyens found quite proper in view of the fallen of Jewish and Muslim denominations, as well as the Christians they commemorated (hence the Cenotaph). Other Jewish clients of Lutyens included Lady Battersea, the Lebus family, the Rt Hon. Leslie Hore-Belisha MP and Victor Behar. Sir Herbert Baker RA, with a large practice in South Africa, also enjoyed Jewish patronage. In England he was commissioned to build a house for Sir 22 Joanna Richardson, Sarah Bernhardt (London 1959). 23 Jenny Pery, Solomon jf. Solomon (London 1990). 24 Aslet (see n. 17). 25 Jackson (see n. 16). 83</page><page sequence="10">Edward Jfami Ily Philip Sassoon at Lympne, Kent, later enlarged by Philip Tilden. Tilden in his autobiography26 makes it clear that Sassoon, then Secretary of State for Air, was no tame client, but the driving inspiration and imaginative force behind the extraordinary mansion named Port Lympne which Cabinet Ministers and their entourages frequented. After Philip's death in 1939 the private airfield was given to the nation by Sir Victor Sassoon, and fighter planes fought the Battle of Britain from it before it later became a thriving cross-channel ferry base. Sassoon had found his site on downland high above Romney Marshes before the First World War and Baker's modest house designed for him was of red brick with South African gables. On his return from the war, Sassoon was keen to complete it and could not wait for Baker, then busy at Delhi with Lutyens. His architect speaks of the imagi? native way in which the project was tackled: 'There was no end to Philip's ideas: he would add more bedrooms; he would make an internal Spanish courtyard or patio; he would make another library; he would make more garden, a swimming pool with fountains, a flight of steps such as no house in England possessed, and, above all, he would let his house grow up from its somewhat baroque name of'Belcaire' to the masculine Tort Lympne', named after the Roman station of Porta Lemanis'. It was turned from week? end home into luxurious mansion, paved and slabbed in marble - Swedish green, white, onyx and gold - panelled with lapis, mirrored with black and oyster-coloured glass, and included a pantiled Moorish patio, classical domed octagonal library, pavilions, fountain, gardens, terraces, loggias, great steps, stone and wrought iron. A private Versailles, it was inundated with visitors: the great of the world held a conference in this halfway house between France and England in 1918, dominated by Foch and Lloyd George, ministers, field-marshals and their staffs; the most important guests stayed at the house, and the Imperial Hotel at Hythe was chartered for the remainder. Sassoon liked a touch of Eastern Renaissance, even in French rooms in Park Lane and Trent (afterwards remodelled), and at Lympne he displayed his passion for a Spanish courtyard; he was equally at home among French furniture, an inclination inherited from his mother Aline de Rothschild. It is clear that during the design of Lympne, Sassoon was the ideas man who scoured the countryside, insinuating himself brazenly into houses he wanted to look inside - 'The most beautiful barley sugar staircase', hissed Sir Philip with his foot in the door of a house. Tilden was lost for words. 26 Philip Tilden, True Remembrances (London 1954). 84</page><page sequence="11">Patrons, clients, designers and developers Plate 4 The Rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens. Entrepreneurs Building was not confined to houses. Although Jews are best known as pro? ducers, directors, composers, conductors and performers, their involve? ment with entertainment goes back to 1742, when Solomon Rieti created Ranelagh pleasure gardens. One of the earliest tavern theatres, the Brown Bear in Goodman's Fields, was run by Ikey Solomons. Loibl and Sonnhammer turned an old coaching inn into a music hall in 1861, which became the London Pavilion. A good many of the Victorian halls seem to have been created by Jewish showmen, with names like Garcia, Levene, Morris Abrahams, Harry Hart and Fox.27 Keeling and Collins (H. H., the synagogue architect) designed the Strand Music Hall in 1864. Lionel Lawson (formerly Levy, uncle of Lord Burnham of the Daily Telegraph) built the Queen's Theatre in Long Acre in 1867 and a year later the Gaiety Theatre in the Strand. A gay and generous bachelor, rumour had it that he turned from newspapers to theatre-building (with his own flat in the roof of the Gaiety) because of a liaison with an actress, a rumour sub? stantiated by his will since he appointed guardians to execute it in favour of her son (Reggie Turner). John Braham the singer, a former choirboy of the Great Synagogue, 27 Harold Scott, The Early Doors (London 1946). 85</page><page sequence="12">Edward Jamilly Plate 5 Hammerstein's Opera House. bought the Coliseum28 panorama in Regent's Park in 1831, adding a grand banqueting hall of mirrors (later converted into the Cyclorama theatre) and an ice rink called the Glaciarium. He went on to build the St James's Theatre in 1835, employing Sam Beazley, architect of the Lyceum Theatre. But neither venture was profitable and he was bankrupted, although the buildings remained. (His daughter Frances, Countess Waldegrave, inherit? ed his passion for building and in 1856 started restoring and enlarging Strawberry Hill at a cost of ?ioo,ooo.29) It was the American impresario Oscar Hammerstein30 who astounded London by building a rival to Covent Garden, an opera house (later renamed the Stoll Theatre) in Kingsway, of cream and gold, marble and plush, with a great staircase, two royal entrances and a Marconi apparatus to receive bookings from 600 miles away at sea. Although Bertie Crewe was the architect, Hammerstein's ideas predominated. Solly Joel, among his many investments in London, financed Sir Alfred Butt's rebuilding of the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square, for MGM as well as the acquisition of the Meux brewery in Tottenham Court Road for the Dominion Theatre. 28 Stella Margetson, 'Illusion of Beauty' Country Life 11 November 1982. 29 O. W. Hewett, 'The Waidegrave Strawberry HilP Architectural Review CXXII (1957) 157-61. 30 Vincent Sheean, The Amazing Oscar Hammerstein (London 1956). 86</page><page sequence="13">Patrons, clients, designers and developers The London Hippodrome, designed for circus and variety by Frank Matcham in 1900, was built by Edward Moss, founder of the Moss Empire chain, and converted into the Talk of the Town by Bernard Delfont. Of London's Art Deco theatres the little Fortune Theatre (1924) owes its inception and erection to Laurence Cowen the playwright. His architect, Ernest Schaufelberg, who built it of reinforced concrete, six years later designed the Adelphi Theatre. During the 1930s Michael Rosenauer remodelled the bar and foyer of the Lyric, while Serge Chermayeff created the Cambridge Theatre interiors and Marc-Henri Levy imported Parisian chic into the Whitehall and Prince Edward Theatre decorations. Augustus Harris's management of Drury Lane is commemorated by a fountain on the street and Lilian Baylis, who made the Old Vic famous, has the studio theatre at Sadlers Wells named after her. The Winogradsky brothers (Lords Delfont and Grade) are remembered by plaques on the Prince of Wales and Palladium theatres. Three major contributions to theatre over the last fifty years must surely be Denys Lasdun's National Theatre, London, and Peter Moro's Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, for their outstanding architectural solutions, and the American film director Sam Wanamaker's perseverance in getting Shakespeare's Globe Theatre rebuilt in Southwark. Jews were prominent also in developing early bioscopes and the cinema chains of the 1930s: Essoldo, named after Essy, Solly and Dorothy Sheckman of Newcastle, the Gaumont-British cinemas built by the Ostrer brothers and, largest of them all, the distinctive, vitrolite and faience-clad Odeons, mostly designed by Harry Weedon and taking their name from the initials of their promoter Oscar Deutsch. He was commemorated by a plaque in the foyer of the largest flagship house (interior decorated by his wife Lily) in Leicester Square until, under different ownership, Odeon cine? mas became 'fanatical about film' and removed the record of their founder. Sir Alexander Korda (Sandor Kellner) charmed the Prudential into building Denham Studios where he produced a series of memorable British films.31 Transport also had its Jewish entrepreneurs, who were holders of many shares in the early railways and in iron shipbuilding. Both Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid as a director and David Mocatta as shareholder and architect to the company played a large part in the construction of the London Brighton &amp; South Coast lines. Between 1839 and 1842 Mocatta designed the terminal building at Brighton, the viaduct over the Ouse valley and the intermediate stations,32 which have since been recognized by architectural critics as 31 The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Rembrandt, The Thief of Bagdad, Things to Come, The Third Man. 32 David Cole, 'Mocatta's Stations for the Brighton Railway' Journal of Transport History III (1958) 149-57 87</page><page sequence="14">Edward jfamilly having set a basic plan that became the model for later railway construction. Goldsmid will be remembered also as a founding father of University College London, for which in 1825 he acquired the Gower Street site, and of University College Hospital, as well as a leading organizer of London Docks. Joseph Samuda, having toyed with railways (with his elder brother Jacob) and built up one of the most important shipyards on the Thames, went to the House of Commons in 1865 on the Liberal ticket, to propagate the introduction of iron ships into the Navy. The merchant bankers Speyer Brothers' contribution to London Underground,33 starting with the electrification of the Metropolitan &amp; District Railway and extending to the construction of five tube lines, was parallelled by Sir Ernest Cassel, who led the financing of the Central Line, opened in 1900. They included immediately recognizable above-ground structures in the form of red-arched station entrances capped by Delissa Joseph's hotels and offices, some of which still exist in central London.34 Using diplomatic as well as financial skills, Baron Maurice de Hirsch put together the Ottoman, Balkan and Austro-Hungarian concessions and con? struction enterprises35 that led to the first Orient Express leaving Vienna for Constantinople in 1888. The baron's palatial pied?terre in London was Bath House, Piccadilly.36 Samuel Isaac, an army contractor whose firm was ruined after support? ing the Southern States during the American Civil War, formed the compa? ny that built the first Mersey Tunnel, opened by the Prince of Wales in 1885. (His brother Saul was the first Jewish Conservative MP.) Jewish entrepreneurs founded great commercial enterprises that have become national institutions. Shell Transport and Trading Company, now operating in 135 countries and employing 90,000 people,37 was a Jewish fam? ily business between 1897, when it was started by Marcus Samuel and his brother Sam, and 1946, when the second Lord Bearsted retired as chairman. Marcus Samuel lived at 3 Hamilton Place, London, and bought The Mote, a country house at Bearsted, Kent, in 1895 where he lived in sombre state and had the Kent County cricket ground made in 1908 in order to alle? viate unemployment. In 1913 he moved his company's offices into a new building in Bishopsgate, St Helen's Court, designed by Ernest Joseph; this necessitated the destruction of Great St Helen's Synagogue, which was 33 Of which Sir Edgar Speyer was Chairman until Germanophobia forced him to resign in 1915 34 E.g. the Coburg Hotel above Queensway station and the office block above the Argyll Street entrance to Oxford Circus station. 35 Kurt Grunwald, T?rkenhirsch (Israel Program for Scientific Translations 1966). 36 Lucien Wolf, Essays in Jewish History (London 1934) 60. 37 The Shell Report 2001. 88</page><page sequence="15">Patrons, clients, designers and developers taken down and rebuilt by his architect at Stamford Hill six years later. St Helen's Court remained the base until a landmark building, Shell-Mex House, also by Ernest Joseph, was erected in 1933, stretching from the Strand to the Thames Embankment on the site of the Hotel Cecil.38 These head offices were generous in the staff facilities provided, supplemented by the building of Lensbury Country Club at Teddington 1933-5. Even more amenities were included in the Shell Centre on the South Bank in London designed by Howard Robertson, President of the RIBA; on its completion in 1963 it was the largest office building in Europe and one of London's tallest. The Shell company that Samuel founded is but one of many commercial enterprises responsible for a great deal of building. The ICI empire, that in 1926 grew out of the chemical industry founded by Mond and his Quaker partner Brunner, inherited the factories they built in Cheshire, London and Wales. Mond even used the stables of his house, 'The Poplars' in Avenue Road, St John's Wood, as the chief research laboratory.39 Many years later ICI's new research laboratories in Manchester, designed by Serge Chermayeff, set new standards for workers. So too did Montague Burton, who in Leeds during the first quarter of the twentieth century turned tailoring workshops and sweatshops into a bespoke trade and multiple tailoring; his Hudson Road Mills were pioneer? ing model factories built by an idealist who rescued the industry from squalor and contributed not only to better standards of factory design and better conditions for workers, but also largely established Leeds as the home of clothing manufacture.40 His shops, usually sited on corners and often with dance-halls or billiards room above, were a familiar sight between the wars on most high streets. At the other end of the scale, a guest at Sir Polydore de Keyser's Royal Hotel (1874), built by a Jewish waiter from Belgium who became Lord Mayor of London, had at one time to secure a personal introduction before he could book one of the 400 rooms. Taken over by the Royal Flying Corps in 1916, it was later rebuilt as Unilever House (1930-1). Starting from similar small beginnings to Burton's, the Lyons tea shops and cornerhouses brought mass catering to working men and gave them for the price of modest refreshments an accompaniment of marble palaces and string orchestras. Still standing but much altered internally, the Cornerhouses, first in Coventry Street (1907 by Ancell) and two later ones in Oxford Street, together with the Strand and Regent Palace Hotels (Tanner &amp; 38 Stephen Howarth, A Century in Oil (London 1997). 39 J. M. Cohen, The Life of 'Ludwig Mond (London 1956). 40 R. Redmayne (ed.) Ideals in Industry, Being the Story of Montague Burton Ltd (Leeds i95i) 89</page><page sequence="16">Edward Jamilly Plate 6 Strand Palace Hotel foyer. Wills, 1912-15) controlled by J. Lyons &amp; Co., 'formed the most important group of London buildings... faced in white glazed terracotta'.41 The Strand Palace's Art Deco interior and lighting (and other Lyons hotel interiors) were designed by Oliver Bernard, a former member of Soloman J. Soloman's cam? ouflage section and father of Jeffrey Bernard, the Soho raconteur. When in 1895 Lyons took a ninety-nine-year lease of the Trocadero Music Hall and rebuilt it as a restaurant, Hatchard Smith &amp; Ancell were employed as architects and J. Lyons acted as their own contractors; F. J. Wills carried out internal alterations and the famous Long Bar was designed by Davis &amp; Emanuel.42 The first of the Lyons tea shops, with its trademark design of raised gold letters on a white fascia, opened at 213 Piccadilly in 1904 and the last closed ninety years later on the corner of Duncannon Street and the Strand. At Buckingham Palace the firm served garden par? ties and at Cadby Hall fuelled its vast catering empire. Retail empires have been long-lasting: in 1856 David Lewis founded a chain of provincial stores that still trades under his name. Marks &amp; Spencer under the Marks and Sieff families not only became a byword for quality, probity and business efficiency, seconding staff to train Government departments in their methods, but constantly studied and improved pedes? trian flow, merchandising layout, heating, lighting and ventilation inside its 41 LCC Survey of London XXXI, Westminster pt. II (1963). 42 LCC Survey (see n. 41). 90</page><page sequence="17">Patrons, clients, designers and developers stores, although they hardly advanced in outward appearance. Tesco, on the other hand, developed from John Cohen's little self-service shops into the United Kingdom's leading food retailer and biggest private-sector employer,43 operating 979 stores around the world and generating an enor? mous amount of building, much of it architecturally exciting. Other Jewish directed stores dealing in clothing, fashion and jewellery have expanded the shopfitting industry and done much to establish innovative shop design and display, while niche retailer/manufacturers such as Hille for furniture have had a design influence far beyond the scope of their own operations. Developers The word 'developer' has come into common usage since the Second World War, with something of a note of opprobrium when linked to prop? erty. Yet the activities it describes are far from new. The Prince Regent, clearing a swathe from Carlton House to St Marylebone and leaving London with the Haymarket, Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street and Regent's Park, is perhaps the best-known royal developer. Nearly all the great landowners have at one time or another acted as developers: to their activi? ties we owe Georgian Bloomsbury, Regency Belgravia and large parts of Victorian Kensington and latter-day Westminster. Outside London, Craig's plans for Edinburgh New Town and John Wood's Bath are recog? nized as cohesive developments. The Jewish contribution was relatively small-scale at first. Emanuel Baruch Lousada, who built and lived in Peak House, has been credited by local topographers with a handful of Regency mansions, villas and cottages built in the small town of Sidmouth in Devon, then popular with nobility and gentry. Jewish financiers participated in the Haldimand syndicate formed to undertake the building of Belgrave Square, London (for which Base vi was chosen as architect). Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid bought the Wick Estate, Hove, from T. R. Kemp in 1830 for ?55,525, and had Decimus Burton prepare designs for Adelaide Crescent there (named after the King's consort by permission of William IV) and a house for himself, Wick Hall (built 1835-8 and demolished during the 1930s for flats of the same name). Goldsmid went on to develop Palmeira Square (named after his Portuguese title) and was instrumental in adding about 400 houses to Brunswick Town, doubling the population of the district and giving land for the new church of St John's, Hove.44 A less extensive speculation was the White Knights estate near 43 i95,ooo employees in the UK and 65,000 overseas. Tesco Pic Annual Review 2002. 44 Anthony Dale, Fashionable Brighton 1820-1860 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1967). 9i</page><page sequence="18">Edward Jamilly Reading, formerly the country seat of the Marquis of Blandford, acquired by Goldsmid from a bankrupt in 1844, for which David Mocatta prepared development sketches.45 Outside his Shell empire, Lord Bearsted was not averse to dabbling in property, buying 12-19 Berkeley Square and six adjoining houses in Bruton Street during the early 1930s for redevelopment. Sir Ernest Cassel played a major role in the financing of the present Kingsway and several large hous? ing estates in London. These undertakings, however important they may have seemed at the time, were puny compared with the vast works initiated by Jewish develop? ers from the 1930s,46 some of whom laid the foundations of major property companies (such as Land Securities), which have drastically changed, for better or for worse, the appearance of whole sectors of towns throughout the country. They started from modest prewar enterprises, such as the redevelopment in 1932 of a site in Langham Place for the BBC initiated by an estate agent, J. A. Phillips, and carried out by his architects Val Myer and Hart. Few people perhaps realize that Broadcasting House was an early developer's building. Joseph Littman, who patiently acquired piecemeal much of Kilburn High Road and later important parts of Oxford Street, paved the way for the modern developer with his expertise in financing methods (re-finance and leaseback). The 'lessor' scheme was pioneered by Emanuel Curtis: many private office blocks were erected in Central London during a period of stringent building licensing after the war, condi? tional on long leases being granted for the rehousing of government depart? ments. Curtis had leased a site in 1936 in Oxford to the GPO and then in 1947 acquired and developed with his architect Arthur Ash a site in Theobalds Road, London, for the Air Ministry (Adastral House), the pred? ecessor of many criticized for their dull and clumsy architecture. Only in 1954, when building restrictions were removed, did property development begin on a large scale, particularly in the rebuilding of war damaged central areas. Louis Freedman, who served his apprenticeship in Curtis's firm, made active approaches to many local authorities, as a result of which he undertook major redevelopments in such blitzed cities as Plymouth, Exeter, Hull, Canterbury, Coventry, Swansea, Portsmouth and Southampton. The brothers D. E. and J. Levy, who started with Phillips, have probably arranged more redevelopment in London than any others. Both Freedman and Levy approached development from the estate agent's point of view. The popular idea of the tycoon with a flair for property is perhaps better personified by Sir Harold Samuel, Jack Cotton, Charles 45 Jill Lever (ed.) Catalogue of the RIBA Drawings Collection (London 1973). 46 Oliver Marriott, The Property Boom (London 1967). 92</page><page sequence="19">Patrons, clients, designers and developers Clore, Lewis Hammerson and Max Rayne. The contribution that such men made was their expertise in harnessing finance to property development, mainly from institutional sources previously notorious for their conser? vatism, such as insurance companies, investment trusts, ducal estates and even the Church Commissioners. Despite the stones that have been thrown at developers, many prominent and well-designed buildings have resulted from their activities, such as Castrol House, Marylebone; Eastbourne Terrace, Paddington; and Brent Cross shopping centre in north London; nor are their developments exclusively office blocks and shops, as popularly supposed, for London has gained several new places of entertainment and major road improvements. Charles Clore, whose British Shoe Corporation once included every well-known name in the business,47 bought a row of terraced houses at the southern end of Park Lane, London, for the erection of the Hilton Hotel (i960, architect Sidney Kaye), breaching the height barrier around the Royal Parks with the encouragement of a government minister who thought 700 hotel rooms for Americans and other tourists essential for the national economy. Centrepoint (1967), designed by Richard Seifert for Harry Hyams, has run the gauntlet from derision to praise as London's pop-art landmark. The Reichman brothers survived bankruptcy to finish Canary Wharf (main tower 1990), topping Seifert's Nat West Tower, previously the highest building in the City, and setting the seal on the revival of Docklands. Designers To practise as a designer ? a fairly recent phenomenon ? involved entering the professions of architecture, surveying or engineering. The University Test Act was not repealed until 1870 and while the charters of the profes? sional bodies that now exist have never contained any clauses that discrimi? nated against Jewish members (as far as I have been able to ascertain), the normal method of training used to be articled pupilage. Here the personal prejudices of the master would prevail against any would-be entrants not perhaps of the same persuasion, background or social standing as himself. The first professing Jew recorded to have been so trained was David Mocatta, articled to Sir John Soane in 1821, with provision for Jewish holi? day leave. Since that date a good many Jewish architects have practised. Some of the better-known Victorians, listed in my previous paper48 before this Society, include George Basevi, David Brandon, the brothers John 47 Dolcis, Saxone, Trueform, Mansfield, Freeman Hardy &amp; Willis. 48 Edward Jamilly, 'Anglo-Jewish Architects, and Architecture in the 18th and 19th Centuries' Trans JfHSE XVIII (1958) 127-41. 93</page><page sequence="20">Edward Jamilly Raphael and Joshua Arthur Brandon, Henry Davis and Barrow Emanuel, H. H. Collins, Edward Salomons, N. S. Joseph and his nephew Delissa Joseph, Lewis Solomon and Halsey Ricardo. Their designs were not greatly different from contemporary trends except for an occasional exuberance, possibly indicating a more volatile and flamboyant temperament. As long as prejudice existed, Jews had perhaps to be more industrious, if not more competent, than their fellow professionals, if they were to win commissions outside their own community, and to make themselves more indispensable if they were to retain their clients. Public competition provid? ed an entree to fields otherwise inaccessible and was the foundation and mainstay of more than one Jewish architect's practice. In professional cir? cles no less a person than Professor T. L. Donaldson (President of the RIBA 1863-5) wrote to George Godwin, editor of The Builder, about the first competition for the new Royal Exchange, London, to which both he and Mocatta had submitted designs: cIn confidence I will state my appre? hensions. Mocatta has powerful moneyed interest in the City, and ... his friends are moving heaven and earth for him, on the plea that his plan is more commodious, less wasteful than mine in its arrangement, and will produce a much greater rental... In all this there is great trick and manoeu? vring. The Jews would be in ecstasy were one of the tribe of Israel to be the architect of the Royal Exchange of London, as is natural.'49 Donaldson's offensively worded fears that the intrinsic merit of his design would be overlooked due to the bogey of Jewish influence and treachery were groundless, for in the event neither won and the Exchange was finally rebuilt to Tite's designs. Had they been aware of his feelings I wonder whether the Jewish community would have chosen Donaldson, as they did, to judge the competition designs for their own Model Dwellings in Commercial Street, opened by the Chief Rabbi in 1863. Some Victorian careerists adopted the expedient of conversion, hopeful of thereby enlarging their social opportunities. Disraeli's cousin George Basevi, who could pass off his descent as Italian, was baptized secretly about the age of seventeen with his ambitious family. The brothers Raphael and Joshua Brandon, after their Jewish youth, professed allegiance to the Church. In the case of Raphael (born 1817), conversion cannot have come until his late twenties, for the Mahamad commissioned him to design the Sephardi Infant School in i843,50adjoining Bevis Marks Synagogue, after which he enjoyed considerable ecclesiastical commissions, a field of practice that would otherwise have been closed to him. Mocatta, though, a staunch adherent to his ancestral faith, found little scope for his capabilities outside 49 T. L. Donaldson, letter, The Builder XLIX (15 August 1885) 212. 50 Presentation trowel in possession of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue (no. 89 in Treasures of a London Temple, London 1951). 94</page><page sequence="21">Patrons, clients, designers and developers Jewish circles, even though well-respected as an architect. Despite private inherited wealth, he left a modest fortune at his death, rather less than half that amassed by his less talented contemporary David Brandon, whose apostasy was the preliminary to a long and lucrative practice among the nobility. He is buried at Kensal Green cemetery alongside some da Costas. One can find the architect Basevi commemorated by a brass plate in the floor of Ely Cathedral, while his father lies with members of the Lindo fam? ily at Hove parish church. One of his grandsons became Father Basevi of the Brompton Oratory, London. It says a good deal for the calibre and energy of Jewish entrants to the architectural profession that, although few in number, they were responsi? ble for a surprisingly large output of important buildings. If, a few years ago, before the spate of rebuilding that has taken place in St James's, London you had walked about that institutional stronghold of the establishment, you could have seen half a dozen clubs designed by Jews: they included the Conservative, the Junior Carlton, the Cavalry, the Marlborough Wyndham, the Meistersinger, the RAC and the Headquarters of the British Legion.51 Beyond clubland, the West End and the City provided theatres, Cornerhouses, hotels, banks and important offices, shops, warehouses and residential chambers too numerous to mention, many of them landmarks to this day. In the 'good' Conservative residential districts of London, where a slight anti-Semitic flavour remains, how many of the residents realize that in addition to the Daily Telegraph pushed through their letterbox, they owe some of their familiar sights and cherished surroundings to Jewish inspira? tion? For example, the two major country houses remaining in Highgate Village - Caenwood Towers,52 designed by Edward Salomons and long the home of Sir Robert Waley-Cohen, and Beechwood,53 by Basevi who also owned Fitzroy Park. When the latter was to be sold a few years ago, a furore was created by local preservationists (led by Mrs Menuhin), apprehensive that it might be altered, converted or demolished. The Edwardian Kidderpore estate in Hampstead, the Regency Pelham Crescent in Kensington, and Halsey Ricardo's remarkable houses in Addison and Melbury Roads (one occupied by nuns) in the same borough, all derive from Jews; I wonder if the Teutonic consular staff who housed themselves in Belgrave Square just before the war knew that this centrepiece of Belgravia too was of Jewish design. Curiously enough, there were even a few churches by professing Jews: the Swedenborg church by Digby Solomon, a convent church by Maurice Sanders and (dare I mention it) a Methodist church and a garrison church with which I myself was concerned. 51 Edward Jamilly (see n. 48). 52 Renamed Athlone House when acquired by the NHS for hospital use. 53 Designed for his brother Nathaniel, a barrister and a governor of Highgate School. 95</page><page sequence="22">Edward Jamilly Plate 7 Caenwood Towers. From the legion of notable metropolitan buildings one might single out the work of one man for detailed comment. Joseph Arthur Davis, or Arthur J. Davis as he later became known, was born in Bayswater (i 878-1951), the son of Montague Davis, a merchant, and his wife Ada (nee Moss). Educated partly in Brussels and partly in Paris, where he was sent at the age of six? teen, he studied under Godefroy and entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He owed the foundation of his career to a meeting in Paris with Charles Mewes, an architect already well known not only in France but also in Germany, where he practised in partnership with Bischoff. Evidently Mewes took a liking to the young and talented student and first employed Davis to assist with the drawings for a competition design and later to deal with the interi? or replanning and redecoration of the Carlton Hotel, Haymarket. Taken into partnership at the early age of twenty-two, Davis ran the London office of Mewes &amp; Davis from 1900; with the building of the Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly, and the Morning Post in the Strand in 1906, the young man began to stir architectural circles by 'a sudden intrusion of French elegance' into stuffy Victorian London.54 The subsequent work of the firm is a cata? logue of institutional grandeur: the RAC in Pall Mall, a splendidly appoint? ed building with its own swimming pool, and the RAC Country Club at 54 C. H. Reilly, Representative British Architects (London 1931). 90</page><page sequence="23">Patrons, clients, designers and developers Epsom; the Cavalry Club; the curious little Armenian church in Kensington, its interior redolent with incense yet, like many Eastern Orthodox churches, strangely reminiscent of eastern synagogues; the grand head office of the Hudson Bay Company outside St Helens; the Leathersellers Hall nearby and the Morgan Grenfell Bank. Davis also designed the Westminster Bank headquarters in Lothbury and Threadneedle Street for which he was awarded the London Architecture Bronze Medal in 1930 (and, in association with Mewes' German partner Bischoff, the Bank's branches in Brussels and Antwerp). He seems to have been company architect to Cunard, for he not only designed Cunard House in London and was consultant for the Cunard building in Liverpool, but did the decorations for the SS Aquitania, Laconia and Franconia; even the lamp standards erected in Piccadilly Circus in 1932 were to his design. The French and Belgian governments honoured him and he became a Royal Academician and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Arts. He rendered service to architectural education, having founded the First Atelier in London, before the Architectural Association school started effective instruction. Edward Salomons had earlier done as much to the face of Manchester as Davis had to London. Born in 1827, he was articled to John Edgar Gregan, a great designer in the palazzo style, who had been commissioned for the Manchester Hebrew School of 1850 while Salomons was his pupil; practis? ing on his own from 1852 he competed for the Free Trade Hall and was awarded second prize while only twenty-eight; he also designed the 1857 Art Treasures Exhibition building - Manchester's Crystal Palace. Generally regarded as one of her most promising architects in a period when Manchester architecture was accepted as the most advanced and pro? gressive in the country, Salomons built three Manchester synagogues (including the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Cheetham Hill, now the Jewish Museum) and the Bayswater Synagogue in London (closed 1966 and demolished), many warehouses and large residences, a hospital, art gal? leries, two theatres - one of which, the Alexandra in Lime Street, Liverpool, was much admired - the Manchester &amp; Salford Savings Bank and the Reform Club - a Gothic building which the great Professor Reilly admired as a fine strong composition with its line of great windows at the first-floor level and its balancing turrets, remarking how poor and thin it made the nearby Gothic banks and offices look.55 Very much a local wor? thy, Salomons helped to found the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, the Manchester Society of Architects (of which he was twice president). He was also the honorary secretary of the Royal Institution of Manchester and 55 C. H. Reilly, Some Manchester Streets and their Buildings (Liverpool 1924) 32. 97</page><page sequence="24">Edward Jamilly Plate 8 Mancester's Crystal Palace. an active promoter of the School of Art, the City Art Gallery and the Chair of Architecture in Manchester University. His last work was the Crematorium, in neo-Romanesque style, which has called forth the com? ment that stylistically he seems to have progressed through architectural history backwards, designing a Crystal Palace in his youth, a Gothic club in middle age and a Romanesque swansong.56 In a previous paper57 I mentioned the more important architects of the Victorian period. Since the Great War the output of Jewish architects has enormously increased. Their works include many pioneer buildings of the Modern movement. Erich Mendelsohn, who came to Britain as a refugee from Germany in 1933, submitted a winning competition design for the stunning Delawarr Pavilion at Bexhill, built Benn Levy and Constance Cumming's house in Old Church Street, Chelsea (later Paul Hamlyn's), and then commuted by plane to design Weizmann's house at Rehovoth, Palestine, until he settled briefly in Jerusalem. In Palestine he was responsi? ble for the Government Hospital, Haifa; Schocken House; the Anglo Palestine Bank; Hadassah University Medical Centre on Mt Scopus and the Agricultural College at Rehovoth. These buildings made a great impact on 56 Cecil Stewart, The Stones of Manchester (London 1956). 57 Tamilly (see n. 4.8). 98</page><page sequence="25">Patrons, clients, designers and developers architectural students here. If one picks up a book on early Modern build? ings in England one nearly always finds illustrations of houses by Serge Chermayeff (Isaakovitch), E. C. Kaufmann (Eugene Kent), Elizabeth Benjamin, Godfrey Samuel and A .V. Pilichowski, while the structural engineer Felix Samuely was the mind behind many pioneering reinforced concrete structures: Simpsons in Piccadilly was one of his buildings, too advanced for the London County Council who initially refused consent. Less imaginative in conception was the prewar work of such firms as Messrs Joseph, Lewis Solomon &amp; Son and Collins, but between them London was dotted with landmarks such as Shell-Mex House, the Prudential extension in Holborn and the Black Cat Factory in Camden Town. Berthold Lubetkin (1901-90) was a pivotal58 figure of the Modern move? ment in Britain; founder of the firm of Tecton, from his stable came Denys Lasdun, Peter Moro and Godfrey Samuel; his work included the two Highpoint flats (1935 and 1938) in Highgate, London, for Sigmund Gestetner, buildings for the zoos of London, Whipsnade and Dudley, of which the Penguin house in Regent's Park (1935, restored 1987) is much loved, and Finsbury Health Centre, London. His career was crowned with the RIBA Gold Medal in 1982. Ern? Goldfinger's house at 2 Willow Road, Hampstead (1937), far in advance of its time, became the National Trust's first Modern property in 1994, complete with its contemporary furniture and avant-garde art collection.59 Not only architects made their mark in cities: a leader in The Times (22 August 1959) acknowledged that 'Epstein, a Jew . . . attempted and achieved great Christian art'. His Madonna and Child in Cavendish Square, London, St Michael and the Devil at the entrance to Coventry Cathedral and LlandafPs Christ in Majesty justified the faith placed in him by nuns and church people and uplifted the ordinary person.60 In addition, let us not forget Pevsner, the Jew turned Lutheran whose monumental work The Buildings of England brought those buildings before a wide public; he was also immensely influential as Slade professor and a founder of the Victorian Society. Since the Second World War the number of Jewish architects in the pro? fession has increased and runs well into three figures. A high standard of work is emerging. It would be invidious to single out any one name at this time. 58 John Allan, Lubetkin (London 1992). 59 Architectural Review (April 1940) and Country Life 12 September 1991. 60 Richard Buckle, Jacob Epstein Sculptor (London 1963). 99</page><page sequence="26">EdwardJamilly Patrons More a patron than a client was Joseph Duveen,61 whose admiration for Gabriel's Ministry of the Marine in Paris's Place de la Concorde led him to engage the American architect Horace Trumbauer and a Parisian named Sergent to put up a reproduction of Gabriel's wing to serve as his art gallery on the corner of 5th Avenue and 56th Street in New York in 1911 at a cost of a million dollars. It was he who steered the job of building the millionaire Frick's New York mansion to Thomas Hastings and Sir Charles Allom. He was also the patron of John Russell Pope for the building of the National Gallery in Washington, a wing of the British Museum to house the Elgin Marbles and the conversion of Frick's house into a museum. Allom owed to Duveen commissions for William Randolph Hearst's castle in Wales and several houses for American millionaires and art collectors, among them the Bache house, the Dodge house and the Fragonard room in Frick's house. The National Gallery in Washington itself resulted from Duveen's perspi? cacity in selling many masterpieces to Andrew Mellon and then persuading him to build them a worthy home. More recently Jewish patrons have indulged their personal whims to a much lesser extent, making extravagant private mansions a thing of the past and concentrating more on social purposes. Sir Ernest Cassel led the way with his donation of ?200,000 to the building of the King Edward VII Sanatorium, Midhurst, and (with Lord Iveagh) gave the radium institute of 1911 erected in Riding House Street, London. He himself occupied a mod? est City office in Old Broad Street signboarded 'E. Cassel first floor'. Today hardly a London hospital lacks a ward, wing or clinic built by a Jewish benefactor. In 1899 Siegfried Rudolf Zunz, metal merchant in the City of London, bequeathed the residue of his estate to several London hos? pitals in memory of his wife Annie, resulting in Zunz wards in Guy's, St Thomas's and the Royal Free. Bernhard Baron the tobacco millionaire divested himself of his wealth to good causes during his lifetime, and in the 1930s his will delivered a new dispensary to Guy's, pathology departments to the London Hospital and Queen Charlotte's, a research laboratory for the Royal College of Surgeons and the Bernhard Baron wing to the Middlesex Hospital.62 Also at the Middlesex are to be found the Meyerstein Institute of Radiology in Nassau Street and the Barnato Joel memorial building, both devoted to cancer treatment and research. The Wolfson building in Riding House Street likewise bears the name of a great provider of medical, scientific and educational facilities. 61 S. N. Behrman, Duveen (London 1963). 62 Gerry Black, 'Bernhard Baron: tobacco and philanthropy' Trans JfHSE XXXVI (2001) 71-80. 100</page><page sequence="27">Patrons, clients, designers and developers Among the host of new institutions created by Wolfson funding are the library of the Zoological Society of London, the Guy's Centre for Age related Diseases, the molecular imaging centre at Manchester University, the research centre for family health at Hammersmith Hospital, London, and the Institute for Bio-medical Research at University College Hospital, the last named a sensitive refurbishment in the cruciform building. The private wings of the Middlesex Hospital and St Mary's, Paddington, are named after Rosenheim and Lindo respectively; three wards and a clin? ical theatre at the London Hospital commemorate the benefactions of Raphael, Stern, Rothschild and Bearsted. Guy's new tower contains the Evelina children's department, with its Rothschild Ward, continuing the work of the Evelina (de Rothschild) hospital for sick children in Southwark. The previous infant welfare centre of Guy's was built with a legacy from Leopold Solomons, whose wife opened it in 1920. Even earlier the Nurses Home (1902) for 296 nurses was built with a donation by Henry Raphael and named after his wife Henrietta.63 St Bartholomew's Hospital has merit? ed a paper to this Society, detailing its many Jewish benefactors and governors.64 The list of Jewish patrons is almost endless: Strauss, Jules Thorn, Polly Silk, Violet Melchett, Caplin, Scharlieb and Schiff mark benefactions to other London hospitals, which were mostly voluntary until 1948, and National Health Service hospitals continue to receive non-state funding from patrons such as Bud Flanagan (a ward at the Royal Marsden, 1973) and Marjorie Sherman (a ward in Stoke Mandeville, 1982). Not all were named after moneyed donors: the Emmanuel Miller unit at St George's Hospital in Tooting, London, is a tribute to the services of an outstanding child psychiatrist,65 father of the actor-director and scientist Dr Jonathan Miller. In the higher educational field Jewish patrons have created many profes? sorships, lectureships and scholarships, but foundations can be seen in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, both with Wolfson Colleges built during the 1960s (the former designed by Powell and Moya), and in Sir Isaac's native Scotland, the Wolfson Hall of residence of Glasgow University. The Liverpool University library was built from funds provid? ed by Harold L. Cohen, who died on the day in 1936 when he was to lay the foundation stone. University College London has its Mocatta Library, Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre and halls of residence named after Goldsmid and Max Rayne. 63 The History of Guy's Hospital, 1/25-1948 (London 1951) and Guy's Tower (1960s). 64 Claire Hilton, 'St Bartholomew's Hospital London and its Jewish Connections' Trans jfHSE XXX (1989) 21-50. 65 Gould and Uttley, A Short History of St George's Hospital (London 1997) 133-4. 101</page><page sequence="28">EdwardJamilly Turning to the arts, Duveen Rooms enlarged the T?te Gallery and the Clore Wing enlarged it again, while the T?te Modern is as much a creation of its director Nicholas Serota as of the funders. Similarly, the rebuilding of Covent Garden Opera House would hardly have been completed without the persistence, persuasive powers and generosity of Vivien Duffield. Dr Ludwig Mond is remembered for a munificent bequest of paintings to the National Gallery and for providing, equipping and endowing the Davy Faraday Research Laboratories of the Royal Society, for which he bought in 1894 and converted Lord Albemarle's London mansion next to the Royal Institution. The National Trust's Clandon Park is visited as much for Mrs David Gubbay's superb collection of eighteenth-century furniture, porcelain, tex? tiles and carpets as for its grand Palladian building. In the Mansion House, London, hangs 'the most significant gift of art ever conveyed to the Corporation of the City of London' - Harold Samuel's collection of seven? teenth-century Dutch pictures, which has been described as the greatest art bequest of the twentieth century.66 Sargent's brilliant series of family por? traits given to the nation in 1922 by his patron Asher Wertheimer, the art dealer, have starred in several exhibitions.67 The National Portrait Gallery too has its Wolfson Gallery and Clore Education Studio. The Warburg Institute is a foundation by German-Jewish refugees. The British Museum owes its Parthenon Gallery to Fleischman and has a Waddesden Room and Sackler Gallery, as does the Royal Academy. John Ritblat of British Land provided the exhibition galleries at the new British Library that display the Magna Carta, Shakespeare's First Folio and the Gutenberg Bible. Patronage on this scale has brought about extensive new building, much of it applauded for its architectural quality as well as its popularity. An inversion of the client/architect relationship took place when David Marks, the architect of the London Eye (or Millennium Wheel, now a tourist attraction in the capital), took his design to a number of developers before persuading British Airways to fund it. Less obvious have been the open spaces given to Londoners: the garden in front of St James's, Piccadilly, provided by Julius Elias Lord Southwood, and Leicester Square itself, conveyed to the Metropolitan Board of Works by Albert Grant MP, as recorded on the Shakespeare fountain in the centre. Jewish patrons and developers have in this and other ways been giving back to the country some of the wealth they have earned. Charles Oppenheimer donated the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the House of 66 Foreword to catalogue of the Barbican Art Gallery exhibition (London 1988). 67 Andrew Wilton, The Swagger Portrait (London 1992). 102</page><page sequence="29">Patrons, clients, designers and developers Commons and the bronze equestrian statue of Prince Albert at Holborn Circus in 1874 (as Albert Sassoon did five years later in Bombay), while Herbert Stern paid for the Quadriga at Hyde Park Corner in 1912, the boy charioteer modelled from his son by the sculptor Adrian Jones.68 The pres? ent Lord Rothschild's passion for heritage projects resulted in the restora? tion of Spencer House in St James's (part Vardy, part Soane), and Arthur Gilbert donated his outstanding gold and silver collection to the reopened Somerset House. The architect Barrow Emanuel left bequests in 1904 to seven hospitals, the RNLI and the RSPCA. 'Jews', wrote G. K. Chesterton, 'are never misers'.69 Conclusion The extent and quality of Jewish contributions to building in England dur? ing the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by patrons, architects and developers, are surprising. In the social context, this is the result of Jews identifying and producing good things of their time. As patrons or clients, whose primary contribution is to know what architecture is all about and to choose the right architect through whom they can create, Jews have a good record. If one were to single out any particular characteristics, perhaps these would be tastes varying from the splendid to the bizarre that have produced architectural effects more surprising than was usual; moneyed Jews have undoubtedly on occasion dominated their chosen professional instrument. Jewish architects too have shown at times a flamboyance and verve not often present in their contemporaries, as well as exceptional industry; many of them were in the avant-garde of the heroic period of Modern architecture. Peculiarly, they have seldom been monopolized by their own community, who have often preferred to employ non-Jews. As developers, Jews have fulfilled a traditional role as middlemen bringing together people, materials, land and finance to execute an idea. 68 Blundell and Hudson, The Immortals (London 1998) 26. 69 G. K. Chesterton, Art Journal (1908) 167. 103</page></plain_text>