1 For the Sotheby’s sale catalogue, see Historic Plaster Casts: From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (New York, 2006).

2 The Musée des Monuments Français was reopened in September 2007 as part of the Cité de l’Architecture du Patrimoine, a project whose completion has taken more than a decade. On this renovation project, see Une Cité à Chaiüot, ed. Jean-Louis Cohen and Claude Eveno (Besançon, 2001), and Marie-Paule Arnauld, ‘Un impossible musée d’architecture’, in Le musée des monuments français, ed. Léon Pressouyre (Paris, 2007), pp. 142–76.

3 For an overview of the history of architectural museums, see Richardson, Margaret, ‘Les Musées d’architecture’, Monuments Historiques, 155 (1988), pp. 77–79 Google Scholar; Harris, John, ‘Storehouses of Knowledge: The Origins of the Contemporary Architectural Museum’, in Canadian Centre for Architecture: Building and Gardens (Montreal, 1989), pp. 15–32 Google Scholar; Cohen, Jean-Louis, ‘Exposer l’architecture’, in Une Cité à Chaillot, pp. 31–44.Google Scholar

4 On the collecting of architectural drawings, see Harris, John, ‘Le Dessin d’architecture: une nouvelle marchandise culturelle’, in Images et imaginaires d’architecture: dessin, peinture, photographie, arts graphiques, théâtre, cinéma en Europe aux XIXe et XXe siècles (Paris, 1984), pp. 74–78 Google Scholar. On the display of architectural models at South Kensington, see Leslie, Fiona, ‘Inside Outside: Changing Attitudes Towards Architectural Models in the Museums at South Kensington’, Architectural History, 47 (2004), pp. 159–200.Google Scholar

5 Two well-known examples are the first Musée des Monuments Français of Alexandre Lenoir, in Paris, and Sir John Soane’s Museum, in London. Another, less well-known, collection is that of Lewis Nockalls Cottingham, in London. See Myles, Janet, ‘L.N. Cottingham’s Museum of Mediaeval Art: Herald of the Gothic Revival’, Visual Resources, 3 (2001), pp. 253–87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Myles, Janet, L.N. Cottingham, 1787–1847, Architect of the Gothic Revival (London, 1996), pp. 28–35.Google Scholar

6 Several appeals for the preservation of ‘national antiquities’ preceded the creation of the Architectural Museum, but the early 1840s demands for a new institution did not propose elaborate schemes as regards display and purchase policies. Indeed, the possibility of its fulfilment was too far away, since the authorities of the British Museum apparently cared more for Classical than for national antiquities. See Lamb, Edward Buckton, ‘Suggestions for a National Collection of Studies of our National Antiquities’, Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal (1844), pp. 302–04 Google Scholar; Hawkins, Edward, ‘The Preservation of Our National Antiquities’, The Builder, 12 April 1845, pp. 171–72 Google Scholar; 19 April 1845, pp. 181–82 (editorial by George Godwin, The Builder, 19 April 1845, p. 181).

7 Fergusson, James, On a National Collection of Architectural Art (London, 1857)Google Scholar.

8 Other cast collections were in use in educational institutions at that time, such as at the Royal Academy in London, the Glasgow School of Art, or the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh. See Bingham, Neil, ‘Architecture at the Royal Academy Schools, 1768–1836’, in The Education of the Architect. Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Symposium of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, ed. Bingham, Neil (Edinburgh, 1993), pp. 5–14 Google Scholar; Ferguson, Hugh, Glasgow School of Art: The History (Glasgow, 1995), pp. 35–38 Google Scholar; Naik, Anuradha S. and Stewart, Margaret C. H., ‘The Hellenization of Edinburgh. Cityscape, Architecture, and the Athenian Cast Collection’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 66 (2007), pp. 366–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Fergusson, On a National Collection of Architectural Art, p. 14.

10 See Janet Myles’ works (n. 5 above); also Descriptive Memoir of the Museum of Mediaeval Architecture and Sculpture, formed by the late Lewis N. Cottingham (London, 1850), and [Henry Shaw], Catalogue of the Museum of Mediaeval Art collected by the late L. N. Cottingham (London, 1851). Although Scott and Allen, and others as well, must have been influential in generating the initial nucleus of the Architectural Museum, neither the museum’s minute books nor Scott’s own account of the museum’s inception provide detailed information as to the circumstances of the acquisition of casts from Cottingham’s collection. See George G. Scott, Personal and Professional Recollections (London, 1879), pp. 164–70 (‘Much of Cottingham’s museum came to us’, p. 166). Some of the casts were Allen’s own property, the minutes of the Standing Committee of 13 June 1859 recording that ‘the Comttee [sic] could have no objection to Mr. Allen’s disposing of his Casts from Mr. Cottingham’s sale to the Department’. Some of the Architectural Museum casts from Cottingham’s sale remained the museum’s property, however, since they are recorded as such in the list of casts that were transferred from the Architectural Association to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1916. My thanks are due to Diane Bilbey and Marjorie Trusted for giving me access to this list, held in the Sculpture Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

11 Piggott, Jan R., Palace of the People: The Crystal Palace at Sydenham 1854–1936 (London, 2004), pp. 67–112.Google Scholar

12 Fergusson, James, On a National Collection of Architectural Art, p. 16.Google Scholar

13 In 1874 the Royal Institute of British Architects collection, mainly deposited at the Royal Architectural Museum, consisted of a collection, given by J. M. Lockyer, taken from ivory carvings, and of various architectural casts. Most of the latter were Classical, from Greece and Rome, while some others were from Britain, such as those from Hayling Island, Kilpeck, London, Oxford, Shobden, Waltham Cross, Winchester, Worcester and York. The contributors to the RIBA collection included W. S. Inman, P. F. Robinson, Philip Hardwick, W. Hosking, T. L. Donaldson, Robert Wallace, Edward Nolan, J. H. Whitling, John Gage Rookwood, F. E. H. Fowler and E. M. Foxhall, as well as Owen Jones for a cast from the Alhambra in Granada. See Catalogue of the medals, busts, casts, marbles and stones, in the collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, complete to end of the session 1873–74. (London, 1874), and the Institute’s Annual Reports.

14 Fergusson, James, On a National Collection of Architectural Art, p. 15.Google Scholar

15 On Charles Bruce Allen, see Bottoms, Edward, ‘The Royal Architectural Museum in the Light of New Documentary Evidence’, Journal of the History of Collections, 1 (2007), pp. 115–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 116, and n. 16, p. 134). This well-researched work is the most comprehensive on the Architectural Museum up to now, and has been preceded by only a few publications: Summerson, John, The Architectural Association, 1847–1947 (London, 1947), pp. 35–41 Google Scholar; and Wylde, Peter, ‘The First Exhibition: The Architectural Association and the Royal Architectural Museum’, Architectural Association Annual Review (1981), pp. 8–14.Google Scholar

16 Hanson, Brian, Architects and the ‘Building World’ from Chambers to Ruskin: Constructing Authority (Cambridge and New York, 2003), pp. 192–201.Google Scholar

17 Architectural Association (hereafter AA), B402 RAM 007, Allen, C. B., ‘Proposal For establishing in the Metropolis A School of Art for Artist-Workmen together With a Museum of Mediaeval Sculpture’ [c. 1851–52]Google Scholar; ‘School of Art for Artist-Workmen. Workmen’s & Student’s Prospectus’ [1851-52]; ‘School of Art for Art Artizans, And Museum of Architectural Art’, 25 March 1852. Cole said that Allen’s scheme had particularly irritated Owen Jones, who was also connected with the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House: National Art Library (hereafter NAL), Henry Cole, Diary, 21 February 1852.

18 Beresford Hope, A. J. B., The Common Sense of Art. A Lecture delivered in [sic] behalf of the Architectural Museum at the South Kensington Museum, December 8, 1858 (London, 1858)Google Scholar; Crook, Joseph Mordaunt, The Dilemma of Style: Architectural Ideas from the Picturesque to the Post-Modem (London, 1987), pp. 161–92.Google Scholar

19 Architectural Museum: Catalogue (London, 1855).

20 AA B401 Minute Books (hereafter MB), 19 May, 26 May and 5 June 1854.

21 AA B401 MB, 6 and 13 October 1856, and passim.

22 The main works on the history of the South Kensington Museum are the following: Morris, Barbara, Inspiration for Design: The Influence of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1986)Google Scholar; A Grand Design: The Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum, ed. Malcolm Baker and Brenda Richardson (London and New York, 1997); Burton, Anthony, Vision and Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1999)Google Scholar; Wainwright, Clive, ‘The Making of the South Kensington Museum’, Journal of the History of Collections, 1 (2002), pp. 3–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Within the Architectural Museum, Burges and Pearson were against its removal: AA B401 MB, 10 March 1857. Beresford Hope was, too, as is evident from his letter published in the Building News, 3 July 1857, p. 688. Numerous letters of protest and editorials were published on this theme between February and August 1857, in the Building News, the periodical being on the whole fiercely opposed to the South Kensington Museum.

24 The Museum of Ornamental Art was established in 1852 at Marlborough House, and itself had inherited part of its collections from the old School of Design founded at Somerset House in 1837.

25 ‘Report on the Annual Conversazione of the Architectural Museum’, The Builder, 25 July 1857, pp. 413–14 (p. 413).

26 Guide to the South Kensington Museum, several editions (London, 1857, 1859, 1860).

27 National Archive (hereafter NA) ED.28/8 H. 14 and 37, Science and Art Department Minutes (hereafter SAD Min.), 13 August and 24 September 1857, and passim.

28 NA ED.28/7 G. 63, SAD Min., 7 April 1857. George Godwin (1813–88), editor of the The Builder from 1844 to 1883; Francis C. Penrose (1817–1903), architect and classic archaeologist; and Thomas L. Donaldson (1795–1885), professor of architecture at University College, London.

29 AA B401 MB, 6 July 1857.

30 AA B401 MB, 10 April 1858.

31 NA ED.28/8 H. 235, 20 May 1858.

32 AA B401 MB, 7 June 1858. Donaldson was opposed to the Architectural Museum’s decision: ‘Correspondence as to the Architectural Museum’, The Builder, 24 July 1858, p. 509.

33 ‘A National Museum of Architecture’, The Builder, 31 July 1858, p. 513.

34 AA B401 MB, 7 June 1858 (letter sent on 12 June 1858).

35 ‘The Architectural Museum and the Government’, The Builder, 7 August 1858, pp. 533–34.

36 The Building News continued to prove fiercely opposed to the South Kensington Museum: ‘The Architectural Museum and the Government Nominees’, Building News, 27 August 1858, pp. 855–56; ‘The Architectural Museum and the Government Nominees: “Beggars Must Not Be Choosers’”, Building News, 24 September 1858, pp. 947–48.

37 ‘The Architectural Collections in the Museum at Brompton: “A National Museum of Architecture”’, The Builder, 17 September 1859, pp. 614–15.

38 On organicism in architecture, see Caroline Van Eck, Organicism in Nineteenth-Century Architecture: An Inquiry into its Theoretical and Philosophical Background (Amsterdam, 1994).

39 AA B401 MB, 4 January 1860, following a correspondence on the structural problems of the Brompton Boilers recorded in NA ED.28/10 L. 126, SAD Min., 15 December 1859, and in AA B401 MB, 17 and 20 December 1859, and 2 January 1860.

40 AA B401 MB, 20 December 1859.

41 AA B401 MB, 11 January 1860, recording a letter from the Department dated 9 January 1860.

42 NA ED.28/11 M. 76, SAD Min., 9 March 1860; AA B401 MB, 24 and 28 March 1860.

43 ‘The Union of Sculpture with Architecture’, Building News, 30 March 1860, pp. 249–53 (p. 253). On Bell, see Barnes, Richard, John Bell: The Sculptor’s Life and Works (Kirstead, 1999)Google Scholar.

44 ‘The Union of Sculpture with Architecture’, p. 250.

45 Ibid., p. 253.

46 AA B401 RAM MB, 2 November 1860.

47 Bell, John, ‘Indian Monuments of Architecture’, Building News, 24 August (p. 656)Google Scholar; 31 August (p. 675); 7 September (p. 693); 14 September (p. 710); 21 September (pp. 736–37); 28 September (pp. 751–52); 5 October (p. 766); and 12 October 1860 (p. 789).

48 ‘Mr. Bell’s Lecture at the Architectural Museum’, Building News, 8 February 1861, pp. 114–15, continued as ‘The Four Sisters; or Some Notes on the Relationship of the Fine Arts’, Building News, 15 February 1861, pp. 136–38 (p. 137).

49 See John Britton’s description, The Union of Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, Exemplified by a Series of Illustrations, with Descriptive Accounts of the House and Galleries of John Soane (London, 1827).

50 AA B401 RAM MB, 2 July 1860.

51 AA B401 RAM MB, 17 November 1860: ‘the Comtee are not prepared to adopt all parts of Mr. Scott’s evidence as an expression of their views’.

52 Report from the Select Committee on the South Kensington Museum; together with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix (n. p. [London], 1860), p. 63.

53 NA ED.28/12 N. 91, SAD Min., 15 November 1860, also recorded in AA B401 RAM MB, 17 November 1860. See also AA B401 RAM MB, 17 December 1860, and NA ED. 28/12 N. 143, SAD Min., 3 January 1861, for the alterations to this arrangement.

54 AA B401 RAM MB, 28 January 1861.

55 AA B401 RAM MB, 6 March 1861, recording a letter of 2 February 1861.

56 NA ED.28/12 N. 143a, SAD Min., 14 March 1861; and AA B401 RAM MB, 18 April 1861.

57 Correspondence of December 1861, recorded in AA B401 RAM MB, 28 January 1862. On J. C. Robinson, see Davies, Helen E., ‘Sir John Charles Robinson (1824–1913): his role as a connoisseur and curator of public and private collections’, unpublished D. Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1992 Google Scholar; and Davies, Helen E., ‘John Charles Robinson’s work at the South Kensington Museum’, Journal of the History of Collections, 10.2 (1998), pp. 169–88 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and 11.1 (1999), pp. 95–115.

58 AA B401 RAM MB, 28 January 1862.

59 Scott, George Gilbert, ‘On the Formation of a National Museum of Architecture, viewed in connexion with its bearings upon Mediaeval Art’, The Builder, 21 June 1862 (pp. 440–42)Google Scholar and 28 June 1862 (pp. 463–64).

60 Scott, ‘On the Formation of a National Museum of Architecture’, p. 463.

61 Ibid., p. 442.

62 Ibid., p. 463.

63 AA B401 RAM MB, 14 July 1862.

64 AA B401 RAM MB, 22 December 1862, recording correspondence of the same month.

65 AA B401 RAM MB, 22 December 1862, recording a letter of 20 December 1862.

66 AA B401 RAM MB, 1 July 1861, recording a letter of 3 June 1861.

67 Allen, C. B., ‘Thoughts on a National Gallery of Architecture’, Building News, 13 February (pp. 114–15)Google Scholar; 20 March (pp. 209–10); 3 April (pp. 251–52); 24 April (pp. 308–09); 22 May (pp. 385–86); and 12 June 1863 (pp. 442–43). Allen had already delivered a lecture ‘On the formation of a National Museum of Architectural Art’ in December 1855 (advertised in The Builder, 13 October 1855, p. 485).

68 Allen, ‘Thoughts on a National Gallery of Architecture’, p. 114.

69 Ibid., p. 114.

70 Report on the Formation of a National Museum of Architecture (London, 1863), also published in the The Builder, 25 July 1863, pp. 526–27.

71 Report on the Formation of a National Museum of Architecture, accompanied by the ensuing correspondence.

72 NA ED.28/17 S. 62, SAD Min., 5 October 1863.

73 AA B401 RAM MB, 23 January 1864, recording correspondence on that topic from June 1863 onwards.

74 AA B401 RAM MB, 15 July 1864.

75 NA ED.28 /18 T. 205, SAD Min., 1 December 1864, also recorded in AA B401 RAM, 14 December 1864. The Architectural Museum members were actually satisfied with the birth of this governmental project, giving their enthusiastic advice and suggestions, and saw in it the fulfilment of their efforts for the creation of a national collection of architecture (AA B401 MB, 16 January 1865).

76 AA B401 MB, 4 December 1865, and 29 January 1866. NA ED.28 / 21A2 mus. 86, SAD Min., 19 January 1866.

77 Royal Architectural Museum: Catalogue of Collection, with a Guide to the Museum by Sir G. Gilbert Scott (London, 1877).

78 Physick, John, The Victoria and Albert Museum: The History of its Building (Oxford and London, 1982), p. 156 Google Scholar. More generally on casts at the South Kensington Museum, see Malcolm Baker, The Cast Courts (London, 1982).

79 Pollen, John Hungerford, A Description of the Architecture and Monumental Sculpture in the South-East Court of the South Kensington Museum (London, 1874)Google Scholar.

80 Baker, Malcolm, ‘A Glory to the Museum’, V&A Album, 1 (1982), pp. 100–08 (p. 108).Google Scholar

81 NA ED.28/17 S. 169–170, SAD Min., 8 February 1864.

82 Fifteenth Report of the Science and Art Department of the Committee Council on Education (London, 1868), p. 24.

83 NA ED.28/25 E2 mus. 109, SAD Min., 24 May 1870. On Riaño, see Trusted, Marjorie, ‘In All Cases of Difference Adopt Signor Riaño’s View. Collecting Spanish Decorative Arts at South Kensington in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Journal of the History of Collections, 2 (2006), pp. 225–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84 Whitehead, Christopher, ‘Aesthetic Otherness, Authenticity and the Roads to Museological Appropriation’. Henry Cole’s Travel Writing and the Making of the Victoria and Albert Museum’, Studies in Travel Writing, 10 (2006), pp. 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

85 NAL 55.CC.13, Henry Cole, Notes on Reproductions, 1871; NAL 55.BB.20, Henry Cole, Diary and Notes of Journey in Belgium and Germany, 1872.

86 See Cole, Henry, Notes for a Universal Art Inventory of Works of Fine Arts, which may be Found Throughout the Continent of Europe, for the Most Part in Ecclesiastical Buildings, and in Connexion with Architecture (London, 1867)Google Scholar; and also Cole, Henry, Universal Art Inventory Consisting of Brief Notes of Works of Fine and Ornamental Art Executed Before A.D. 1800, Chiefly to be Found in Europe, Especially in Connexion with Architecture, 4 vols (London, 1870–79)Google Scholar.

87 NA, ED.28/22 B2 mus. 66–67, SAD Min., 23 November 1866.

88 NA ED.28/23 C2 mus. 132, SAD Min., 10 June 1868.

89 Seventeenth Report of the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education (London, 1870), p. 319.

90 Cole, Henry, Cole, Alan S. and Cole, Henrietta, Fifty Years of Public Work of Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B. Accounted for in his Deeds, Speeches and Writings, 2 vols (London, 1884), 1, pp. 264–71 Google Scholar; Bonython, Elizabeth and Burton, Anthony, The Great Exhibitor. The Life and Work of Henry Cole (London, 2003), pp. 250–52.Google Scholar

91 Although the erection of Trajan’s Column had not yet been completed, private views of the western court took place on 10 and 11 July 1873: NA ED.28/28 H2 mus. 224, SAD Min., 3 July 1873. On the building of the Architectural Courts, see Physick, The Victoria and Albert Museum, pp. 156–60.

92 ‘The Architectural Courts, South Kensington Museum’, The Builder, 4 October 1873, pp. 789–90 (p. 789).

93 Barringer, Tim, ‘The South Kensington Museum and the Colonial Project’, in Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum, ed. Barringer, Tim and Flynn, Tom (London and New York, 1988), pp. 11–27 (p. 17).Google Scholar

94 ‘The South Kensington Extension’, Building News, 4 April 1873, p. 384.

95 This expression is to be found in ‘The New Court, South Kensington’, Building News, 25 April 1873, p. 469.

96 The casts of Indian architecture, removed around 1880 to new galleries set up on the opposite side of Exhibition Road (when the India Museum was transferred to South Kensington), would at that time be replaced in the Architectural Courts by the casts of Italian Renaissance sculpture that can still be seen there today. These were first mentioned as being located in the Architectural Courts in the 1882 edition of A Guide to the South Kensington Museum (London, 1882). The Indian casts would later be destroyed at the same time as the galleries, in the early 1950s, when the India Museum collections were transferred to the premises of the South Kensington Museum itself: see Skelton, Robert, ‘The Indian Collections: 1798 to 1978’, Burlington Magazine, 902 (1978), pp. 297–304 (p. 301).Google Scholar

97 ‘South Kensington Museum. The New Architectural Court’, Art Journal (1873), p. 276.

98 Barringer, ‘The South Kensington Museum and the Colonial Project’, pp. 11 and 19. See also Pelizzari, Maria Antonella, ‘From Stone to Paper: Photographs of Architecture and the Traces of History’, in Traces of India: Photography, Architecture and the Politics of Representation, 1850–1900, ed. Pelizzari, Maria Antonella (Montreal and New Haven, 2003), pp. 22–57.Google Scholar

99 Ibid., pp. 12 and 17–19.

100 Whitehead, ‘Aesthetic Otherness, Authenticity and the Roads to Museological Appropriation’, p. 13.

101 Whitehead, Christopher, ‘Henry Cole’s European Travels and the Building of the South Kensington Museum in the 1850s’, Architectural History, 48 (2005), pp. 207–34.Google Scholar

102 Gombrich, Ernst H., The Preference for the Primitive: Episodes in the History of Western Taste and Art (London and New York, 2002), pp. 177–94.Google Scholar

103 Summerson, The Architectural Association, p. 38.