Albertopolis Walking Tour: transcript - Royal Institute of British ...

3. Science Museum
4.00mins
The Science Museum is the youngest of the
museums in the Exhibition Road Cultural
Quarter, although its origins date back to the
Great Exhibition of 1851. The study of science
was a key part of the exhibition’s objective, and
this ideal was continued by Prince Albert and
the 1851 Commissioners when they developed
the area of South Kensington.
Although the first museum, the South
Kensington Museum which opened in 1857, is
though of as an arts institution, science
collections featured in its very first building, the
Brompton Boilers. As the science collections
expanded during the 1860s they had to be
gradually moved across Exhibition Road, in to
storage in buildings originally constructed for
the International Exhibition of 1862.
The East Block of the Science
Museum, 1928
Copyright: Science Museum/SSPL
From 1893 the science collections had their own director but they were still administered as
part of the South Kensington Museum. The science accommodation was by now inadequate
and the scientific community argued for new and appropriate buildings.
The committee planned a range of buildings all the way from Exhibition Road to Queen’s
Gate. In reality only a small proportion of the proposed buildings were ever built.
Construction work began on the East Block in 1913, and this is the building which you see
before you today.
Due to World War I the museum was not fully opened until 1928. It was designed by the
Office of Works and the architect Sir Richard Allison (1869-1958). Allison, who was a
Scotsman, used the department store as a model for the inside of the museum and the
Edwardian office building for the outside. Having said that, the Science Museum’s exterior
does also bear some resemblance to Selfridges on Oxford Street.
Allison designed generous circulation spaces inside the museum, and a roof lit central hall
which serves very well for the display of large engines. He also created open galleries at the
sides, lit naturally as was the fashion at the time.
In 1996 some westward expansion at South Kensington finally began. The Wellcome Trust
sponsored a new building which was to become the Wellcome Wing of the museum. This
was opened by HM The Queen in June 2000 and houses exhibitions of present and future
science and technology.
If you cross over Exhibition Road to stand at the entrance to the Science Museum you’ll see
on the opposite side of the road a striking modern church that is the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints. This Mormon church was designed by T.P Bennett and Son in 1961.
Also worth noting is the large block of flats immediately next door to the church, numbers
59-63 Prince Gate. This is a 1930s interpretation of the white stuccoed terraces of South
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