Charles Barry
Barry won the competition for the new Houses of Parliament in 1836 and worked on them for the rest of his life, with Augustus Pugin responsible for the Gothic detailing. He also designed clubhouses and palaces in the Italian Renaissance Revival style.
Charles Barry was born in 1795 in Westminster, London, the son of a stationer. At fifteen he was apprenticed to a firm of surveyors, where he learned to draw and measure. When he received an inheritance from his father he used it for a long study tour in 1817–1820 to France, Italy, Greece, Egypt and the Near East, where he drew ancient and medieval buildings. On his return he began designing Gothic churches for the Church of England’s great building programme, but he first made his name with Italian Renaissance clubhouses in London, where the Travellers Club and the Reform Club took Italian town palaces as their model.
When the old Palace of Westminster burned down in 1834, a competition was announced that required the Gothic or Elizabethan style. Barry won in 1836 and worked on the Palace of Westminster for the rest of his life. Construction began in 1840. He was responsible for the plan and the symmetrical whole, while Augustus Welby Pugin designed the Gothic details, from the façade ornament to wallpapers, floor tiles, furniture and the clock tower. The building, with the Victoria Tower and the clock tower housing Big Ben, became a symbol of Britain. Barry was a skilled planner who combined a classical order with a Gothic surface. He also designed country houses such as Highclere Castle and terraces and gardens for English country estates.
Barry was knighted in 1852 and died in 1860. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his son Edward Middleton Barry completed the Houses of Parliament. The collaboration with Pugin later became the subject of a dispute over who deserved the credit, since Pugin’s details were decisive for the building’s character. The Palace of Westminster became a model for Gothic Revival parliaments and town halls, including those in Budapest and Ottawa, and helped make Gothic a national style. His Italianate clubhouses inspired banks and office buildings. In Sweden the Gothic Revival made its mark on church building in the second half of the 19th century, and the palazzo style appeared in Stockholm’s commercial buildings, although Swedish architects mainly looked to Germany and France.