The Adelphi Buildings included a fine terrace of neoclassical townhouses built by Robert Adam and his brothers in the mid-C18th and occupied by many notable residents. The Adelphi Terrace, originally known as Royal Terrace, provided an exceptional 180 degree panoramic viewpoint of the City of London, the factories of Lambeth and Southwark and the view upstream past Westminster.

 

The 1829 Panorama

 

This painting, "View of London from the Adelphi" was created to accompany the original Panorama of the Thames book which was published in 1829. The artist is not known, but the engraving and aquatint is attributed to Mr Clark who is believed to be John Heaviside Clark, a well known artist of the period.

 

We have restored this panorama as part of the Panorama of the Thames project and it is reprinted in full in our book "A Riverside View of Georgian London" published by Thames and Hudson.

 

 

The 2014 Panorama

 

The original Adelphi terrace was demolished in 1936 and rebuilt as a ten-storey Grade II listed art-deco office building on the same site. Our 2014 view taken from the roof of the New Adelphi building today is several storeys higher than the viewpoint for the 1829 panorama but it shows the same 180 degree view.

 

The immediately obvious constant is St Paul's Cathedral, to the left in both pictures. Almost everything else has changed over the intervening two centuries, although the new Waterloo and Westminster Bridges still cross the river in roughly the same place. The southbank is no longer industrial but a mix of commercial, residential and leisure developments and the Houses of Parliament, to the right, was rebuilt after the devastating fire in October 1834.

 

Our online views here enable you to zoom in to see detail. They each open in separate tabs so you can compare the two panoramas on the same screen if you wish.