John Nash
John Nash, (born 1752, London?, Eng.—died May 13, 1835,
Cowes, Isle of Wight), English architect and city planner
best known for his development of Regent’s Park and Regent
Street, a royal estate in northern London that he partly
converted into a varied residential area, which still
provides some of London’s most charming features. Designed
in 1811, this major project was named for Nash’s official
patron, George, prince of Wales, at that time regent for his
father, King George III.
Trained by the architect
Sir Robert Taylor, Nash became a speculative builder and
architect in London. He went bankrupt in 1783 and moved to
Wales, where, as a country house architect, he rehabilitated
himself professionally. In the late 1790s he returned to
London as an informal partner of the landscape gardener
Humphry Repton. From 1798 he was employed by the prince of
Wales. Soon acquiring considerable wealth, Nash built for
himself East Cowes Castle (from 1798) on the Isle of Wight;
this construction had much influence in the early Gothic
Revival period.
In 1811 Marylebone Park
reverted to the crown, and on that land Nash laid out
Regent’s Park. This development comprised the Regent’s
Canal, a lake, a large wooded area, a botanical garden, and,
on the periphery, shopping arcades and picturesque groupings
of residences (for working-class as well as more prosperous
families). Nash’s East and West Park Villages (completed
after his death by his chief assistant, James Pennethorne)
served as models for “garden suburbs” of separate houses
informally arranged. Regent Street, with its colonnades
(demolished 1848) and its Quadrant leading into Piccadilly
Circus, was finished about 1825.
From 1813 to 1815 Nash held
the government post of surveyor general. He remodeled the
Royal Pavilion (1815–c. 1822), Brighton, in a fanciful
“Hindoo” style (derived from architecture in India) at
enormous financial cost. He also redesigned St. James’s Park
(1827–29), London, and began to reconstruct Buckingham
House, London, as a royal palace (from 1821). When George IV
died in 1830, Nash was dismissed before he could complete
the Buckingham Palace project, and he faced an official
inquiry into the cost and structural soundness of the
building. Retiring from business in 1831, he left London to
spend his twilight seasons at East Cowes Castle.
Encyclopædia
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