The architecture of the Waterhouse building with its huge facade and high spired towers is world famous. The rounded arches and the grand entrance inspired by the basalt columns of Fingal's Cave make the Museum one of the most striking examples of Romanesque style.
By the mid 1800's the Natural History collections at the British Museum were stored in crammed, damp and inadequate conditions. Professor Richard Owen, the celebrated anatomist and palaeontologist who gave us the word 'Dinosaur', was Superintendent of the collections. He petitioned the Gladstone Government which resulted in funds being committed to create a new building to house the collections. The South Kensington site of the 1862 International Exhibition was chosen for the new Museum.
A competition to design the buiding was finally awarded to the young architect Alfred Waterhouse. Following Owen's brief to have a building suitable 'for housing the works of the Creator' Waterhouse set about this monumental task. After several redesigns and seven years of construction beset with difficulties the building was opened to an enthusiastic public in 1881.
Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905).
Alfred Waterhouse loved the ability to work in terracotta with its irregular tints and sculptural qualities. The distictive buff and cobalt blue terracotta is not only attactive but was highly practical as the glazed ceramic was resistent to attack by the acid smogs of Victorian London.
The elaborate ornamentation and sculptures of plants and animals inside and outside the building represent biological diversity. Those on the western wing are of living forms while those on the east side depict the fossil past.
One of the first buildings to use the then new technology of structural cast iron and steel the Waterhouse building marks the beginning of a whole new era in Architectural Design.
In 1986 the Natural History Museum incorporated the former Geology Museum which had been constructed on an adjacent site in 1935. To consolidate the merger a new gallery, Lasting Impressions, linking the two buildings was opened in 1988. The expanded Natural History Museum offers visitors the opportunity to explore the Earth and its life, both past and present, under one roof.