Review: George Edmund Street Available to Purchase

In his obituary in The Builder, George Edmund Street (1824–81) was described as “probably one of the most indefatigable workers ever known in the architectural profession.”¹ This characterization helps to frame Street’s extraordinary output for the initiated and uninitiated alike: in more than forty years of practice, he completed some five hundred projects, from cathedrals, churches, and chapels to schools and colleges to public buildings and private residences. Although he worked principally in Britain and Ireland, Street was also involved in projects in France, Italy, Switzerland, Tasmania, and Turkey. As Geoff Brandwood notes in his preface, Street is “the most important Victorian architect about whom a monograph has yet to be written” (ix). With the present book, Brandwood addresses this notable gap. In doing so, he is clear that he drew fully from the remarkable archive of the late Paul Joyce (1934–2014), an architectural draftsman at Roderick Gradidge’s...