A cross posting from the blog which covers my work as the Vice President Education of the Royal Geographical Society.
I'm now six months into my VP work, and it's been fascinating to see a whole other angle to the Society.
This blog post is about the building which houses the RGS, also known as "the home of Geography" and has also been described by Joe Smith as "the Broadcasting House of geography".
Lowther Lodge is the name of the country house which was designed and built by Norman Shaw and which became the home of the RGS in 1912. It had been built in the 1870s. The client for the house was William Lowther, an MP who was a nephew of the Earl of Lonsdale. Lowther Lodge occupied a site at the top of Exhibition Road as it is now, next to Hyde Park, and close to the Royal Albert Hall. This was a time when this area of London was still quite separate from the rest of London, and before the developments which would occur after the death of Prince Albert.
The grounds were extensive. Lowther's family sold the house when he died. Originally, there were large gardens extending down towards what is now Imperial College.
It is built in the Queen Anne style.
The RGS, under the Directorship of Lord Curzon purchased the house as its HQ having had a peripatetic existence. For the first 10 years, from its founding in 1830 as an institution to promote the advancement of geographical science, members met in the rooms of the Horticultural Society in Regent Street, London, then later at 3 Waterloo Place and 15 Whitehall Place.
In 1870, the Society found a more permanent home at 1 Savile Row, off Piccadilly (which is now the tailors Gieves and Hawkes.)
Norman Shaw was the architect. There are some very attractive design features in the original house, and also innovative use of heating technology for its time.
An extension was added which created what is now called the Ondaatje Theatre, and there was also the addition of the glass pavilion on Exhibition Road, and the building which houses the reading room and other collections. This is called the Kennedy and Nightingale block.
A later fund raising effort spearheaded during the Presidency of Michael Palin created the very nice Member's Room, which I've sat in quite a few times.
An RGS history of Lowther Lodge is on this link (PDF download)
At a recent RGS Council meeting we had a good tour of the building from top to bottom.Why not pay the building a visit, and come and see one of the exhibitions that is produced, or come along to a Monday evening lecture as a guest.
The building is Grade II listed; listing number 1217774.
A cross-posting from my RGS blog: 'At the Home of Geography'.
For more details:
Source
Walker, Lynne. “The Royal Geographical Society’s House: An Architectural History.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 146, no. 2, 1980, pp. 178–89. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/632859.
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