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BONUS EPISODE: Pugin, Barry, and the Origins of Gothic Revival Architecture · Repcolite Home Improvement Show

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to this bonus episode of Home in Progress,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: sponsored by Repcolite Paints and Benjamin Moore. And on the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: last episode, the last official episode, we dug into the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: rise and the decline of Victorian era architecture.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: And it's a huge story with.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: A ton of interesting things to cover, and I did
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: my best to focus on what I thought were the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: key aspects of the story. But one big part of
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: it that I was forced to skim over, and it
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: really bummed me out, was the story of the fire
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: at the Palace of Westminster and the working relationship of
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Augustus Pugin and Charles Barry. Now this fire and the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: resulting collaboration between those two, the architect and the idealist,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: all of that kind of set the template for how
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Victorian architects would think about style, about ornament, and the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: relationship between the past and the present. You know, it's
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: kind of where the philosophy foundation for all of the
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Victorian abundance that we think about when we think about
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Victorian era architecture. This is where all of that really
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: crystallized into something, you know, tangible. So today we're going
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: to look at all of that in detail in this
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: bonus episode. And since I don't really have time constraints
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: here normally Home and Progress. You're hearing it as a podcast,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: but it airs as a radio show on a local
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: station out in Holland, Michigan. And I've got time constraints,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: so a lot of the times I have to cram
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: things into certain spaces and I've got.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: To cut stuff.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Today I don't have to do that. I can kind
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  Speaker 1: of ramble and just take my time to get there.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So I want to focus on this fire. It started
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: on October sixteen of eighteen thirty four, and it destroyed
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  Speaker 1: the Palace of Westminster in London, you know, the seat
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of Parliament there. And interestingly enough, I think we can
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: make the argument that the blaze, this big fire actually
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: started in a way at least seven hundred years earlier. Okay,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: all those years back in eleven hundreds or so. England
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: is using something called tally sticks to keep its accounting records.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if you've ever heard of tally
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: sticks before, but there's simply pieces of wood, usually hazel
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: or ash or something like that, and each stick had
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: notches carved into it to show how much money someone
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: owed the crown. All right, So here's the deal. When
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: a debt was issued, the stick was notched accordingly, and
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: then it was split into two pieces. One half went
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to the royal treasury, the other half went to the
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: person who owed the money. Later, when the debt was paid,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: the two pieces were matched back together to make sure
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: that everything was paid back in full. Now, because the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: grain and the notches had to line up perfectly, it
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: was nearly impossible to fake these things. So here are
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a couple interesting facts with tally sticks before we even
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: get to the fire. When the stick was split into
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the longer piece was called the stock, and that one
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: went to the creditor, the person who was oh the money.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: The shorter piece was called the foil, and that went
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: to the debtor, to the person who owed the money.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: So if you held the stock, you literally held proof
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: that somebody owed you money. You were a stockholder, all right.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Over time, those stocks started to take on a life
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of their own. People began buying, selling, and trading them,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and they kind of became their own source, you know,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: their own kind of currency. The British government even issued
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: tally sticks and people would trade them at a discount.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Basically creating the first bond market. And when the Bank
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: of England opened its doors in sixteen ninety seven, a
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: big chunk of its startup capital came from tally stick stocks.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So our entire modern financial system, stocks, bonds, shareholders, all
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  Speaker 1: of that all traces back to these simple notched pieces
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  Speaker 1: of wood tally sticks, all right. Really interesting. And here's
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: another fun fact, that old saying getting the short end
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: of the stick. You know, I've spent my whole life
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: getting the short end of the stick that I That
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  Speaker 1: phrase actually comes from tally sticks because the debtor, the
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  Speaker 1: person who owed the money, literally got the shorter piece,
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  Speaker 1: the shorter end of the stick, all right. So that's
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  Speaker 1: what tally sticks were. And while it sounds really simplistic
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  Speaker 1: and primitive, the system worked, and it worked so well
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  Speaker 1: that it lasted, you know, seven hundred or so years,
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  Speaker 1: you know, into the early eighteen hundreds, and that's when
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  Speaker 1: people finally started using paper based record keeping.
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  Speaker 2: And written ledgers and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 1: Now, the move away from sticks of wood with notches
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  Speaker 1: carved on them to paper was generally agreed upon by
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: most people as a solid, solid advancement, but there was
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: still a little problem, just a little inkling of a problem,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and they needed to do something with all these piles
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: and piles and piles of obsolete, old wooden sticks that
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: were cluttering up the Palace of Westminster. Well, that gets
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: us to our fire. The current clerk of works at
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  Speaker 1: the Palace eighteen thirty four, a man named Richard Whibley
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  Speaker 1: wibbly weebley.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know how to pronounce it.
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  Speaker 1: Richard Whibley, that's what we're gonna call it. He was
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: a thinker, he was a problem solver, and he went
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  Speaker 1: to work and came up with an absolutely brilliant plan.
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  Speaker 1: You know, after all, he's looking at these sticks in
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  Speaker 1: the basement and he's thinking, all right, what are we
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  Speaker 1: gonna do with all these guys? There's a lot of them.
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  Speaker 1: You know, they're made of wood, and you know, after
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: all these years, he's thinking, this is incredibly dry wood.
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  Speaker 2: And one thing we all know.
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  Speaker 1: About drywood is that it burns. It burns like there's
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: no tomorrow. So Richard Whibley, our clerk of Works at
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  Speaker 1: the Palace, thinks, hmmm, why not burn all these tally
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  Speaker 1: sticks to ash? Right, Ash is a lot easier to
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: deal with than all these tally sticks. That's the surefire
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  Speaker 1: way to get them out of here and to free
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: up some space. Yeah, you could toss them out. He
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: thought about that, but that's not as much fun as
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: burning things. You know, just throwing it in the garbage
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: isn't as much fun. And we know that's true, right,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: you know, raking and bagging leaves for example. You know
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  Speaker 1: we can do that. We can break them all up
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  Speaker 1: and put them in big bags and put them on
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  Speaker 1: the roads, and that's doable.
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  Speaker 2: We can make do with that. It works, but it's
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  Speaker 2: not fun, right, not like when.
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  Speaker 1: We used to be able to make a big pile
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: of leaves and then burn it, you know, like lighting
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  Speaker 1: the beacons of Gondor or something like that. I loved
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: burning leaves. It was a lot more fun. Fall was
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  Speaker 1: more fun. Life was more fun when we could burn
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  Speaker 1: things to get rid of them. Probably wasn't as healthy,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: I get that, but it was more fun. So anyway,
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  Speaker 1: Richard Webbly Webley Webbly wibly, he wants to.
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  Speaker 2: Burn these sticks.
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  Speaker 1: So he's going to do that, but not outside in
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  Speaker 1: some big, uncontrollable bonfire.
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  Speaker 2: That's what the commoners might do. You know.
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  Speaker 1: He's a man of breeding and he decided that these
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  Speaker 1: tally sticks royal as they were, should be burned royally
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  Speaker 1: right here in the palace's furnaces. And so, without a
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  Speaker 1: second thought, the Clerk of Works tasks a couple of
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: workmen with the job of burning two large, enormous cartloads
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  Speaker 1: of sticks in the stoves beneath the floor of the
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  Speaker 1: House of Lords. And let me tell you the guys
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  Speaker 1: that he got, they were devoted. You know, they may
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: not have been all that bright. You know, history doesn't
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  Speaker 1: tell us for sure, but there are clues. They may
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  Speaker 1: not have been all that bright, but they were committed
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  Speaker 1: to their work. You know, nothing was going to deter
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  Speaker 1: them from finishing this task, and I mean literally nothing. See,
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  Speaker 1: they went to work early in the morning of October sixteen,
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  Speaker 1: and they started dumping loads of these sticks into the fires,
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  Speaker 1: watching that dry wood ignite almost instantly. So they've worked
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  Speaker 1: in work throughout the day, constantly tossing armfuls of sticks
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  Speaker 1: into the furnaces. Now, unfortunately, part way through the day,
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  Speaker 1: a chimney fire begins to smolder beneath the floor of
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  Speaker 1: the House of Lords, you know.
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  Speaker 2: Out of sight for the workers. They don't see it. Happening.
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  Speaker 1: They don't know what's going on, but it's happening.
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  Speaker 2: You know.
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  Speaker 1: It starts to smolder, and it continues to smolder for
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: a good part of the day and on a If
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: you'd think that something like that would be noticed by somebody,
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  Speaker 1: well you'd be right. It would be noticed. And in fact,
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  Speaker 1: a party of visitors to the House of Lords conducted,
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  Speaker 1: you know, brought through by this deputy housekeeper named missus. Right,
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  Speaker 1: she's bringing them through, and this party of visitors become
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  Speaker 1: strangely puzzled by the heat just emanating out of the
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  Speaker 1: floor as they're walking over it. That was definitely strange, right,
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  Speaker 1: that's not the normal experience here in October, that the
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  Speaker 1: floor is.
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  Speaker 2: Hot to the touch. Hmm, that's odd.
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  Speaker 1: But if that wasn't confusing enough, they were absolutely flummixed.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, they had no idea what to do with
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  Speaker 1: this when they saw the smoke pouring out of the floor.
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  Speaker 1: You know, the floor is hot and it's smoking. What's
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  Speaker 1: going on here?
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  Speaker 2: This is not usual.
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  Speaker 1: Now, we would all know what was going on at
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  Speaker 1: that point if we were there and we saw that.
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  Speaker 1: But that was happening way before the phrase where there's
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  Speaker 1: smoke there's fire had been invented, so they had no idea.
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  Speaker 1: The heat and the smoke and its connection to fire
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  Speaker 1: completely lost on them. So they puzzled about it for
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  Speaker 1: a while, and then good old missus Right checked with
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  Speaker 1: the workmen. But I told you these people were diligent,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I said that right at the beginning. They
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  Speaker 1: were committed to the work. They maybe weren't the brightest bulbs,
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  Speaker 1: but they were committed. They told their boss they're going
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  Speaker 1: to burn these sticks, and they weren't going to quit
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  Speaker 1: till they burned.
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  Speaker 2: Them, all of them.
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  Speaker 1: So they dismissed missus Right in her concerns. You know,
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  Speaker 1: hot floors with smoke rising from them was clearly clearly
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  Speaker 1: not connected to the inferno in the furnaces. There's no
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  Speaker 1: causal relationship there at all, nothing to worry about. So
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: they kept working. Missus Right figured, well, you know, they
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  Speaker 1: seemed good with it. I guess we might as well
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  Speaker 1: just move on with our day. And everything proceeded.
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  Speaker 2: As it had been going.
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  Speaker 1: And then around five o'clock or so, the workmen called
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  Speaker 1: it a day, put the fires out in the furnaces,
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  Speaker 1: and they went home. Missus Right also decided to call
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  Speaker 1: it a day, locked things up up and headed out.
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  Speaker 1: Soon after that, screams arise from a doorkeeper's wife that
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  Speaker 1: the House of Lords is on fire, and then, in
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  Speaker 1: what seemed like no time at all, the flames spread
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  Speaker 1: through the rest of the palace. Huge fireball erupted. You know,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: it's visible for miles and miles around as more of
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the building goes up in flames, and thousands of Londoners
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  Speaker 1: are crowding around the bridges around the bank of the Thames,
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  Speaker 1: and they're watching as the blaze consumed centuries of history.
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  Speaker 1: There's paintings about this. Google it and you can check
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  Speaker 1: them out now. In the end, both Houses of Parliament
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  Speaker 1: were completely destroyed, along with most of the surrounding buildings.
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  Speaker 1: The only major structure that survived was Westminster Hall, and
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  Speaker 1: that was saved by heroic firefighters and a lucky shift
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  Speaker 1: and wind that night. Now, by the following morning, October seventeen,
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  Speaker 1: much of the Palace of Westminster it's in ashes. But
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  Speaker 1: out of these ashes came one of the most famous
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  Speaker 1: architectural partnerships of the nineteenth century and one of the
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  Speaker 1: most tragic, the story of Charles Bears and Augustus Pugin
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: and their design for the new Palace of Westminster didn't
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  Speaker 1: just give us the iconic Houses of Parliament. It ended
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  Speaker 1: up launching the Gothic Revival and helped define what we
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  Speaker 1: now call Victorian architecture. Here's the scoop on this part
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  Speaker 1: of the story. Now, after Parliament burned down, the government
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  Speaker 1: held a design competition for the new building, and the
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  Speaker 1: rules were specific. The design had to be either Gothic
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: or Elizabethan, nothing classical, nothing modern, because Westminster Hall had
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: survived and the new construction needed to be able to
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: blend with that, so it needed to be Gothic or Elizabethan.
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  Speaker 1: That was basically the requirement.
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  Speaker 2: Now.
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  Speaker 1: The winner of this contest was Charles Barry. He's a
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  Speaker 1: Westminster born architect in his forties at the time, and
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: he's already one of London's rising stars. He'd been born
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: just across the street from where Big Ben now stands,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: and he was orphaned as a young kid, and he
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: left school I think it was around fifteen. The age
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: of fifteen, he apprenticed with a surveyor and before long
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  Speaker 1: he'd earned this reputation for diligence and quiet genius, you know,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: not saying anything. But I earned a similar reputation amongst people.
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  Speaker 1: Some people, handful of people, mom, dad, kind of mom.
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  Speaker 1: Mom saw the genius and the diligence. But anyway, Charles Berry,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: you know, people are seeing that he's got, you know,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: a bright future in front of him. He's got big dreams,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: and they're feeling like he's going to be able to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: achieve these things. Well, Charles Berry's got a small inheritance,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: you know, like I said, it was orphan young, but
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: there's a little bit of money there. And he takes
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: that money and he sets off on a three year
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: grand tour through France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, you know,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: all over the place. And those travels really end up
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: changing him. He falls in love with the balance and
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: the grandeur of the Italian Renaissance. And when he came
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  Speaker 1: home in eighteen twenty, he brought that, you know, and
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: all the things that he picked up on the road,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: he brought that with him. His Travelers Club on Paul Mall,
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  Speaker 1: built in eighteen thirty two, that was hailed as the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: first true Italian Renaissance building in London. Now, by the
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: mid eighteen thirties, Barry was famous for elegant classical designs.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Palaces in miniature kind of is the idea, you know,
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  Speaker 1: So he's really well known when this contest comes about.
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  Speaker 2: But there's a problem.
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  Speaker 1: Remember, the rules require a Gothic ear Elizabethan style to
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: match the surviving medieval Westminster Hall. Gothic wasn't really Barry's language.
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  Speaker 1: So he needed help, and he turned to somebody who
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: spoke Gothic fluently. And that's a brilliant twenty three year
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  Speaker 1: old draftsman named Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, Pugi n Pugin.
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  Speaker 1: He was already a phenomenon at this point. He's talented, fiery,
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  Speaker 1: absolutely consumed by his love for the Gothic, and just
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: that same year, eighteen thirty four, he had converted to Catholicism.
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  Speaker 1: Now it wasn't a sudden spiritual experience for him, it
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: was something that had been building for years. Through all
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: of his work. Pugin had been studying the great cathedrals
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: of France and when.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: He was doing that.
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  Speaker 1: While doing that, he became just absolutely convinced that the
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: medieval Gothic wasn't just more beautiful, it was more truthful. Okay,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: it's not just more beautiful, it's more truthful. The forms
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: of those old churches. He argued that those forms expressed
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: the faith that had created them. Every point at arch
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: lifted the soul towards Heaven. That's his idea. Every carved
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: detail was an act of devotion. To pugen architecture wasn't decoration.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: It was theology and that conviction that really really strong belief,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: which is.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Literally what conviction is.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Didn't need to clarify that conviction shaped every single thing
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: he touched. And the irony was really profound here, all right.
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  Speaker 1: So here's a young, devout Catholic helping design the seat
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: of Britain's product government, just five years after Catholics had
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: even been allowed to serve in Parliament. He couldn't even
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: submit designs under his own name, really, because his open
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: passionate Catholicism would have guaranteed rejection. But Barry understood the
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: genius of Pugin, and so while Barry handled the structure,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Pugin kind of quietly supplied the soul of the building,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: and he worked feverishly designing not only the huge, soaring interiors,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: but also the carved woodwork, the metal fittings, the tiles,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: the fabrics, the patterns of the tiles underfoot, the tracery
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: and the windows, even the shape of the inkstands, all
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: of them came from Pugin's imagination. Now, later letters to
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: his friends show how much he poured into this work
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: and how much it drained him. He called it the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: hardest labor of his life. But it was also his
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: ministry because for Pugen this wasn't remember, this wasn't just architecture.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: You know, there's way more going on with the construction
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: of these buildings. To him, it was kind of like evangelism.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: In a way.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: He believed that beauty was moral. We talked about that
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: in the episode that aired previously. We got a little
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: more into that. But he believed that beauty was moral,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: that good buildings could shape good people. And so through
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Barry's official plans, Pugen set out to kind of preach
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: through design, to restore, inform and symbol what he saw
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: as the spiritual heart of England. That's his goal, that's
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: what he's doing, and that's the deep irony of the
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Palace of Westminster. It's really really intriguing. It's one of
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: the most enduring symbols of British Protestant democracy, and yet
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: inside in its details and on the outside it's profoundly Catholic. Now, however,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: I mentioned that this collaboration had elements of the tragic
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: in it, right, So let's get to those. Despite all
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: of Pugin's work, we talked about all the things that
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: he did, despite all of that, Charles Barry actually gave
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: him very little public credit. And it's a little muddy
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: as to why. You know, what his reasoning was. Was
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: he being selfish, was he just protecting the project and
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: protecting both of them. It's really hard to say.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: On the one hand, he gave pugin In, you know,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: a way to contribute to the cause in a safe manner.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Remember we talked about if it was clear to everybody
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: that this new Catholic convert was involved, he probably would
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: have been, you know, potentially kicked off the project. So
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: in one regard, Charles Barry's giving Pugin a way to
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: contribute safely. You know, he's kind of giving him some
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: architectural cover so that he can collaborate with Barry.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: But on the other hand, the only.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Official title Pugin ever was given was Superintendent of Wood carving,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: you know, a description that came nowhere close to covering.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: What he actually did. Well.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Despite this, despite the fact that Barry wasn't dishing out
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: the credit, by the mid eighteen forties, people were beginning
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: to whisper that Pugin really was the real architect of Parliament.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: And the rumors grew loud enough and rampant, ton and
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: fervent enough that Pugin himself came out and issued a
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: public statement saying, hey, no, no, no, I'm only assisting
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: mister Barry. All of my work is just based on
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: his designs, so he's trying to calm things down and
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: move things forward, you know, keep things moving forward. Well,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: all of this drama added a huge amount of pressure
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: to the work. And then on top of that, all
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Parliament themselves get involved and micromanages every single design decision
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: that needs to be made. So they're there micromanaging everything.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: They're blaming Charles Barry for every single delay that crops up,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: even though most of those delays were caused by their
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: own demands. And then when the House of Commons Chamber
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: was finally finished in eighteen fifty, the members of Parliament
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: they walk in, they look it over and they say, nah,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: we hate it. They complained about the layout, they had
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: complained about the acoustics, and they forced Barry to redesign
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: the whole thing. He had to love working with these people.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: We know that he did, because all of this pressure
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: took a terrible toll on both of the men. You know, Pugin,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: let's look at him first. He was juggling dozens of projects.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: He was juggling over one hundred churches, country houses, furniture designs, metalwork, wallpaper, tiles.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: He was doing a ton of different things while working
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: on Westminster, and by eighteen fifty two his health completely collapsed.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: He suffered a complete mental and physical breakdown after years
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: of relentless overwork, and he was committed to Bedlam, right,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: the infamous Bedlam Asylum, and after five and a half
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: weeks there he was released. But he never really recovered,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: and he ended up dying on September fourteen, eighteen fifty two,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: at just forty years old, never seeing the palace completed. Now, Barry,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: he didn't really fare all that much better. While he's
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: managing Westminster's construction, you know, he's dealing with Parliament's constant
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: interference they're micromanaging, they're constant nagging. While he's doing that,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: he's also designing the Reform Club. He's working on projects
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: from Istanbuldest, Scotland. He reportedly slept only four or five
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: hours a night, you know, rising between four and six
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: in the morning to get to work again. Well, doing
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: that day after day on top of all the stress
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: that each one of those projects brought him, all of
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: that aged him terribly. And on May twelve, eighteen sixty,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: after spending an afternoon at the Crystal Palace with his wife,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: he was seized with difficulty breathing and chest pain, and
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: then later he died of a heart attack that night
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: at his home. He was sixty four years old, and
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: the palace still wasn't finished. His son Edward, completed the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: work in eighteen seventy, thirty four years after construction began.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Now neither of the brilliant minds who created it lived
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: to see their masterpiece completed. So that was tragic, right,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: But it gets worse. Remember when I mentioned that Barry
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: said Pugin was the superintendent of woodworking, and how that
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: really didn't explain the depth of his role in the
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: least well, nobody ever corrected that story, at least not
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: while both men were alive. After their deaths, their sons
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: end up fighting bitterly over who deserved the greater share
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: of the glory, and that feud dragged on for decades,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't until after World War Two, nearly one
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: hundred years later, that Pugin's name finally appears in the
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: official guidebook to the Houses of Parliament. Today, historians generally
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: agree Barry provided the grand plan and oversaw construction. Pugin
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: filled it with soul. So why does all of this matter?
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: You know, why spend time on a fire, two architects
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: and one building. Well, it matters because what Barry and
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Pugin created at Westminster didn't just rebuild, you know, Parliament,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: It reshaped an entire era. Before the Palace of Westminster,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Gothic revival was just a niche curiosity, you know, it
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: was something Romantics used for country chapels or the odd
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: you know, odd of state house or something like that.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: But after Westminster, pretty much everything changed. Gothic became the
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: architectural language of the Victorian Age. You know, if the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: seat of the British Empire, the very symbol of its
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: power and identity and coolness if that could be gothic.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: And pretty much anything could be gothic.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Town halls, train stations, universities, libraries, and then from there,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: homes across Britain and America eventually followed the lead. Very
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: and Pugin proved that you could take a medieval style,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: something old, and.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Make it work for the modern world.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: You know, you could blend history and progress, you could
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: honor the past while looking ahead to the future. And
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: that balance, you know, nostalgia and innovation, reverence, reform, however
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: you want to look at it. That balance became the
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: heartbeat of Victorian design and it's still something that we
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: see in design today. But there's something deeper to Pugin
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: brought a philosophy to Westminster that would echo through the century.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: You know, the belief that beauty and morality were connected,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: that good design could help make good people. Now, to him,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: ornament wasn't frivolous.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: It was meaningful.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: You know, every carved detail, every painted pattern, every curve
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and flourish was meant to lift the spirit, to remind
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: people that beauty pointed towards something higher than themselves. And
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: that conviction spread and it became the soul of the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Victorian home. It's why they filled their homes with pattern
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: and color, why they covered every wall and every ceiling.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Why more.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't just excess, it was virtue. They
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: truly believed that living among beautiful, well crafted things could
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: make you a better person. And I love, love, love
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: love that idea. I love digging into it because here's
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: the thing. It's so easy to dismiss design and decoration
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: and all of that.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: It's kind of shallow, you.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Know, sup superfluous, super oh, good grief, super what is
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: that word? Superficial? Man, I'm sorry, complete brain melt.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Superficial.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: It's easy to dismiss, you know, design and decoration as
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: shallow and superficial, you know, something that's not important, something
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: that just makes our homes look nice and feel comfortable,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, it's not actually.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Important, right. It's easy to say that, you know.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I catch myself thinking that way sometimes, and I've spent
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: most of my working life in the paint industry, but
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: still sometimes it's easy to think that paint's just you know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: an afterthought, it's a finishing touch, you know, not something
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: that really matters.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: At the end of the day.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: But I think the Victorians were onto something. And it's
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: not just them.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: I know that it's not just them.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Who had this thought, but they really brought it to
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the forefront, and I think they're onto something. And I'm
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: not saying that paint in your living room is going
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: to make you morally superior. You know, that's not the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: argument at all. But what I am saying is that
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: when we take the time to paint our homes perhaps,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: or to choose colors that we love, to add touches
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: that reflect who we are and who we want to be,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: we're making our homes better places to be in, better
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: places to live in.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: And that is a moral good.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Isn't it.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Isn't that a moral good?
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: I think that's a moral good because the world out
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: there is nuts. Sometimes not all the time, but sometimes
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: it's nuts. Often it's nuts. And home is our retreat,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: you know, it's our hate. And making it feel welcoming
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: and comfortable and peaceful, that's not just frivolous, it's necessary.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: It's good for us. It's good for the people we love.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: It's good for the kids that were raising in that space.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: A beautifully painted and designed home doesn't raise your kids
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: for you, of course not, but it helps you know,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: maybe a little bit, maybe a lot. Either way, it matters,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: you know, when the world feels chaotic, Every bit of
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: piece that we can create at home is definitely worth something.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Every small choice to make our space better, even something
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: as simple as a fresh goat to paint.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: All of that adds up.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: The Victorians understood that they built it into their philosophy.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Beauty isn't a luxury. It's part of what makes life livable.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: And I think they were right. And a good chunk
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: of that philosophy that we're talking about came into being
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: because of the work of Pugin and Barry and the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: legacy of their partnership. And remember all of that started
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: with a pile of burning sticks. All right, that's going
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: to do it for this bonus episode of Home and Progress.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed the show and you want to hear
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: more content like this, be sure to subscribe to the podcast,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and please, if you feel so inclined, share the show
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: with a friend or two, or you just leave us
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: a review. All of those things will help other people
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: find the show, and I really appreciate that. Thanks for
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: listening for home and progress. I'm Dan Hansen. I'll see
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: you next time.