A New Piece of Scottish Architecture

The MacEwan University Hall Edinburgh, designed by R. Rowand Anderson LL.D., Architect, is a gift to the university of Edinburgh by William MacEwan, M.P., and virtually completes the large block of buildings erected ten years ago for the medical department of the university at a cost of some £250,000. The only feature still awaiting execution is the Campanile, 275 feet in height, tile base of which is illustration underneath.

The hall, which will cost, with the site, about £80,000 corresponds in style with the early Renaissance design of the rest of the medical school, but treated with great independence and boldness. In ground-plan like a theatre, it presents the rounded wall of the auditorium to the exterior, forming thereby the corner of the block of buildings abutting on the public streets. This wall is not opened with arcades, as in the Roman theatre, but holds the eye by its simple and vast expanse of masonry. Vertical divisions are given by two semicircular projections enclosing staircases, and by buttresses, but the horizontal stages in slightly marked, and a noble breadth of effect is thereby secured. The blind arcade, with statue-niches in the buttresses in the upper story, gives the needful enrichment, and with the band of sharply cut Italian ornament below it, receives value from the plain wall of the middle story, upon which the eye dwells with a pleasing sense of repose. The lowest story is less happy. The rustication in the form of "Channelled Ashlar," which girds the rest of the black, is here exchanged for a panelled treatment somewhat weak light and shade, and carrying with it that suggestion of an origin in woodwork, which attaches to the panelled stone and marble surfaces so dear to the Renaissance architect.

Above this massively treated outer enceinte, measuring 64 feet to the top of the parapet, is seen the summit of an inner concentric with the last, which carries the domical roof constructed of steel. These concentric walls are connected Above by flying buttresses, while on the ground story the space between them is utilised for a vaulted corridor, 12 feet wide, extending round the half - circle of the auditorium, and affording communication between the various staircases, entrances and exits.

In the interior, the platform occupies the chord of the are, with a clear floor space in front bounded by tiers of seats following the sweep of the semicircle and extending back to the inner wall. The internal elevation above these floor-seats has not a little of the simplicity and greatness of the exterior. The inner wall here becomes an open arcade of round arches twelve feet in span, supported on columns of red Corsehill stone with caps and bases of grey sandstone; measuring 26 ft. 6 in. in height, and behind this arcade are galleries in two tiers stretching back to the limits of the outer enceinte. The device of carrying the columns past both these two stages of the elevation is a happy one, and gives dignity to the whole interior. Above the semicircle, the diameter of which is 106 feet, rises the low dome of the roof, pierced at its springing by a range of round windows. Its crown, where it is opened with a skylight 25 feet in diameter, is 90 feet above the floor.

The hall, when completed will hold about three thousand people, and is destined to be used for Graduation and all other Academic ceremonies. It will also serve for concerts, for there will be a large organ behind the platform, while arrangements are made by which an orchestra to accommodate three hundred performers can be substituted for the perform. It will be by far the finest Edinburgh, and will challenge comparison, in point of design, with any hall in the kingdom, or indeed in Europe. The architect, having large masses to deal with, has worked them into artistic harmony through his boldness in aiming at a grand general effect, instead of wasting his resources on details.

G. BALDWIN BROWN.