Bid Harbours open, Public Ways extend;
Bid temples, worthier of the God, ascend;
Bid the broad Arch the dang’rous flood contain;
The Mole projected break the roaring main;
Back to his bounds the subject Sea command,
And roll obedient Rivers thro’ the land;
These Honours, Peace to happy Britain brings,—
These are Imperial Works, and worthy Kings.
Fortified by Pope’s century-old call for the use of royal riches to civic ends, John Soane’s Designs for Public Improvements in London and Westminster of September 1827 culminated a summer-long campaign on the part of the 74-year-old architect to bring his works to the notice of George IV. Both were men entering their last years under the cloud of public disapproval, for the King a nearly lifelong state of affairs but for Soane the result of pointed criticism of his recently completed Law Courts at Westminster. He was determined to defend and enhance his reputation as a public architect and set about doing so with a flurry of publications produced from 1827 to 1834. Principal among these was the enlarged ‘second impression’ of 1828 of Designs for Public Improvements in London and Westminster. Dedicated to the King, this folio consists of a thirty-six-page-long descriptive text followed by fifty-five line engravings depicting a variety of Soane’s works both public and private. However, the first twenty-four plates form a distinct group presenting a coherent programme of royally sponsored public works that, I will argue, delineate Westminster as a civic space symbolic of the Crown’s historic legitimacy and continued relevance to contemporary society. This programme combines three of Soane’s recently completed public works projects, including the Law Courts, with three projected designs to constitute a royal processional route through Westminster which I shall analyze as employing narrative, expressive, and numinous symbolic modes.