Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/50

 raised to twelve, and in January 1867 designs were finally sent in by eleven architects. The judges recommended Street for the external and Barry for the internal arrangements, while a special committee of the legal profession inclined to the designs of Mr. Waterhouse. Controversy raged for a year, but at last, in June 1868, Street was nominated sole architect. The inevitable vexations of so large an undertaking were greatly increased from the start by the policy of parsimony pursued by A. S. Ayrton, the first commissioner of works, which went the length of cutting down the architect's remuneration. Street met these false economies with the generosity of a true artist. Each of the courts was worked out on a separate design. Three thousand drawings were prepared by his own hand, and so loyally did he obey his instructions as to expense that when the east wing was completed the accounts showed an expenditure of 2,000l. less than the authorised amount. The completed work evoked adverse criticism from many points of view, but it enhanced Street's reputation in the public eye.

It was, however, as an ecclesiastical architect that he won his highest artistic successes. Street was diocesan architect to York, Winchester, and Ripon, as well as to Oxford. During the progress of the work at the law courts, which was interrupted by many formidable strikes and by the contractor's financial difficulties, Street was employed in restoring many cathedrals. His work at Bristol, which consisted mainly of the rebuilding of the nave, showed a power of combining originality with archæology, and was marked at its close by an acrid controversy over the statues placed in the north porch, resulting eventually in the banishment of the figures. In 1871 Street was engaged in restoration at York Minster, and about the same time at Salisbury and Carlisle, at Christchurch Dublin, and St. Brigid's, Kildare. At Carlisle his most important undertaking in connection with the cathedral was the rehabilitation of the fratry, a building of the fifteenth century much concealed by later accretions. The removal of these accretions met with warm reprobation from certain archæologists, and Street defended his action in a reply to the Society for the Protection of Antient Buildings (Building News, 27 Feb. 1880).

In 1874 he received the gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Next year he took part by writing letters to newspapers, and subsequently as a witness before the House of Lords, in the agitation which saved London Bridge from a hideous iron addition; and in 1876 he was consulted on the rehabilitation of Southwell Minster for purposes of modern worship. In 1879, when fears were aroused that St. Mark's at Venice was suffering from injudicious restoration, Street was the first to express, if not to conceive, the idea that the undulations of the pavement, which the restorers threatened to level, were due to design.

In 1878, in recognition of his drawings sent to the Paris Exhibition, Street received the knighthood of the Legion of Honour. Another foreign distinction which he received was the membership of the Royal Academy of Vienna. His appointment as professor of architecture at the Royal Academy (where he also held the office of treasurer) and his election to the presidency of the Royal Institute of British Architects both took place in 1881, the last year of his life. His energetic though short presidency of the institute was a turning point in its history. His wish that the council of that body should come to be regarded as an arbiter in architectural matters of national and metropolitan importance has since his death been partly realised.

In 1873 he built himself a house on a site he had purchased at Holmbury, Surrey, and a few years later he took a leading part in the formation of the parish of Holmbury St. Mary. He built the church at his own expense. In 1881 his health, which was impaired by the great responsibilities of his work for the government, showed signs of failure. Visits to foreign watering places proved of no avail, and he died in London, after two strokes of paralysis, on 18 Dec. 1881. He was honoured on 29 Dec. with a public funeral in Westminster Abbey. He married, first, on 17 June 1852, Mariquita, second daughter of Robert Proctor, and niece of Robert Proctor, vicar of Hadleigh, whose church he restored. She died in 1874, and was buried at Boyne Hill, near Maidenhead, a church designed by Street himself and decorated by his own hand with copies of Overbeck's designs. He married, secondly, on 11 Jan. 1876, Jessie, second daughter of William Holland of Harley Street; she died in the same year.

The works left incomplete on his death were in most cases completed by his only son, Mr. Arthur Edmund Street, with whom (Sir) Arthur W. Blomfield, A.R.A., was associated in the task of bringing the courts of justice to completion.

The principal memorial to his honour is the full-length sculpture by H. H. Armstead, R.A., in the central hall of the courts. The same artist executed a bust which is preserved in the rooms of the Royal Institute