How Buckingham Palace Has Changed During Queen Elizabeth II’s Reign

Celebrity StyleHow Buckingham Palace Has Changed During Queen Elizabeth II’s ReignAs the monarch celebrates her 70th year on the throne, or Platinum Jubilee, AD examines her impact on the main royal residenceMay 26, 2022Image may contain House Building Housing Palace Mansion Architecture City Town Urban Downtown and MetropolisBuckingham Palace is the main residence of Queen Elizabeth II, who is celebrating her Platinum Jubilee, or 70th anniversary on the throne, this year. Photo: Leonid Andronov / Alamy Stock Photo

Buckingham Palace has gone through as many changes over the years as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has custom-made hats. Beginning as the handsome Buckingham House that was constructed in 1703 for the first Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, it has been remodeled, rebuilt, enlarged, aggrandized, and resurfaced, resulting in the grand urban palace that bedazzles camera-wielding visitors today. Even more changes are coming, as the renovation, which began in 2018, at a reported cost of around $500 million, marches forward. As the 2016 Buckingham Palace Reservicing Programme Summary Report states, since “the Palace’s electrical cabling, plumbing and heating have not been updated since the 1950s, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the building’s infrastructure is now in urgent need of an overhaul to avoid the very real danger of catastrophic failure leading to fire or flood.” In other words, in some ways, the Windsors are like you and me—their house has maintenance issues. The dust is expected to settle when it’s completed in 2027.

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The rear of Buckingham Palace as photographed during a garden party earlier this year. 

Photo: Peter Cziborra - WPA Pool/Getty Images

The interiors of Buckingham Palace have been equally mutable, as successive monarchs and their spouses have put their individual stamp on the place. Since Queen Elizabeth II, now celebrating her Platinum Jubilee, and her late husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, began to live there in 1953, following the death of her father, George VI, changes large and small have been seen, though not as dramatic in nature as the architecture and decoration schemes of Queen Victoria, her son, Edward VII, and her grandson, George V. Edward VII favored Germanic Victoriana. His successor adored Francophile schemes of fresh white paint, glimmering gold leaf, and richly colored fabrics, much of which remains and was wonderfully photographed by designer Ashley Hicks for his 2018 Rizzoli book Buckingham Palace: The Interiors. He also photographed many rooms that have survived from the days of Victoria but are not available for public viewing.

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King George VI and Queen Elizabeth—the queen regnant’s parents—in their private residence at Buckingham Palace, in 1948. This picture was taken in honor of their silver wedding anniversary.

Photo: Hulton Deutsch

As the website of the Royal Collection Trust makes clear, George V ordered architect Sir Ashton Webb to install a smart new Portland stone primary facade on the palace in 1913, the previous one by Edward Blore, dating from 1850, having been criticized as too Middle European in appearance and, in any case, made of Caen stone that crumbled in London’s coal-smoke climate. His consort, Queen Mary, created many spaces in the palace with the help of White Allom & Co., a leading London decorating establishment founded in 1905. She also tinkered with her late father-in-law’s Ritz-hotel-style decors, bringing back a Regency flavor that reflected the gloriously chic era of George IV.

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The White Drawing Room in Buckingham Palace, photographed in 2011.

Photo: Nick Ansell - WPA Pool/Getty Images

Little is known about the rooms that are occupied by the family, since they are off-limits to the intruding press and scarce information about them has leaked out over the queen’s 70 years on the throne. That being said, the state rooms—which have been open to the public since 1993, initially to raise money to repair a fire-damaged Windsor Castle—have been continually primped, fluffed, and improved during her reign, since over 15 million tourists a year expect to see a perfect palace. Walls are repainted. Architectural details, such as the faux lapis lazuli columns in the Music Room, are restored. Fabric is replaced as it begins to fade and fray. Carpets are repaired. The effect, though, remains much as Edward VII left it: grand, glimmering, and regal. Even photographs of the White Drawing Room, one of Edward VII’s finest creations, show that the space, flamboyantly gilded, bristling with decorative plasterwork, and hung with lemon yellow curtains, hasn’t really changed at all, since the 1910s.

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Queen Elizabeth II with former U.S. President George W. Bush in the Queen’s Gallery, in Buckingham Palace, in 2003.

Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

So what has Queen Elizabeth II put her hand to at Buckingham Palace? No great projects like her predecessors, though she and her late husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, are responsible for the jewel-like Queen’s Gallery. A public exhibition space dedicated to art and objects from the Royal Collection, it was created in 1962 by the royal couple, replacing an 1840s chapel—originally built as a conservatory in 1831—that had been bombed during World War II and which still remained in ruins. This gallery included walls draped and stretched with a fabric of the queen’s choice, described by journalist Muriel Bowen in Tatler as “a specially woven biscuit colour cotton-rayon mixture”. As Bowen archly reported, the “small and charmingly intimate gallery” was also “the only part of the Palace to be air-conditioned, a concession to the pictures and not to the hordes of American tourists expected.”

Since then, the Queen’s Gallery has been altered, enlarged, and boldly classicized in the late 1990s by architects John Simpson & Partners, the work being completed just in time for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, in 2002. Visitors to London for the Platinum Jubilee can pass through the structure’s magnificent Doric porch to take the measure of Her Majesty’s architectural commission as well as revel in the surprising breadth of the Royal Collection. Currently on display is “Japan: Courts and Culture,” which highlights Asian treasures ranging from samurai armor given to James I as a diplomatic gift to an exquisite gold-and-black lacquer box, made around 1900, that Japanese emperor Hirohito sent to the queen as a coronation present, in 1953.

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Originally posted on: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/how-buckingham-palace-has-changed-during-elizabeth-ii-reign