Burlington House

Coordinates: 51°30′32″N 0°8′22″W / 51.50889°N 0.13944°W / 51.50889; -0.13944

Burlington House is a building on Piccadilly in London. It was originally a private Palladian mansion, and was expanded in the mid-19th century after being purchased by the British government. The main building is at the northern end of the courtyard and houses the Royal Academy, while five learned societies occupy the two wings on the east and west sides of the courtyard and the Piccadilly wing at the southern end. These societies, collectively known as the Courtyard Societies are:

Burlington House is most familiar to the general public as the venue for the Royal Academy's temporary art exhibitions.

History

The house was one of the earliest of a number of very large private residences built on the north side of Piccadilly, previously a country lane, from the 1660s onwards. The first version was begun by Sir John Denham about 1664. It was a red-brick double-pile hip-roofed mansion with a recessed centre, typical of the style of the time, or perhaps even a little old fashioned. Denham may have acted as his own architect, or he may have employed Hugh May, who certainly became involved in the construction after the house was sold in an incomplete state in 1667 to Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Burlington, from whom it derives its name. Burlington had the house completed.

Burlington House (New York City)

The Burlington House, the AllianceBernstein Building, is a 625 ft (191m) tall skyscraper in New York City, New York. The structure located on Sixth Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets, was completed in 1969 and has 50 floors. Emery Roth & Sons designed the building, which is the 68th tallest in New York City. It is an unrelieved slab structure in corporate International style, faced with dark glass. Its small plaza is dominated by its sprinkling fountain like a dandelion seedhead. It replaced the original Ziegfeld Theatre.

A base station atop the building was used on April 3, 1973, by Martin Cooper to make the world's first handheld cellular phone call in public. Cooper, a Motorola inventor, called rival Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs to tell him about the invention. Engel was staying across the street in the Hilton New York.

Tenants

See also