Basic Biographical Details
| Name: | Adam Menelaws |
| Designation: | |
| Born: | c. 1749 |
| Died: | November 1831 |
| Bio Notes: | Adam Menelaws was born about 1749. He was a mason and architect whose family was Scottish. He may have been related to John and Thomas Menelaws who worked as master masons in Greenock in the 1760s. He was one of the group of Scottish craftsmen who responded to the invitation of Charles Cameron in 1784 to work on the new buildings Cameron had designed for the Empress Catherine at Tsarskoe Seloe near St Petersburg. Menelaws was an experienced mason by the time he went to Russia and Colvin suggests he would have been sent south to build a cathedral at Mogilev between Minsk and Smolensk to the designs of Nikolai Lvov. Although he was described as an architect and was highly regarded, he worked in a relatively minor capacity until 1798 when he began to work for the School of Practical Agriculture. Here he demonstrated the workings of a steam engine and other machinery which had been imported from England. From this point he received private commissions including the Razumovskys’ Gorenki mansion near Moscow and for the same client, their palace at Baturin in the Ukraine. He also rebuilt the family’s town house (later the Museum of the Revolution) at 21 Gorky Street in Moscow which had been destroyed in the burning of the city in 1812. By 1812 Menelaws had virtually supplanted Cameron as leading Court architect. He was employed by Nicholas I soon after the latter’s accession to design an informal country house at Alexandria on the Gulf of Finland. This is a large ‘cottage orné’ with elaborate Gothic interiors. Menelaws is also attributed with the design of various ornamental buildings at Tsarskoe Seloe including a chapel (1825-8, now ruined), a Turkish elephant house (1828), the polygonal Arsenal and Egyptian Gate. In 1831, the year of his death, he acted as executant architect for the Gothic chapel at Alexandria designed by K F Schinkel. He died of cholera in November 1831. |
Private and Business Addresses
| The following private or business addresses are associated with this : | |||||
| Address | Type | Date from | Date to | Notes | |
 | Russia | ||||
References
Bibliographic References
| The following books contain references to this : | ||||||
| Author(s) | Date | Title | Part | Publisher | Notes | |
| Colvin, Howard | 2008 | A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 | London: YUP. 4th edition | ||
| Shvidkovsky, Dimitri | 1996 | The Empress and Her Architect | Chapter 6 | ||