Tite was born in the parish of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London,[2] in February 1798,[3] the son of a merchant in Russian goods named Arthur Tite.
He was articled to David Laing, architect of the new Custom House, and surveyor to the Parish of St Dunstan-in-the-East. Tite assisted Laing in the rebuilding of St Dunstan's church: according to an article published in the Architect in 1869, Tite entirely designed the new building, Laing himself having no knowledge of Gothic architecture.[2]
The rebuilding of the Royal Exchange, opened in 1844, was Tite's greatest undertaking.[3] The previous building was destroyed by fire in 1838, and a competition to design a replacement was held the following year. When this proved unproductive, a second limited competition was held between Tite, Charles Robert Cockerell, George Gwilt, Charles Barry and Robert Smirke. Tite's winning design has an imposing eight-column entrance portico, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, while the other sides of the building are based on Italian renaissance models.[5]
Railway stations
Tite was the architect for the Eastern Counties, London and Blackwall, Gravesend and South Western Railways, and in France those between Paris and Rouen and Rouen and Le Havre; an article in the Architect named the station at Rouen, spanning nearly ninety feet, as an example of his structural skill.[2] Tite designed many of the early railway stations in Britain, including:[3]
His station at Carlisle was built in a neo-Tudor style with a frontage of about 400 feet, broken into several masses. At the centre of the façade was an arcade of five arches, with buttresses and pinnacles. The refreshment rooms had "an open timber roof, and oriels or bays, reminiscent of the dining-hall of olden times".[7]
As a company director of the South Metropolitan Cemetery Company he laid out his first cemetery at Norwood in 1836 and designed several significant monuments and chapels there. While previous cemetery designs had followed a classical style, Tite's design was the first to employ the Gothic revival alongside landscaping, which was subsequently judged to be the archetype for future cemeteries.[8]
Tite's active work as an architect ceased about twenty years before his death[3] (in recognition of his contributions, however, he was awarded the RIBARoyal Gold Medal in 1856).[9]
He was a director of the London and Westminster Bank and Governor of the Bank of Egypt; in 1856 he was nominated a member of the Select Committee on the Bank Charter. He was a member of the Metropolitan Board of Works, a magistrate of Middlesex and Somerset and Deputy Lieutenant for London.[2][3] He was also a Governor of St. Thomas's Hospital, London, where he is commemorated by the William Tite Scholarship, for the best student in the first year, with the highest aggregate marks in Anatomy and Physiology. After over 125 years, this prize has been subsumed into King's College London,[10] where it is still awarded for excellence in the pre-clinical medical course.[citation needed]
^English Heritage The Register of Parks and Gardens: Cemeteries: "West Norwood (South Metropolitan Cemetery, 1837) saw the first cemetery buildings erected in the Gothic style (these being by William Tite) and from this point, Gothic Revival began to challenge Neo-Greek as the dominant style. By the mid 19th century, it was generally accepted that Gothic was the correct style for a Christian cemetery and for the latter part of the century onwards the great majority of cemetery buildings were in this manner"
