Mausoleum for Newton's House - Image from London as it might have been, Felix Barker and Ralph Hyde

The top image image shows a lithograph prepared by George Schalf, an artist, in 1834 in response to a commission from a Mr T. Steele. Mr Steele desired to make a national monument to Sir Isaac Newton who had died over a hundred years before; his plan - to encase Newton's former home and observatory, just off Leicester Square, in a gigantic mausoleum. It would be pyramidal, with a globe at its top. The ideal of encasing the building, which seems to isolate the home from all that surrounds it, is suspected to come from the treatment of a Franciscan chapel at Assisi, shown bottom left. Like this Mr Steele's plan seems to wish to preserve the building from the affects of time and the outside world; it reminds me of the embalming of the Egyptian mummies. I find the the naming of the building as a mausoleum an odd one; mausoleums usually contain tombs: burial places. Maybe Mr Steele believed the essence of Newton was best preserved, not it the usual way - of monuments over graves, but of the place where the given body, the person, has inhabited.
The plans progressed no further than these images; the book which they are presented in quotes someone by the name of Macaulay saying 'to preserve for posterity Newton's house which Macaulay hoped would "continue to be well known as long as our island retains any trace of civilization" ' The building, without still without mausoleum, was demolished in 1913.

The image and information above have been drawn from London as it might have been, Felix Barker and Ralph Hyde, John Murray Ltd, 1984.