He could have put up an imposing and beautifully proportioned building, correct in every constructional detail, from the roughest of sketches tossed patronizingly at him by a 'gentleman architect'",[1] and "James Burton became adept at relieving the monotony of long residential terraces by allowing their central blocks to project slightly from the surfaces to each side, and by bringing forward, too, the houses at each end", and that "the ironwork in a classical style in James Burton's Bloomsbury terraces was, and often still is, particularly fine, though mass produced".

[10] Samuel Pepys Cockerell, advisor to the Governors of the Foundling Hospital, a contemporary of James Burton, commended James Burton's architectural excellence: Without such a man, possessed of very considerable talents, unwearied industry, and a capital of his own, the extraordinary success of the improvement of the Foundling Estate could not have taken place... By his own peculiar resources of mind, he has succeeded in disposing of his buildings and rents, under all disadvantages of war, and of an unjust clamour which has repeatedly been raised against him.

[20] Whereas Decimus's father James Burton was vigorously industrious, and had become 'most gratifyingly rich',[10] John Nash's early years in private practice, and his first speculative developments, which failed either to sell or let, were unsuccessful, and his consequent financial shortage was exacerbated by the 'crazily extravagant' wife whom he had married before he had completed his training, until he was declared bankrupt in 1783.

Decimus had showed precocious talent as a draughtsman and as an exponent of the classical style... John Nash needed the son's aid, as well as the father's'.

[31] Decimus's design, when the villa had been completed, was described in Proceedings of the Royal Society as, 'One of the most elegant and successful adaptations of the Grecian style to purposes of modern domestic architecture to be found in this or any country'.

of G. L. L. Buffon and Bernard Germain de Lacépède;[22] and standard works on classical architecture, such as the five volumes of Colen Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus by John Woolfe and James Gandon, James Gibbs's Book of Architecture, and William Kent's The Designs of Inigo Jones; and numerous topographical views and surveys of cities and counties in the collection;[22] and foreign-language texts, including volumes by Charles Percier and Jean-Baptiste Rondelet, and a complete set of Giovanni Battista Piranesi's works, and several dictionaries.

[37] He toured Canada and the United States, after departing Liverpool for Halifax, Nova Scotia, with his cousin Thomas Chandler Haliburton, a Tory MP and author.

[22] Dana Arnold (2002) described his Neoclassical work thus: "His use of the orders is always correct, but he showed a lack of pedantry in their application that sets him apart from some of his more doctrinaire contemporaries, such as Hamilton and Smirke.

[39] By 1826, the name of Decimus Burton "was on the lips of everyone who cared at all about the arts and architecture": he was "very well liked [and] his modesty, politeness, and upright bearing were endearing" and "his integrity and professional competence were worthy of the greatest respect".

[48] Burton bought from the Crown a plot at Spring Gardens, St. James's Park, at the east end of The Mall, where he constructed, in the Georgian neoclassical townhouse style, No.

[39] Burton retired in 1869,[51][52] and subsequently resided at his homes at Gloucester Gardens, Kensington, and St. Leonards Lodge, St. Leonards-on-Sea, which adjoined 'The Uplands' and 'The Lawn' developments which he had designed.

[57] During the second half of the 1820s, the Commissioners of Woods and Forests and the King resolved that Hyde Park, and the area around it, must be renovated to the extent of the splendor of rival European capital cities, and that the essence of the new arrangement would be a triumphal approach to Buckingham Palace, which had been recently completed.

[58] The committee of the project, led by the Prime Minister, Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, and advised by Charles Arbuthnot, President of the Board of Commissioners of Woods and Forests, selected Decimus Burton as the project's architect: in 1828, when giving evidence to a Parliamentary select committee on the Government's spending on public works, Arbuthnot explained that he had nominated Burton 'having seen in the Regent's Park, and elsewhere, works which pleased my eye, from their architectural beauty and correctness'.

There were no authoritative precedents for such buildings, which required windows and chimney stacks, in the classical style, and, in the words of Guy Williams, 'Burton's reticent treatment of the supernumerary features' and of the cast iron gates and railings, was 'greatly admired'.

Burton created a new design, "to pander to the majestic ego", which was much larger and modelled on a fragment found in the Ancient Roman forum, which was accepted on 14 January 1826, and subsequently built as the present Wellington Arch.

[62] A writer in The Builder asked Charles Canning, the First Commissioner for Woods and Forests, to ban the project: "We have learnt, and can state positively, that Mr. Burton has the strongest objection possible against placing the group in question on the archway... and that he is taking no part whatever in the alteration proposed to be made in the upper part of the structure to prepare it to receive the pedestal... Mr. Burton, through the mildness which characterizes him, has not expressed this opinion so loudly and so publicly as he ought to have done.... an opinion prevails very generally, that he is a party to the proceedings, and this has induced many to be silent who would otherwise have spoken...".

The face of London might have been very different now – freer, perhaps, of the 'monstrous carbuncles' so disliked by the present Prince of Wales – if the attacked party [Decimus Burton] had been a little more pugnacious, and so better equipped to stand his ground".

With his eye for landscape, Burton had John Nash's triumphal monument, originally intended as the entrance to the palace, relocated to the north eastern corner of Hyde Park.

[64] The campaign led by Fearon was successful: Wyatt's incongruous statue was removed to Aldershot, and its place on Burton's arch, which was moved to Constitution Hill in 1883,[22] was occupied by a Quadriga by Captain Adrian Jones.

In 1823, Croker wrote to Sir Humphry Davy, "I will take the opportunity of repeating the proposition I have made to you about a Club for Literary and Scientific men and followers of the Fine Arts.

[71] When the Clubhouse was completed in April 1830, the members of the Club Committee stated, "[They] are bound to express their entire satisfaction at the manner in which the work has been carried out by Mr. Burton.

They can testify, and indeed the foregoing Accounts evince, the general accuracy of his estimates and they trust that the Club at large, as well as the public, must be satisfied of his professional skill, and the beauty of his architectural designs".

[74] Burton's development of the Calverley Estate contained elements of the neoclassical-, the Old English-, and the neogothic styles, and was highly commended: it has been described as "a landmark in English domestic architecture" and the "prototype garden suburb".

[82] A more unanimously successful attempt to design in the neogothic style was St Mary's Church, Goring-by-Sea, which he redesigned, for the Tory MP David Lyon, between 1836 and 1838.

[85] Decimus Burton and his pupils commended the purchase of the Elgin Marbles for the nation, and the erection of a neoclassical gallery in which they could be displayed to the same, and subsequently contended that the Burning of Parliament in the fire of 1834 were an opportunity for the creation of a splendid neoclassical replacement of the Houses of Parliament, in which the Elgin Marbles could be displayed: they expressed their aversion that the new seat of the British Empire would "be doomed to crouch and wither in the groinings [sic], vaultings, tracery, pointed roof, and flying buttresses of a Gothic building…":[86] a building of a style that they contended to be improper ‘to the prevailing sentiment of an age so enlightened’.

[94] In 1845, Pugin, in his Contrasts: or a Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries and Similar Buildings of the Present Day, which the author had to publish himself as a consequence of the extent of the defamation of society architects therein, satirized John Nash as "Mr Wash, Plasterer, who jobs out Day Work on Moderate Terms", and Burton as "Talent of No Consequence, Premium Required", and included satirical sketches of Nash's Buckingham Palace and Burton's Wellington Arch.

[41] Burton completed a new portico, hall, and staircase for William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire's Devonshire House;[95] additions to 10 Belgrave Square for the second Earl of Burlington;[96] the enlargement of Grimston Park, Yorkshire, for John Hobart Caradoc, 2nd Baron Howden and the Russian Princess Bagration; additions to Syon House for Lord Prudhoe; and a new town, Fleetwood, in Lancashire, for Sir Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood.

[109][110][34] Despite the fact that he had left his library to the Royal Institute of British Architects, of which he had served as president, most of it was deposited instead with his two unmarried nieces, Helen and Emily Jane Wood, who subsequently sold it, and the remainder was distributed among other family members.

As a consequence, according to Dana Arnold, there is a gross imbalance between the ‘scale and significance’ of Decimus Burton's work and the amount of documentary evidence about it that has come into the public domain.

[112] Douglas Murphy contends that Burton's use of "Iron and glass, through shedding ornament and aiming for efficient performance over capricious pomp, was retroactively understood as the historic forerunner of Modernism, meaning that what had been thought of as mere engineering was allowed to enter the pantheon of true architecture.