On the whole, however, for all that King’s Cross is one of the major late monuments of the rationalistic side of Romantic Classicism, it is better to consider railway stations in relation to their sheds of iron and glass, technically, that is, rather than stylistically (see Chapter 7). They illustrate especially well something which the stylistic preoccupations of the first half of the nineteenth century tended to mask from most contemporaries, the success with which new functional needs were satisfied in this period by the bold use of new materials and new types of construction. Yet the most characteristic monuments of Romantic Classicism in Europe after those prime urbanistic symbols of Napoleonic or counter-Napoleonic triumph, the arches, the columns, and the obelisks that rose in all the great cities from Petersburg to Madrid, are the museums and libraries, starting with Soane’s Dulwich Gallery, begun in 1811, and ending with Labrouste’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, opened in 1850. These are useful, yes; moreover, they serve what were effectively new purposes, purposes closely related to the rising ideal of providing cultural opportunities for the general public. On the whole, however, they could be carried out—and so they usually were down to Labrouste’s library—with established methods of construction; while their cultural significance—and in the case of the sculpture galleries from Klenze’s Glyptothek, begun in 1816, to Bindesbøll’s Thorwaldsen Museum, opened in 1848, their very contents—seemed to justify, if not indeed to demand, the use of Greek or Roman forms. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER 5 THE NEW WORLD IN varying degree Romantic Classicism left its mark on all the major cities of Europe. Paris without the Napoleonic monuments that Louis Philippe brought to completion is inconceivable, while Karlsruhe, Munich, Petersburg, and Edinburgh owe most of their architectural interest to this period.