Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuriesHitchcock, Henry-Russell
History
Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell
Architecture, Modern -- 19th century; Architecture, Modern -- 20th century
The housing of public services, initiated so actively by Napoleon,
continued at a much reduced pace under Louis XVIII and Charles X. The
Paris Custom House of 1827 by L.-A. Lusson (1790-1864), a pupil of
Percier, with its great arched entrance rising from the ground and its
similar transverse arches inside, was later transformed—three bays of
it, at least—into a Protestant church by one of Lebas’s pupils, the
German-born F.-C. Gau (1790-1853), for Louis Philippe’s German relatives
in 1843. A similar reflection of Durand’s utilitarian models may be seen
in the vast Government Warehouse at Lyons, begun in 1828 by L.-P.
Baltard (1764-1846), Lequeux’s master, who had worked when very young
with Ledoux on the Paris _barrières_. This contrasts notably in its
consistent arcuation with the belated giant Corinthian colonnade that
fronts Baltard’s Palace of Justice there, built in 1836-42, and
parallels fairly closely the contemporary warehouses Schinkel was
building in Berlin. More characteristic of the rather mixed official
mode of the period is the Custom House of 1835-42 at Rouen by C.-E.
Isabelle (1800-80), a pupil of Leclerc. This is of interest chiefly for
the tremendous rusticated arch of the entrance, which quite overpowers
the rest of the _palazzo_-like façade.
For educational institutions most new construction was subsidiary to
existing buildings. At the École Polytechnique, A.-M. Renié (_c._
1790-1855), a pupil of Percier and Vaudoyer, provided in 1828 a new
arcuated and rusticated entrance hardly worthy of the school where
Durand was now teaching a second generation of architects. P.-M.
Letarouilly (1795-1855) made in 1831-42 additions that are less
unworthy, but hardly more interesting, to Chalgrin’s Collège de France,
built originally in the 1770s. But his great contribution, of course,
was the _Édifices de Rome moderne_—the first volume of which appeared in
1840. Finally completed with the publication of the third volume in
1857, this was the bible of the later Renaissance Revival in France as
of several generations of academic architects throughout the rest of the
world. The École Normale Supérieure by the youngest Gisors (H.-A.-G. de,
1796-1866), a pupil of Percier, is a large, wholly new building of
1841-7; this looks forward to the Second Empire a little in its high
mansard roof and seventeenth-century detailing, extremely dry and sparse
though that is (see Chapter 8).
Private construction was for the most part very dull, whether in city,
suburb, or country. As an example of the country houses that were built
in some quantity, a typical project of 1830 for one by Hittorff may be
illustrated (Figure 9). With its careful if rather uninteresting
proportions, its rigid rectangularity, and the stiff chains of
rustication that provide its sole embellishment, however, this rises
somewhat above the general level of achievement of the period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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