FIG. 214.—BLOCK OF DWELLINGS (MARIE-THERESIENHOF), VIENNA.
VIENNA. During the last thirty years Vienna has undergone a transformation which has made it the rival of Paris as a stately capital. The remodelling of the central portion, the creation of a series of magnificent boulevards and squares, and the grouping of the chief state and municipal buildings about these upon a monumental scheme of arrangement, have given the city an unusual aspect of splendor. Among the most important monuments in this group are the Parliament House, by Hansen (see [p. 360]), and the Town Hall, by Schmidt. This latter is a Neo-Gothic edifice of great size and pretentiousness, but strangely thin and meagre in detail, and quite out of harmony with its surroundings. The university and museums are massive piles in Renaissance style; and it is the Renaissance rather than the classic or Gothic revival which prevails throughout the new city. The great blocks of residences and apartments (Fig. 214) which line its streets are highly ornate in their architecture, but for the most part done in stucco, which fails after all to give the aspect of solidity and durability which it seeks to counterfeit.
The city of Buda-Pesth has also in recent years undergone a phenomenal transformation of a similar nature to that effected in Vienna, but it possesses fewer monuments of conspicuous architectural interest. The Synagogue is the most noted of these, a rich and pleasing edifice of brick in a modified Hispano-Moresque style.
FIG. 215.
—HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, WESTMINSTER, LONDON.
GREAT BRITAIN. During the closing years of the Anglo-Greek style a coterie of enthusiastic students of British mediæval monuments—archæologists rather than architects—initiated a movement for the revival of the national Gothic architecture. The first fruits of this movement, led by Pugin, Brandon, Rickman, and others (about 1830–40), were seen in countless pseudo-Gothic structures in which the pointed arches, buttresses, and clustered shafts of mediæval architecture were imitated or parodied according to the designer’s ability, with frequent misapprehension of their proper use or significance. This unintelligent misapplication of Gothic forms was, however, confined to the earlier stages of the movement. With increasing light and experience came a more correct and consistent use of the mediæval styles, dominated by the same spirit of archæological correctness which had produced the classicismo of the Late Renaissance in Italy. This spirit, stimulated by extensive enterprises in the restoration of the great mediæval monuments of the United Kingdom, was fatal to any free and original development of the style along new lines. But it rescued church architecture from the utter meanness and debasement into which it had fallen, and established a standard of taste which reacted on all other branches of design.