IX
HALL AND STAIRS
What is technically known as the staircase (in German the Treppenhaus) has, in our lax modern speech, come to be designated as the hall.
In Gwilt's Encyclopedia of Architecture the staircase is defined as "that part or subdivision of a building containing the stairs which enable people to ascend or descend from one floor to another"; while the hall is described as follows: "The first large apartment on entering a house.... In magnificent edifices, where the hall is larger and loftier than usual, and is placed in the middle of the house, it is called a saloon; and a royal apartment consists of a hall, or chamber of guards, etc."
It is clear that, in the technical acceptance of the term, a hall is something quite different from a staircase; yet the two words were used interchangeably by so early a writer as Isaac Ware, who, in his Complete Body of Architecture, published in 1756, continually speaks of the staircase as the hall. This confusion of terms is difficult to explain, for in early times the staircase was as distinct from the hall as it continued to be in France and Italy, and, with rare exceptions, in England also, until the present century.
ANTECHAMBER IN THE DURAZZO PALACE, GENOA.
DECORATED BY TORRIGIANI. LATE XVIII CENTURY.
PLATE XXIX.