[203]. See Acciaresi, P., Giuseppe Sacconi e l’opera sua massima, Rome, 1911.
[204]. The best-maintained later equivalent in northern Europe is probably the Passage, as it is called, in The Hague. Built in 1882-5, this hardly rivals the Galleria Mazzini in Genoa in length and breadth, much less Mengoni’s. There are many other examples, some of them considerably later, but few are in good condition today, and none have the scale of the three principal Italian examples. For earlier French examples, see Chapter [3].
CHAPTER 9 - Notes
[205]. See Kreisel, H., The Castles of Ludwig II of Bavaria, Darmstadt [n.d.] and Schloss Linderhof, Munich, 1959.
[206]. The design derives from the results of a competition held in 1876. Of the nine architects involved in the execution of the building, Grotjan, Lamprecht, Robertson, and Martin Haller (1835-1925) had won prizes in the competition. The tower is attributed specifically to the last and sometimes, more loosely, the whole structure.
[207]. It should be pointed out that tall mansards allowed the addition of a full storey—sometimes even two—without increasing the height of the masonry work of the façade itself; thus there were reasons of economy as well as of fashion for their spread at this time (see Chapter [14]).
[208]. For that matter the London Ritz Hotel, built in 1905-6 by Mewès & Davis, is capped with a high mansard, although the vocabulary of their façades is a discreet and academic, if overscaled, style Louis XVI and the construction—reputedly—the first example of the use of a steel skeleton of the American skyscraper type in England.
[209]. Thomas Cundy II (1790-1867) died in this year; if provided by the Estate Architects’ office, the designs were either initiated before his death or else they were entirely by his assistants, perhaps directed by his surviving brother Joseph (1795-1875). A. T. Bolton believed that the responsibility for the design lay with the builder Trollope; the Grosvenor Estate office, however, names not Trollope but the Cubitt firm as the builders. As with the Place de l’Opéra, the credit—or discredit—for this most notable and conspicuous piece of Second Empire urbanism remains rather uncertain.
[210]. See, however, Castermans, A., Parallèle des maisons de Bruxelles, Paris, 1856, which illustrates much work that is not at all Parisian.