In domestic architecture the tendency has been to quit picturesque irregularity for a more formal and more dignified treatment. Such a house as Norman Shaw’s “Cragside,” built in the earlier part of our period (fig. 105), however its picturesque English domestic and street architecture. treatment may still be admired, would hardly be built now on a large scale; its architect himself has of late years shown a preference for a symmetrical and regular treatment of house architecture sometimes to the extent of making the mansion look too like a barrack. In street architecture, however, the tendency has been towards a more characteristic and more picturesque treatment; nor is there any class of building in which the improvement in English architecture has been more marked and more unquestionable. Many of the new residential streets in the west end of London present a really picturesque ensemble, and many shops and other commercial street buildings have been erected with admirable fronts from the designs of some of the best architects of the day. Norman Shaw’s building at the corner of St James’s Street and Pall Mall was one of the first, and is still one of the best examples of modern street architecture, though surpassed by the same architect’s more recent building opposite, at the south-west angle of St James’s Street—one of the finest and most monumental examples of street architecture in London. Among other examples may be cited T.E. Collcutt’s London City & Midland Bank in Ludgate Hill (fig. 106) and R. Blomfield’s narrow house-front in Buckingham Gate (fig. 107). The introduction of sculpture in street fronts is also beginning to receive attention; and a simple house-front recently erected in Margaret Street, London, from the design of Beresford Pite (fig. 108), is an excellent example of the use of sculpture in connexion with ordinary street architecture. It is significant of the increased attention accorded to street architecture, that the most important architectural event in England at the very close of the 19th century, was the outlay of £2000 by the London County Council, in fees to eight architects for designs for the front of the proposed new streets of Kingsway and Aldwych. The idea was to treat these streets as comprehensive architectural designs with a certain unity of effect. Unfortunately this idea was abandoned for merely commercial reasons, it being feared that there would be a difficulty in letting the sites if tenants were required to conform their frontages to a general design. In the case of Aldwych, which is a crescent street, this decision was fatal. A crescent loses all its effect unless treated as a complete and symmetrical architectural design.
| Fig. 107.—House in Buckingham Gate, London. (R. Blomfield.) |
The competition for the Queen Victoria Memorial, consisting of a processional road from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace, culminating in a sculptural trophy in front of the palace, attracted a great deal of attention in 1901. Of the five invited competitors—Sir Aston Webb (b. 1849), T.G. Jackson, Ernest George (b. 1839), Sir Thomas Drew (b. 1838), and Sir Rowand Anderson (b. 1834) the two latter representing Ireland and Scotland respectively,—Sir Aston Webb’s design was selected, and unquestionably showed the best and most effective manner of laying out the road, as well as a very pleasing architectural treatment of the semicircular forecourt in front of the palace, with pavilions and fountain-basins symmetrically spaced; but some of this was subsequently sacrificed on grounds of economy. The building, a triumphal arch flanked by pavilions, forming the entry to the processional road from Whitehall, is a dignified design.
| Fig. 108.—House in Margaret Street, London. (Beresford Pite.) |
In France, still the leading artistic nation of the world, the art of architecture has been in a most flourishing and most active state in the most recent period. It is true that there is not the same variety as in modern English Recent French architecture. architecture, nor have there been the same discussions and experiments in regard to the true aim and course of architecture which have excited so much interest in England; because the French architects, unlike the English, know exactly what they want. They have a “school” of architecture; they adhere to the scholastic or academic theory of architecture as an art founded on the study of classic models; and on this basis their architects receive the most thorough training of any in the world. This predominance of the academic theory deprives their architecture, no doubt, of a good deal of the element of variety and picturesqueness; a French architect pur sang, in fact, never attempts the picturesque, unless in a country residence, and then the results are such that one wishes the attempt had not been made. But, on the other hand, modern French architecture at its best has a dignity and style about it which no other nation at present reaches, and which goes far to atone for a certain degree of sameness and repetition in its motives; and living under a government which recognizes the importance of national architecture, and is willing to spend public money liberally on it (with the full approbation of its public), the French architects have opportunities which English ones but seldom enjoy— the predominant aim with a British government being to see how little they can spend on a public building. The two great Paris exhibitions of 1889 and 1900 may be regarded as important events in connexion with architecture, for even the temporary buildings erected for them showed an amount of architectural interest and originality which could be met with nowhere else, and which in each case left its mark behind it, though with a difference; for while in the 1889 exhibition the main object was to treat temporary structures—iron and concrete and terra-cotta—in an undisguised but artistic manner, in those of the 1900 exhibition the effort was to create an architectural coup d’œil of apparently monumental structures of which the actual construction was disguised. In spite of some eccentricities the amount of invention and originality shown in these temporary buildings was most remarkable; but fortunately the exhibition left something more permanent behind it in the shape of the two art-palaces and the new bridge over the Seine. The two palaces are triumphs of modern classic architecture; the larger one (by MM. Thomas, Louvet and Deglane) is to some extent spoiled by the apparently unavoidable glass roof, the smaller one, by M. Girault, escapes this drawback, and, still more refined than its greater opposite, is one of the most beautiful buildings of modern times; the central portion is shown in Plate XIV., fig. 130. The architectural pylons, with their accompanying sculpture, which flank the entries to the bridge, are worthy of the best period of French Renaissance. Thus much, at least, has the 1900 exhibition done for architecture.
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| Fig. 109.—Plan of Hôtel de Ville, Paris. | |
A, Salle des Fêtes. B, Salle à manger. C, Salons de Réception. D, Council Chamber. E, Grand Staircase. F, Salle des Cariatides. G, General Secretary. | H, Prefect. K, Committee Rooms. L, Public Works. M, Corridor. N, President of Council. O, Library. P, Refreshment Room. |
At the beginning of the last quarter of the 19th century stands one of the most important of modern French buildings, the Paris hotel de ville, commenced shortly after the war, from the designs of MM. Ballu and Deperthes, planned on an immense scale, and on the stateliest and most monumental lines: the plan is given in fig. 109. The central block is, externally, a restoration of the old hotel de ville, the remainder carried out in an analogous but somewhat more modern style. The interior has been the scene of sumptuous pictorial decoration, in which all the first artists of the day were employed—unfortunately in too scattered a manner and on no predominant or consistent scheme. One of the most characteristic architectural efforts of the French has consisted in the erection of the various smaller hôtels-de-ville or mairies, in the city and suburban districts of the capital; as at Pantin, Lilas, Suresnes and in various arrondissements within the city proper (Plate XIII., fig. 127). Nothing shows the quality of modern French architecture better, or perhaps more favourably, than this series of district town halls; all have a distinctly municipal character and a certain family resemblance of style amid their diversity of details; all are refined specimens of pre-eminently civilized architecture. Among the greater architectural efforts of France is the immense block of the new Sorbonne, by M. Nénot, a building sufficient in itself for an architectural reputation. Among smaller French buildings of peculiar merit may be mentioned the Musée Galliera, in the Trocadéro quarter of Paris, designed by M. Ginain—a work of pure art in architecture such as we should nowadays look for in vain out of France; the École de Médecine, by the same refined architect (fig. 110); and the chapel in rue Jean Goujon (Guilbert), erected as a memorial to the victims of the bazaar fire, again a notable instance of a work of pure thought in architecture—a new conception out of old materials. The new Opéra Comique (Bernier) should also be mentioned, the rather disappointing result of a competition which excited great interest at the time. Street architecture has been carried out of late in Paris in a sumptuous style, with great stone fronts and a profusion of carved ornament, such as we know nothing of in England; and though there is a rather monotonous repetition of the same style and character throughout the new or newly built streets, it is impossible to deny the effect of palatial dignity they impart to the city. In the matter of country houses the French architect is less fortunate; when he attempts what he regards as the rural picturesque, his good taste seems entirely to desert him, and the maison de campagne is generally a mere riot of gimcrack bargeboards and finials. In Paris, the taste for the contortions of what is called art nouveau has led to the erection, here and there, of ugly and eccentric fronts with preposterous ornamental details; but the invasion of this element is only partial and will probably not prove other than a passing phase.
| Fig. 110.—École de Médecine, Paris. (Ginain.) |
The great military success of Germany in 1870, and the founding of the German empire, gave, as is usual in such crises, a decided impetus to public architecture, of which the central and most important visible sign is the German Houses of Parliament Germany. (Plate IX., fig. 117), by Paul Wallot (b. 1841), whose design was selected in a competition. There is something essentially German in the quality of this national building; classic architecture minus its refinement. The detail is coarse; the finish of the end pavilions of the principal front absolutely unmeaning— mere architectural rodomontade; the central cupola of glass and iron, on a square plan, probably the ugliest central feature on any great building in Europe; and yet there is undeniable power about the whole thing; it is the characteristic product of a conquering nation not reticent in its triumph. The new cathedral at Berlin, by Julius Raschdorff (b. 1823), is the other most important German work of the period (fig. 111); a building very striking and unusual in plan, but absolutely commonplace in its architectural detail; school classic of the most ordinary type, without even any of those elements of originality which are to be found in the Houses of Parliament. A curious feature in the plan (fig. 112) is that the building, alone of any cathedral we can recall, has its principal general entrance at the side, the end entrance being reserved for a special imperial cortège on special occasions, the cathedral also serving the second purpose of an imperial mausoleum. Theatre building has been carried on very largely in Germany, and among its productions the Lessing theatre at Berlin (fig. 113) (Hermann von der Hude and Julius Hennicke, d. 1892) is a favourable example of German classic at its best, besides being, like most modern German theatres, very well planned (fig. 114). Hamburg has had its new municipal buildings (Grotjan), a florid Renaissance building with a central tower, showing in its general effect and grouping a good deal of Gothic feeling Mention may also be made of the Imperial law courts (Reichsgerichtsgebaude) at Leipzig, designed by Ludwig Hoffmann (b. 1852) and finished in 1895, a building with no more charm about it, externally, than the Berlin Parliament Houses, but with some good interior effects. The new post offices in Germany have been an important undertaking, and are, at all events, buildings of more mark than those in England. There has also been a great deal of new development in street architecture, which shows an immense variety, and a constantly evident determination to do something striking, but we find in it neither the dignity of Parisian street architecture nor the refinement of modern London work; there is an element of the bombastic about it.