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Linda Student The French hôtel

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THE FRENCH HÔTEL

By

Linda Student

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

of Bachelor of Arts in Architecture

University of Nottingham

2005

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THE FRENCH HÔTEL

By Linda Student

Chairperson of the Supervisory Committee:

R. Quek

School of Built Environment

The French hôtel, explores the sociological foundations of noble domestic design in

eighteenth century Paris, and its contribution to modern functional planning. It

considers the representational strategies and dilemmas of French elites and their

configuration in relation to this extraordinary archetype. It covers the derivation

and refinement of the Baroque hôtel, the Rococo hôtel, and the Neoclassical hôtel as

well as debates on eighteenth century architectural theory.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people have helped in the writing of this dissertation, not all of them

knowingly. In particular, though, I would like to thank the following for their

various contributions, advice and encouragement. My tutor and mentor

Raymond Quek, for his guidance, generosity in reading and making suggestions,

helpful advise and criticism, throughout the past year. My family, whose

endless support and encouragement I would be lost without. Charlie, for

always being there. My fellow students who have most kindly read and re-read

my writing and whose comments have been invaluable.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. 1 Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... 2 List of Figures ...................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter I: Characteristics of the Court-Aristocratic Figuration .............................. 10 Chapter II: The Baroque Hôtel ....................................................................................... 14 Chapter III: The Rococo Hôtel ....................................................................................... 19 Chapter IV: A Monumental Exterior ............................................................................ 26 Chapter V: The Beginning of Modern Functional Planning .................................... 31 Chapter VI: Interior Decoration .................................................................................... 35 Chapter VII: Servants and their Social Status .............................................................. 38 Chapter VIII: Etiquette, Ceremony and the Power Structure of the Noble Society ....................................................................................... 40 Chapter IX: Debates on Architectural Theory and the French Hôtel .................... 44 Chapter X: The Neoclassical Hôtel ................................................................................ 49 Chapter XI: Revolution of the Arts .............................................................................. 65 Chapter XII: The Nineteenth Century ......................................................................... 71 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 72 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 75 Appendix I ......................................................................................................................... 80 Appendix II ........................................................................................................................ 92

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LIST OF FIGURES

Number Page

1. Ground-floor plan of the abbot’s house at Villers-Cotterets, 18

by Jaques-Francois Blondel

2. Escalier du Roi at the Compiegne. 18

3. Salle à manger in the Château de Villette. 24

4. Library in the Hôtel in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. 24

5. Ground floor plan, Hôtel de Rothelin by Lassurance. 25

6. Ground floor plan, Hôtel de Desmarets by Lassurance. 25

7. Ground floor plan, Hôtel d’Amelot by Germain Boffrand. 29

8. Court, Hôtel d’Amelot by Germain Boffrand. 29

9. Ground floor plan, Hôtel d’Estrées by Robert de Cotte. 30

10. Ground floor plan, Hôtel d’Humiéres by Armand-Claude Mollet. 30

11. Ground floor plan, Hôtel de Matignon by Jean Courtonne. 30

12. Ground floor plan, Hôtel d’Evreux by Armand-Claude Mollet. 34

13. Carved and giltwood frame. 37

14. Detail of doorway in the hall of the Hôtel d’Évreux. 37

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15.

I) Project for a country house, ground floor plan, Jacques-François Blondel. 61

From De la distribution.

II)Project for a country house, upper floor plan, Jacques-François Blondel. 61


III) Project for a country house, garden elevation, Jacques-François Blondel. 61


IV) Project for a country house, detail plans of dinning room, 62

Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution.

V) Project for a country house, Elevation of the dinning room, 62


VI) An orangerie with an appartement des bains, plan and elevation, 62


VII) Detail plans of a lieux à soupape (flush toilet), Jacques-François Blondel. 62


16. Frontispiece of Laugier’s Essai sur l’architecture. 63

17. De Machy’s painting of Hôtel de Salm under construction. 63

18. Plans, section, and elevations from Hôtel de Montmorency, 64

by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux.

19. Plans, section, and elevations from Hôtel Chenot, by Brunau. 68

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20.

I) The Marie Plan, 1808, key plan showing the twenty detail sections. 68

II) The Marie Plan, detail sections showing the north-western area of Paris. 69

III) The Marie Plan, detail sections showing the north-eastern area of Paris. 69

IV) The Marie Plan, detail sections showing the south-western area of Paris. 70

V) The Marie Plan, detail sections showing the south-eastern area of Paris 70

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INTRODUCTION

The study of a single building type, an aristocratic town house, associated

almost entirely with one city, Paris, and with a finite period of development,

c.1550-1800, might initially seem to be of modest value today. In the history of

western architecture alone, the French hôtel offers merely a limited contribution

to a vast picture. The French hôtel in architectural scholarship has in the past

been wrongly overshadowed by the perversity which seems to surround the

much-criticised Rococo period, with which the hôtel is often solely associated.

Emil Haufmann, for example dismisses the entire era in his Architecture in the Age

of Reason, and his attitude is typical of most modernists. This puritanical attitude

which has obscured the French hôtels is unfortunate. However, architectural

cognoscenti have since been awakened to the fact that the changing ideas of this

independent building type is in fact of great significance to current architecture;

and its compositional features have persisted well into the twentieth century as

a recognisable and characteristic national icon. The hôtel belongs to a

particularly significant cultural outlook, which was dominated by a need to

classify and then to arrange spaces with a clear articulation and hierarchy.

Whilst the early type of the French hôtel is usually seen as a symbol of a previous

social order, later modifications can be used to prelude expressions of modern

functional design, while simultaneously affirming the importance of symbolic

organisations of space. The eighteenth century hôtel is particularly revealing as

it represents the cultural changes that signal the coming of mass democratic

society and can be viewed as a sophisticated component of a complex pre-

industrial city as well as a development of French urbanism.

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In Julien Guadet’s textbook written for Beaux-Arts students in the first part of

the twentieth century, the eighteenth century French hôtel is seen as the birth of

the ‘modern dwelling’,1 and he stresses that it had become an icon of French

cultural identity. If one also looks at the houses published by L’Architecture

Suisse, in the years preceding World War I, it is clear that the model of the

eighteenth century French hôtel was used as a sign of cultural distinctiveness.

The eighteenth century French hôtel type, even appealed to avant-garde

designers. Auguste Perret who constructed the first multi-storey apartment

building – 25 bis rue Franklin (Paris 1903), used a variant on the eighteenth

century hôtel type, and Le Corbusier even superimposed the principles of the

hôtel to his Maison Cook, creating a fully three-dimensional rendition of the

eighteenth century hôtel according to the aesthetics of synthetic Cubism.

As an admirer of such a significant archetype, it has been of intent to produce a

study which explores its components. The forthcoming discussions shall

concentrate particularly on the evolution of the French hôtel during the

eighteenth century. This was at a time when the process of change – social,

intellectual, and formal – began to alter the balance in favour of the private

realm. It should be noted at this stage in the discussion that evidence from this

period is however scarce, largely owing to the appointment of Georges-Eugène

Haussmann in 1853, to improve Paris's planning, which resulted in mass

clearances and a proliferation of characterless buildings as well as more recently,

ineffective efforts by official protection – see Appendix I. Therefore the

research conducted for this dissertation relies heavily on plans and from

engravings, in architects’ biographies, and from contemporary records and

accounts in old guide books, to provide evidence of what has disappeared. The

1 GUADET, J., Eléments et théorie de l'architecture. Cours professé à l'Ecole Nationale et Spéciale des Beaux-Arts,

Librairie de la Construction moderne, Paris, 1905, volume 2, p. 623

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evidence provided for many of the hôtels has been observed from writings by a

few investigators working at the beginning of the twentieth century, who

reconstructed the chain of successive ownerships and uncovered archives.

These have provided dates of construction, and dealings between landlords’ and

tradesmen as well as illuminating the activities of private individuals, which

introduces us to the princely residences, and thus assumes their proper place in

the city’s evolutionary pattern.

In recent years art and architectural history have become a matter of

international synthesis. We have seen the old chronological classifications

disappear. For many the terms ‘classical’, ‘baroque’, ‘romantic’, no longer

indicate periods, but particular attitudes more or less coexistent at all times. As

for the stylistic labels – Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI – it has long been

recognised that they do not correspond to the duration of these reigns. The

coming of Louis XV style was perceptible about 1690, not long after the peak

of Louis XIV’s sovereignty. It flourished around 1730 and declined after the

middle of the century. This style is - with Gothic – the most original in French

architecture, and marked the French as the undisputed leaders in the realm of

domestic architecture. The impending study shall investigate the particular

period when the French elites and their architects abandoned the style of

planning and decoration associated with Versailles and turned to the

development of the private realm. Together they were to “invent” this “new

art” of domestic design. However its originality poses a much debated aesthetic

problem. Within the study there are the rudiments of where the style came

from and how it developed as well as the importance of the rules of decorum in

the domestic sphere. The refined “new art”, emerged, I shall shortly argue,

from the specific nature of French society, with its hierarchy of social estates

and ranks, and from the representational, ceremonial, and functional needs of

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its elites. Though many lauded the elegance and modernity of many of the

plans and the refinement of the interior décor, others condemned the houses

for breaches of representational decorum.

The period of the Seven Years’ War marks the great division of the eighteenth

century. Architectural activity ceased, and while the theorists continued their

debates, archaeology was uncovering new aspects of Antiquity. The

architecture which followed the peace of 1763 was inspired by a desire for

grandeur and the return to the Greco-Roman tradition, honoured in Louis

XIV’s reign. Louis XV lived another eleven years and saw the birth of his

successor’s name. But the social conditions which enabled Louis XV style to

thrive remained the same until the Revolution. Though it has been decided that

the dates 1700 and 1800 may be chosen as points of beginning and ending for

this study, no chronological division can be considered absolute, and one

should note that analysis of this phase in history may entail as much returning

to the past as venturing into the future.

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C h a p t e r o n e

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COURT-ARISTOCRATIC FIGURATION

Up to the beginning of the eighteenth century, the court had been the leading

influence on both public and private French architecture. We shall refer to the

‘court’ in the body of this text, as the extended household of the French kings

and the government, which was central to the entire state administration.

The court etiquette which by the values of bourgeois-industrial societies, may

well have seemed something quite unimportant, proves if one respects the

autonomy of the structure of court society, an extremely sensitive and reliable

instrument for measuring the prestige value of an individual within the social

network. In the court of Louis XIV, there was an expression of a very specific

social constellation, whereby the etiquette of court dictated that people were

bound to one place. The Château of Versailles was considered the

representative organ of this society. The necessity of asserting all the nobles,

within such a figuration gave them all a special stamp, that of court people.

In admiration for the court, the aristocratic residences of Versailles would

follow a general pattern closely based on royal example. For instance, the

bedchamber was not always used as a sleeping chamber and those passing

through the bedchamber would have to make a bow to the bed. The stature of

a ceremonial bed in a noble dwelling derived from the dignity of the royal bed,

which shared the status of the throne and was the site of the two most

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important daily rituals the lever and the coucher. 2 In accord with royal precedent,

this was the dominant feature in the classic aristocratic residence, and the

climax of the spatial sequence. The more magnificent the mansion the less

likely the bed was to be used, other than on a wedding night or for the birth of

children.

However at the start of the eighteenth century when Louis XIV’s reign drew to

a close, a new intellectual climate began to prevail which marked the end of an

epoch. The political and military successes created by Louis XIV, and the skill

of his statesmen began to crumble, and the looming depression settled in. The

War of the Spanish Succession shook the country to its very foundations and

aside from the completion of the Dome des Invalides and the chapel of

Versailles; the country was forced into the temporary suspension of public

building. The increasing criticism of abuses in the church and at the court

which began to undermine the social order resulted in a social revolution.

The enriched generation of nobility known as the ‘good society’, which had

been gathered at the court, were bored of the tedious ceremonials of court life

and began to demand personal privacy, they duly abandoned the Château of

Versailles for town-houses - de grandes hôtels - in Paris. This group of nobility

were independent, rich, less discreetly immoral and clamoured for novelty.

Their return to the city was of symbolic significance to the new age, and gave a

2 ‘The prestige of the bed presumably emerged from its role in the continuation of the dynasty. When the

king appeared at a session of parliament or order registration of a royal edict, he reclined on cushions, and the appearance was called a “lit de justice”; BAILLIE, H M., Etiquette and the Planning of the State Apartments in Baroque Palaces, Archaeologia, Society of Antiquaries, London, 1967, p.13

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strong impetus to private architecture, by exploring the intimacy in architecture

with an increasing degree of sophistication.

Royal architects were seen to devote themselves more and more to private

practice, which drastically moved the centre of gravity away from the court to

the aristocratic world, and for nearly forty years the Crown gave up its

leadership in architecture to the high court nobility. During this period those

distinctive features of the hôtel which became classical for the French mode of

living in the eighteenth century and what gave it its specific character in

comparison with other countries were developed.3

There was an obligation by the etiquette of the ‘good society’ to distinguish

itself from the vulgar lower classes and put on an appearance corresponding to

its rank. The hôtels would make visible and seal off to the world below the

various elements which made up this society; that of a shared wit, a delicacy of

manners and a highly developed taste. In a society in which every outward

manifestation of a person had special significance, expenditure on prestige and

display, was for these classes a necessity.

Suitably each of the hôtels assumed the appearance of an imposing imperial,

Roman palazzo which made the social status of its occupants directly visible. At

the entrance there were motifs such as lions’ snouts, laurel branches and friezes

of foliage. The arms of the owner were carved on the tympanum, like the

stemma of Italian palazzo; and the name of the hôtel would be inscribed, for

everyone to see, on a slate tablet. These elaborate expressions of outward

3 ‘Cortonne, Jombert, Jacques-Francois Blondel, and Patte are always proudly emphasising the superiority to

all others of the French mode of living, which they saw embodied in the buildings of the twenties’, HAMLIN, T., Architecture Through the ages, New York, 1940, pp. 465-65

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appearances, to create social differentiation and the display of rank through

outward form, is characteristic not only of the houses but of the whole shaping

of noble society life, and provides both a reliable and a verifiable insight into

the basic relationships and characteristics of the people within its society.

The sensitivity of these people to connections between social rank and the

shaping of their visible environment including their own gestures was both a

product and an expression of their social situation. However it should be noted

that the symbolic function and representation of the home, was not confined to

this society alone and it is true to say that all eighteenth-century French

dwellings were more than just residences. For each of the principle elites – the

sword (with the court nobility at its summit), the robe (government officials and

judges) and the top of the rungs of finance – houses were settings in which the

social relations of a profoundly hierarchal society were represented and re-

enacted. Even so the hôtels, were seen as the pinnacle of the residential types,

and letter-writers and commentators have left us evidence in various records of

the particular pleasure taken by the aristocracy to leave their imprint on their

homes and set the pattern of taste.4

4GALLET M., Stately Mansions: Eighteenth Century Paris Architecture, New York, 1972, p. 21

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C h a p t e r t w o

THE BAROQUE HÔTEL

Though it has been made clear that these aristocratic buildings had now come

to the fore, one cannot say, it is true, that the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries had been poor in town houses for the nobility and many regions of

Paris are indebted to them for their appearance. These hôtels known as the

Baroque type were more urban in appearance and function than later eighteenth

century examples. It is also worth observing that the hôtels of each period were

concentrated in a particular quarter – see Appendix II. Under Richelieu, it was

in the area around the Louvre and the Palais Cardinal; under Mazarin and

during the minority of Louis XIV reign, the Marais and the area around the

Place des Vosges; later the Ile Saint-Louis.

The prototypes for these hôtels appeared near the middle of the sixteenth

century at the end of the reign of Françoise I. They resulted from the second

wave of Italian influence, which coincided when Sebastiano Serlio arrived in

France in 1540 and though was affected by French taste – the “modi di Francia”

– they were fundamentally a product of the Italian Renaissance, and profoundly

influenced subsequent French developments.5 Their timelessness was also an

important factor, because they occurred as Paris was about to become the seat

of French government, so ensuring the city’s long-range development. Few

examples of domestic architecture survive from this period, but it firmly

5BLUNT, A., Art and Architecture in France 1500 to 1700, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1957, pp.117-131

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established the new style and the urban destiny of Paris.6 The Italian concept of

space – Renaissance space – was introduced into French architecture. In Italy

the discovery of perspective and enthusiasm for controlled architectural space

had completely transformed the architecture. Space was the fashionable

medium, the principle means of articulating the new view of the universe. As

an extension of the Italian Renaissance, architectural theory favoured public

buildings of Baroque France to be built based on Palladian ideas and therefore

in favour of total design, freestanding buildings, overall symmetry, integration

between inside and outside, and unity through continuity. It wasn’t until the

social order changed that hôtels began to assume the freestanding characteristics

of the public buildings. Therefore the French hôtel can be seen as an all

inclusive account of Baroque France and of Palladian ideals

The most important innovation for the Baroque hôtel, during the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries was one of plan rather than of elevation, known as ‘l’art de

la distribution’, which were the rules for arranging rooms. It is of value to note,

that the idea of symmetry was seen as fundamental in establishing the image of

the hôtel, and was often achieved through neglect of logical sequence. The most

extraordinary feats of planning to achieve this desired symmetry, was regarded

as a proper expression of rationalist ideas. Architects learned even with the

most awkwardly shaped sites, to present the building with order and regularity

(Figure 1).

The primary plan for a typical sixteenth century hôtel prescribes a cross-axial

arrangement of public rooms in the core of the building, centred around the

6 THOMPSON, D., Renaissance Paris, London, 1984, pp. 13-15

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salle, which was the major living and party room. The private spaces were lower

in height, and were located at a distance from these common places. The

principle rooms were linked by ‘enfilade’, a sequence of corridors that provided

both access and a visual link between them.7 The rooms occurred according to

a flexible, but none the less prescribed order with their doors aligned. No

corridors intervened between the adjacent rooms so they were also all

designated as en-suite. From the front of the house the enfilade passed through

the centre of the vestibule and the salle. In the perpendicular direction the enfilade

ran through the length of the house as each room on the garden façade took its

place along a spine created by aligning the doors and by providing appropriate

sized windows. The enfilade then, had two principle requirements. It had to

pass through the length of the building and could not be interrupted by a wall

or staircase. In addition, the enfilades had to be prolonged by windows to the

exterior. If however the lateral enfilade could not be extended outside, because

of partitions, then mirrors were to be used to provide an artificial substitute. It

was considered that the vestibule was essential in gaining access to the salle and

the main staircase. Another necessity was the staircase in the public domain,

which was a major object of display, had to be wide enough for people to pass

each other (Figure 2). The remainder of the plan was arranged into three types

of suite, called ‘appartements’.

The first effective application in France of these planning principles is usually

considered to be Cardinal Hippolyte d’Este’s hôtel, The Grand Ferrare, erected

opposite the royal palace of Fontainebleu between 1544 and 1546 by Serlio.

From the outside it appears to be exactly what it is, a French house designed by

an Italian. The house enclosed three sides of a square court, while the fourth

7 MIDDLETON, R., ‘The Beaux-Arts’, Architectural Design Magazine, Volume 48, No. 11-12, London, 1978, p. 4

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side was closed to the street by a wall containing the public entrance, which was

laid out geometrically to enhance any symmetrical effects in the elevation,

allowing the house to be designed as a palazzo with two long frontages. The

internal sequence was particularly suggestive of the Roman house, which was

rarely used in French domestic architecture. Soon after the erection of The

Grand Ferrare, its arrangements were introduced into much of the new Parisian

architecture and acquired the status of an ideal sequence for a noble appartement.

Each of the appartements were composed of several rooms. Serlio outlined the

sequence of rooms in an appartement in the description of a royal palace in his

sixth book on architecture, which in descending order of importance and size would

read, an anteroom, followed by a salle, a bedchamber, a study and a closet.

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Figure 1 Ground-floor plan of the abbot’s house at Villers-Cotterets, designed by Jaques-Francois Blondel in 1765, showing how symmetries are maintained in individual rooms and even in their relationship, despite the vagaries of the site conditions. Illustrated in Jaques-Francois Blondel, Cours d’architecture.

Figure 2 Escalier du Roi at the Compiegne. The ironwork and gilt-bronze balustrade is the work of the locksmith Raguet.

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C h a p t e r t h r e e

THE ROCOCO HÔTEL

With the eighteenth century came a supreme intensification of hôtel building.

The crumbling of Versailles court, the growth of a new independent stratum

society in Paris, and the amazing large fortunes in the country’s wars all played a

part in this. The town-planning activities of the Crown – the Palace Vendôme,

the opening up of the area on the left bank of the Seine by the Pont Royal, the

Hôtel des Invalides, and the new quais along the Seine – encouraged the

development of the new residential quarters. The most important of which

were the Faubourg Saint-Germain, which had been radically rebuilt from the

Rue du Bac to the Invalides and from the Rue de Babylone to the Seine8; and

the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Here was where the new society was concentrated

and extensive private architecture was opened up, to replace the cultural

functions of the court of Versailles. The move to these quarters, was

undoubtedly fuelled by a desire, by not only members of nobility and of the

upper classes but also those who had recently made money in the wars, to

escape the inner districts of Paris, which had started to become more and more

built up, to be crammed with blocks of flats and tenant houses, forming narrow

streets filled with traffic. The new high-class residential quarters ensured a

quantity of greenery and fresh air as well as a superior exclusive environment,

providing social distinction for a new and different kind of life.

8 HAUTECOEUR, L., Histoire de l’architecture classique en France, Paris, 1955, volume 3, p. 34

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Though as shall be discussed later there were notable changes in the eighteenth

century, the construction never undermined the classical hôtel architecture,

which remained an important symbol of wealth and class distinction. The

characteristics of the new type of Rococo hôtel, were largely developed quickly

by a young generation of architects, who refined the basic principles of la

distribution, devised by the previous generation of established architects

including Jules Hardouin Mansart and Pierre Bullet. Some of the names

reputable at the time of the latest boom in Paris included, Lassurance9, de

Cotte, Boffrand, Le Bond and Delamair. The new generation of prominent

architects had prior to establishing their position, been students of their

predecessors.

The hôtel maintained its basic form by keeping the continuity of building fabric

at least around three sides of the court. The central building, behind which

there was a large garden, would contain the reception rooms. To the right and

left of the main building were two wings where the main appartements were

located and were connected to the street. This particularly telling arrangement

of the strict use of two separate wings in the hôtel, was now more than ever

mandatory and provides us with the evidence for the way in which these nobles

lived, and the relationships they had with each other. One wing was designated

for the lord and one for the lady of the house. Though they may have been

built almost identically, the bedrooms would have been separated by the whole

width of the court, where the occupants could not have seen each other as the

windows were only open to the flower gardens on the other side. This clearly

9 ‘Lassurance’s real name was Pierre Cailleteau. He did not begin to work on his own until 1700, after his

appointment as Crown architect. In 1702 he was entrusted with the direction of the building operations at the Invalides and officially stationed in Paris. With that he left Jules Hardouin Mansart’s office.’, Ibid., p. 116

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indicates this society to be spacious, so much so that even married people

would lead their own separate lives.

Behind the two wings separated from the main garden by a large gallery on one

side and on the other by bathing and toilet rooms, there were two flower

gardens.

In the parts of the wings closer to the street, architects typically set stables and

carriage stalls. Ample provision in this realm and such a placement identified

the dwelling as noble. Land along an urban street was valuable, if it had been in

the bourgeois quarters, it may well have been used for shops or offices. The

locating of the most mundane of functions along the public realm was a sign

that no commercial value was attached to the street frontage, because the

proprietors were noble.

The salle à manger (dinning room) (Figure 3) was most often placed to the left of

the entrance vestibule, off the main enfilade. Here the grand stair opened to the

right of the vestibule, providing an impressive prelude to the main ceremonial

appartement on the first floor.10 The first floor plan was nearly identical to that

of the ground floor, but an important addition was the gallery. The gallery had

become the most distinguished representational space in a noble dwelling, in

emulation of it prestige in royal palace. As it stretched across the right wing it

was attached to the appartement of the master of the house and therefore

considered a male space.

10 ‘most theorists recommended placement of the stair to the right, some arguing that it was the direction to

which a visitor naturally turned’, LE CAMUS DE MEZIERES, N., BRITT D. (translator), The Genius of Architecture: Or, the Analogy of That Art With Our Sensations, Santa Monica, California: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1992, p. 187

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Another sign of a noble residence was the presence of a chapel. It was

functionally unnecessary due to the hôtel’s location in the urban context; and

required application to the archbishop of Paris and the blessing of the site.

Therefore, to have a chapel in a private residence was a privilege and a social

sign limited to the nobility, which imbued them even greater power.

Finally, a common feature distinguishing high-noble dwellings, was often an

unusually ample library, with impressive installed collections of books (Figure

4). The nobles aspired to participate with wit and polish in polite society,

though were not expected to be learned like the ministers, magistrates and

prelates.

Among the architects who enjoyed a leading reputation at the time, was

Lassurance, who had worked as a designer under J. H. Mansart11, between 1684

and 1700, previous to his personal projects. His first independent building the

Hôtel de Rothelin (1700), indicates a strong link to the Baroque hôtel style (Figure

5), and relied upon rhythmical co-ordination for the plan. The rooms were

divided into two symmetrical appartements looking out on to the garden

following a strict alignment with the central salle, the biggest room in the house.

In front of this, as a parallel axis, lay a shallow vestibule with a staircase on the

right and two rooms on the left. The vestibule and salle also linked the courtyard

conceptually and optically with the garden. Unlike hôtels in the past the entry

was recessed from the street, increasing the legibility of the noble entrance and

providing space for the carriages to turn. Beyond the entrance visitors found

11 ‘His decorating work under Jules Hardouin Mansart extended from 1684 to 1699, when he was succeeded

by Le Pautre. His share in Mansart’s official buildings was considerable, judged by the payments he received but his scope of activity cannot be precisely defined.’, HAUTECOEUR, L., Histoire de l’architecture classique en France, Paris, 1955, volume 3, p. 116

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themselves in a court with a curved end, which reversed and answered the

concavity of the entry; this was a common means of masking asymmetries that

might arise from the irregular shape of the lot or angle of the street.12

Lassurance’s next design for the Hôtel Desmarets (1704) (Figure 6), brought

further tautening and balancing of proportions. The corps-de-logis (the main

block and its outbuildings), had become shorter but deeper. The garden side

now consisted of only five rooms, and the former antechamber had become the

dining room. A bedroom and a servant’s hall had been transferred to the

wings. The vestibule was now bigger and had incorporated part of the ‘salon’,

which succeeded the salle, as the room to receive guests; this made the contrast

in size of the rooms less pronounced. The unity of the vestibule and staircase,

the interior communications in the shape of corridors and subsidiary exits, and

the more numerous dressing rooms show a distinct proximity to J. H. Mansart’s

designs.13 In his facades, too, Lassurance translated the Versailles court style

into the smaller dimensions of the aristocratic style.

12 NEUMAN, R., Robert De Cotte and the Perfection of Architecture in Eighteenth-Century France, University of

Chicago, 1994, pp, 128-32

13 Ibid., p.140

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Figure 3 Salle à manger in the Château de Villette, near Pontoise, with wall fountains and buffets in stone. The paintings inset in the panelling are by Descloches, a member of the Academie de Saint Luc.

Figure 4 Library in the Hôtel in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

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Figure 5 Ground floor plan, Hôtel de Rothelin by Lassurance

Figure 6 Ground floor plan, Hôtel de Desmarets by Lassurance

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C h a p t e r f o u r

A MONUMENTAL EXTERIOR

Despite the evident similarities to the established principles, the Rococo hôtels

which were developed in the new quarters did adopt specific characteristics

which were distinctly different to the old style; the most obvious disparity was

their striking physical appearance. Though the Rococo hôtels, were town houses,

their structure and appearance was still connected with that of a country manor

house. The main living block at the end of the forecourt was articulated in plan

and section as an independent element that appeared as a pavilion between the

court and the garden. The Rococo hôtels also usually entailed more extensive

gardens, which meant they would be defined as more suburban than the

Baroque type. This peculiar situation – whereby there was a firm link to their

society and homeland of Versailles – determined their character and that of

their houses. Hardly anything about these hôtels would signify a functional link

to the town and very little would have needed to be altered if their homes had

been erected in the country.

The Hôtel d’Amelot, (Figure 7) by Boffrand, 1712, is indicative of the impending

change. Though the site is regular and the building nominally symmetrical, in

contrast to earlier hôtels, the central axis of the plan is blocked, forcing counter

clockwise progression through the sequence of rooms. This idea was to

become virtually standard in the hôtels found later in the century, as was the

variety and specificity of the rooms. But the oval court, upon which the rest of

the organisation depends and which in plan is so convincing, is less coherent in

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three dimensions (Figure 8). The mass of the building is fractured around the

space and even ceases at the two service courts; the definition is serviced only

by a screen wall. A lower mass completes the composition at the street and

forms an entry gate. Consequently, although the building mass extends from

party wall to party wall, and although in the plan, the space in the oval court

appears to control the organisation, in reality the artificial qualities of the solids

are dominant. Here, the figural solid competes with the figural void.

The separation, isolation, and articulation of the corps-de-logis is progressively

clarified in the more normative plans of Robert de Cotte’s Hôtel d’Estrées (1713)

(Figure 9),14 Armand-Claude Mollet’s Hôtel d’Humiéres (1715) (Figure 10), and

Jean Courtonne’s Hôtel de Matignon (1722-24) (Figure 11). All three plans were

largely symmetrical, but most important to note was the significance of the

perception of their symmetry. A decade later, Courtonne still found symmetry

to be one of the principle beauties in architecture, but he argued that it was

neither necessary nor desirable unless perceived by the visitor.15 In these hôtels,

the wide main block was articulated from the side wall as well as from the

street, so that from either side, court or garden, it would read as a proportioned

pavilion. Porticos with four full columns in the Palladian manner were used to

create a very strong central component for the façade. Although most of these

features had long been part of the classical repertoire, there was a growing

tendency towards classical purism and an archaeological approach to the design

of the hôtels. The overall treatment became more monumental and less domestic

14 NEUMAN, R., ‘French Domestic Architecture in the Early 18th Century: The Town Houses of Robert de Cotte,’ Journal

of the Society of Architectural Historians 39, Pt. 2, Philadelphia, PA, USA, May 1980, pp. 128-44

15 LAVIN, S., QUATREMERE DE QUINCY AND THE INVENTION of a Modern Language of Architecture, Cambridge, 1992 p.41

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and greater use was made of the five architectural Orders – Tuscan, Doric,

Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite, though many critics describe how they were

misused completely, by being twisted or made to ‘hang in mid-air’.

These buildings were expressions of the independence and individuality

characteristic of the period.

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Figure 7 Ground floor plan, Hôtel d’Amelot by Germain Boffrand

Figure 8 Court, Hôtel d’Amelot by Germain Boffrand

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Figure 9 Ground floor plan, Hôtel d’Estrées by Robert de Cotte

Figure 10 Ground floor plan, Hôtel d’Humiéres by Armand-Claude Mollet

Figure 11 Ground floor plan, Hôtel de Matignon by Jean Courtonne

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C h a p t e r f i v e

THE BEGINNING OF MODERN FUNCTIONAL PLANNING

The preceding discussions have made clear that symmetry and regularity

evidently governed the exteriors of these buildings and increasingly the

converse may have been said of their interiors. As the eighteenth century

progressed it is clear that the interiors became more complex and ornate. In

the reign of Louis XIV, the hôtel would reflect purely the master’s rank in

society, dictated by the size and style. However the new developments in the

eighteenth century saw the aristocratic circles refine this, by also organising

their houses for their own comfort desires and for convenience and flexibility.

The decisive innovations in the new type of hôtel were that the relationship of

rooms to one another was determined on rhythmical grounds and the public

sphere was separated from the private.16 This was no easy task, confirmed

Pierre Patte, who complained that excessive concern for room arrangement was

incompatible with architectural integrity. Before the revolution, even in the

most magnificent of seventeenth-century mansions, rooms had been used at

random by many members of the family and by passing servants. With the

latest emphasis on individual sentiment, this need for privacy took a new value.

Rooms were now designated for personal use, and did not only require a

particular size and location but also an individual ambience. In the new edition

of Daviler’s Cours d’architecture (1710), the most popular manual of the period

and the book that established the new building habits, Le Bond gave directions

about the proper form and size of an appartement and supplied illustrations of his

16 ‘La chamber a coucher est plutot de parade que d’usage, quoy qu’on puisse y coucher en Este, car pour

l’Hyver on se retire dans de petits apartments plus, bas, moins aerez et plus faciles a echauffer’ D’ AVILER, Cours d Architecture, Paris, 1720, pp.113-119

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own building, which were lucid and rational. He assumed that a comfortable

residence was the first requirement of life. The plan had given way to

flexibility, convenience and the practical proliferation of secondary rooms. As

the century progressed different rooms were given different levels of

importance. The way a room was furnished indicated its use and the intended

user. Large rooms used for receiving many people at a time remained sparsely

furnished, contrasting with more intricate and highly cluttered rooms. In the

Hôtel d’Humiéres, Mollet provided bathrooms near the bedroom and an array of

secondary bathrooms in the main block.17 He arranged the appartement de parade

(the grand rooms) anticlockwise, in Boffrand’s style, round an imaginary heart,

so that spatially the salon formed a central point, but the anterooms were doubly

linked with the spacious grande salle, and to the left of the entrance, by the

bedrooms, there was an unbalanced system of anterooms, side rooms, and

interior passages. His Hôtel d’Evreux likewise provides a characteristic example

of the new planning techniques.18 Although most of the ground floor was

occupied by grand public rooms arranged in clockwise sequence, the area to the

left of the entrance was asymmetrical behind a regular façade, and filled with

small bedrooms, service rooms and passages (Figure 12).

This new aspect of la distribution for the Rococo hôtel, marked the beginning of

modern functional planning,19 and the idea of a regular envelope masking an

idiosyncratic plan was to become the typical French method of planning during

the eighteenth century. However this specialisation in the use of rooms seen in

17 KALNEIN and LEVEY, BRITT, D. (translator), Art and Architecture of the Eighteenth Century in France, New

Haven, Yale University Press, 1995, p. 233

18 Ibid, p. 242

19 ‘Blondel considered the Palais Bourbon the beginning of “modern” French planning , Ibid., p. 380

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some of the new hôtels, sometimes led to logical rationale being at odds with

each other. The adjustment of rooms to more appropriate sizes and shapes –

hexagons, circles and ovals – meant that the walls on one level might not

correspond to those on another level, and the manipulation of structures in

some examples rendered the whole building as being unstable.

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Figure 12 Ground floor plan, Hôtel d’Evreux by Jean Armand-Claude Mollet

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C h a p t e r s i x

INTERIOR DECORATION

In the same way that the spatial composition would reflect the progressive

desire for a free and individual mind the interior decoration did so too. The

great change in interior decoration was already beginning at the end of the

seventeenth century. At the court the deterioration in the financial position and

a change in taste caused a decline in the use of gold and marble. The panelling

of walls saw a relaxation of the system of geometrical lines, the use of mirrors,

and the decrease of the range of colours to white and gold. The system which

had began with the reduction of the royal appartement at Versailles in 1684, was

already almost fully developed by the end of the seventeenth century.

The new impulses in the hôtel interior decoration sprang from a growing

influence of the grotesques of Audran and other painters. One of the leading

artists of this period was Oppenordt who exerted a powerful influence on the

new trend20 which favoured highly decorative wall panels and predominance of

naturalistic elements. Among his famous motifs which were to form an

important contribution to the Rococo style were the outspread bats wings, the

figured medallions in the wall panels and spandrels of arches, the têtes en

espagnolette, as they were called, in the frames of mirrors and mantelpieces21

(Figure 13) and shells used as an articulating element. In the Hôtel de Pomponne

(1714), his first big commission, he filled the wall panels with hunting and

20 KJELLBERG, P., Le Guide Du Marais, Paris, 1967, p.33

21 Ibid., p. 72

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nature scenes rather like still-life subjects and built up on purely artistic

principles. They were in fact nothing other than relief versions of paintings

popular at the time; and were framed with three-dimensional elements such as

staves and C-scrolls used in different combinations. Medallions and garlands

were carved into stucco, and carved plaster used in the ceiling and panelling.

A further example which emphasises the tendency to use three-dimensional

decoration is where the tops of the wall panels in Oppenordt’s highly influential

Hôtel d’Assy curve downward, in the opposite direction to the door and window

arcades, so that a wave-like undulation is produced which enriches the whole

room and creates a unified upper zone.22 The direct influence of Oppenordt

can be recognised in the decoration of the Hôtel de Villeroy, built in 1720-4 by

Claude Gillot, where the scheme of the Hôtel d’Assy was literally imitated, and in

the Hôtel d’Évreux, where some of the tops of the doorways (Figure 14) and

mirrors are shaped exactly in Oppenordt’s style and the edges of the wall panels

run in quite unconventional sharp convex and concave curves. With these

decorative schemes, where naturalistic, grotesque forms predominate, the

different spatial zones would run into each other – and asymmetry makes its

appearance.

22 Ibid., p. 90

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Figure 13 Carved and giltwood frame. The cartouche-shaped panels at the corners and in the centre of each side bear a different matte treatment of the surface, emphasising the three-dimensional effect.

Figure 14 Detail of doorway in the hall of the Hôtel d’Évreux

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C h a p t e r s e v e n

SERVANTS AND THEIR SOCIAL STATUS

There were of course aspects of this new society which did remain consistent

with the old court society, one being their requirements for a broad stratum of

servants. It was considered correct decorum and an important element of

display, for these nobles to command a large body of domestiques. However

whilst before the social revolution the servants were treated as members of an

extended family, they were now treated more often as simple employees

increasingly separate from their masters, and it was clear that the lords and

ladies would not talk much about them. As a result one or two service entries

were included from the street, screening the activities of the servants from the

noble proprietors and their guests. Moreover the layout of the rooms

themselves proves to be very revealing about the way the whole structure of

this society detached itself from the ‘common people’.23 The rooms where they

would carry out their duties were carefully segregated from the living and

receptions rooms, in special service wings. Their accommodation was in

modest rooms in the mansard roofs or in entresols (mezzanines) between the

floors; those at the bottom of the hierarchy were squeezed into rooms with

multiple beds; and stable hands slept on mattresses or hammocks in the stables.

A chambermaid usually slept in an antechamber next to the bedroom of her

mistress to be available during the night. Each of the noble rooms would be

approached by one of these antechambers. This room was where the servants, in

constant readiness would await the commands of their masters. The

23 ‘If there was a second antechamber before the masters’ rooms, it was for people above the common.’

JOMBERT, C., Architecture moderne ou l'art de bien bâtir pour toutes sortes de personnes tant pour les maisons des particuliers que pour les palais, Paris, 1728, p. 43

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arrangement seen here was a modified version which could be found on

another level of the social hierarchy in the king’s house. Where, the grands

seigneurs and grandes dames who were masters on a lower level that served the

king, would confine their inferiors to the antechamber, and stand as servants to

await summons from the king. It also seemed essential to include service stairs

and corridors to provide separate access to the main rooms. It is therefore

apparent that there was always preset a sense of distance with the nobles and

their servants, and that there was a deep-seated feeling that the nobles were

concerned with a different race.

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C h a p t e r e i g h t

ETIQUETTE, CEREMONY AND THE POWER STRUCTURE OF NOBLE SOCIETY

In forming a mental picture of the domestic space occupied by the great lords

and ladies from the period of the beginning of the eighteenth century, we see in

a structural aspect the nature of their relationships of which they were a part.

The particular relationship between husband and wife is expressed in the

characteristic distance between their appartements. The special nature of their

relationship to their servants is expressed in the separateness of the rooms and

the antechamber. And finally, the nature of their involvement in the network of

society is represented in the layout of the reception rooms. These rooms take

up the majority and central part of the ground floor, suggesting the importance

of social life for the court aristocracy.

“Idleness” (l’oisiveté), as Genevan Béat-Louis de Muralt observed at the

beginning of the century, formed an essential component of self-definition

among nobles. A group that had traditionally defined itself through military

service to the Crown represented itself by the turn of the new century through

its leisure. When they were not called upon for military service, the daily lives

of noblemen focused on the reception of a variety of official visitors at their

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places of residence and on social activities within their circle.24 Norbert Elias

has argued that official reception constituted “the ‘businesses’ of court life”.25

As the visitor would enter the main building they would pass through a large

rectangular hall leading to the main two storey, oval sallon. The two appartements

on either side were intended for two specific social functions. The appartement

de société was intended for the more intimate circle of company to provide

relaxation, amusement and conversation, where the rooms were adapted for

comfort over display. They were explained as “the most lived in” by Le Bond in

the revised edition of Daviler’s Cours d’architecture. The ceremonial appartement

known as appartements de parade, on the other hand, were used for official visits

of people of equal or higher rank; and incorporated large public rooms of

reception. They would typically stretch along the garden in enfilade, with

doorways aligned to maximise display; and were usually reached by ascending

the grand stair to the first floor. The rank of the visitor determined the locale

of official reception, which might have taken place in the grand cabinet, where a

nobleman often kept a desk, or in another of the ceremonial rooms. For

special distinction, reception might have occurred in the most lavishly

decorated room, the ceremonial bedchamber. The chamber de parade, was still

the most important room of the house, in the same way it had been during the

reign of Louis XIV, though the hostess no longer lay upon it when receiving

guests. It was distinguished by its canopied bed and the privileged zone around

it. The zone of distinction might have been raised above the rest of the room,

24 ‘Even after the professionalisation of the arms, when the payment of a communication in exchange for

service became more common, nobles continued to to persue military careers in great numbers;’ FORD, F. Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XIV, 2nd eddition, New York, 1965, p. 17

25 NORBERT, E., The Court Society, New York, 1983, p. 52

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and princes and dukes had the privilege of emulating the king by demarcating

with a balustrade, sometimes flanked by columns.26 Antoine de Courtin’s

popular seventeenth-century guidebook, Nouveau Traité de la Civilité, specified

the sort of respectful behaviour to be observed in the ceremonial bedchambers

of the king, and queen, and persons of high rank.27

This distinction between the public and private sphere and the two types of

reception appartements makes clear how important it was for these nobles to

maintain and improve their social position. These two independent internal

worlds were what Richard Etlin describes as ‘a bipolar system of display and

retreat’.28 Depending on the occasion, a different side to aristocratic life would

be exposed. In either case however, these were the rooms that would allow the

“good society” to distinguish itself from the bad society, from vulgar

association and from the provincial society. These rooms were a descendant of

the royal salon of the second half of the seventeenth century, where the knights

would finally become court people in the proper sense of the word, people

whose social existence, depended on their prestige and their standing within

court society. The eighteenth century salons became small, unofficial academies

at which literary fame and literary fashions were created. They were the noble

forums for sound judgement and discussions on works of art.

What the noble society had created was a mode for expression and

communication for people who often met and who had created their own

26 BAILLIE, H M., Etiquette and the Planning of the State Apartments in Baroque Palaces, Archaeologia, Society of

Antiquaries, London, 1967, pp. 186-7

27 Ibid., pp. 186-7

28 ETLIN R. A., Symbolic Space - French Enlightenment Architecture & Its Legacy, University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 137-47

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jargon – a secret language of which they understood, but to others was

unintelligible. The apartments had become the stage for which the aristocracy

would act out their favourite occupation – to intensify the strangeness and

secrecy of their society. The requirements for social distinction and avoidance

of social levelling meant they were always on the look out for unusual and

unnatural social badges and formulations as tokens for their superiority.

We may be unsure today, why these people were so beholden on external

appearances, why so sensitive to what they regarded as the ‘incorrect’ behaviour

of another, to the slightest infringement or threat to any outward privilege. We

can to some extent allow ourselves today to leave real social differences

concealed, because relationships between people mediated by wealth and

profession, and the resulting differentiation of people, remain unmistakably real

and effective, even when not expressed directly in their public displays. But in

their society, social reality inhered directly in the rank and esteem granted to a

person by his own society. A person with little standing in society was more or

less worthless in his own eyes. There were literal documentations of social

existences, notations of place one currently occupied in the court hierarchy. A

rise or fall in this hierarchy meant as much to the courtier as profit or loss to a

businessman today.

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C h a p t e r n i n e

DEBATES ON ARCHITECTURAL THEORY AND THE FRENCH HÔTEL

The resumption of extensive private building provided a fertile ground for

theoreticians, and the increase in domestic architecture was accompanied by a

spate of treatises. It is not clear whether these treatises actually altered and

promoted the development of the hôtel or were simply handbooks. It may be

argued that because illustrated handbooks of hôtels preceded the theoretical

treatises that proliferated around this time, hôtel practice tended to precede

theory. Either way they now serve as useful milestones that bring order to an

increasingly complex subject. Studied in succession they illustrate the

transformation from functionally non-specific rooms during the sixteenth

century to the functionally particularised interiors of the eighteenth century –

and therefore the coming of modernism.

It has already been mentioned that d’Aviler’s Cours d’architecture, which first

appeared in 1691, was republished in many editions in the eighteenth century.

The edition by A. Le Bond, 1710, was the most accepted, and was the

beginning of a rich series of eighteenth century books about the principles of

domestic planning. It contained thirteen new pages on la distribution,

illustrations of four new hôtels, and a new section on stairs. The differences

between this and the first edition were in the expanded sequence and more

precise description of the appartements and the service rooms. Le Bond begins

his addition, appropriately entitled De la nouvelle manière de distributuir les plans, by

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stating: “Buildings are different from one another…and one cannot give

absolute rules for the layout of plans. One can only make general observations

about arrangements of rooms.”29 He then describes the overall disposition of

the plan in several versions and explains the sequence and order of the rooms

of an early eighteenth century appartement. His facades did not correspond to the

interior and the formalities of classicism seen in the Baroque hôtels were

dismantled. Le Bond’s distinctive tendency towards the elegant and decorative

soon became one of the marks of the new style. The structural elements gave

way to the optical factor, and especially to rusticated pilaster strips; articulation

was frequently replaced by mere decoration; window openings had became

larger, proportions slimmer and lighter.

Sebastien Le Clerc’s Traite d’architecture (1714) was another book which

highlighted the new style, though it remained more conventional in its approach

by providing a contribution to the ongoing debate about good taste, and

highlighted the judgement of enlightened contemporaries and the new Rococo

requirements of domestic architecture. Le Clerc dealt with the aesthetic side of

architecture only: ‘la beauté, le bon goût, et l’élégance’.30 What mattered was the

effect; the Orders were badges of social status; decoration and furnishings were

detached from architecture proper. He spoke despairingly of positive forms of

beauty, where by he was only interested in the arbitrary ones determined by bon

goût. Le Clerc; described the bon goût as personal judgements based on personal

taste and the greatest individual pleasure.

29 D’ AVILER, Cours d Architecture, Paris, 1720, pp.113-119

D’Aviler , Cours d Architecture 2nd edition by A. LE BLOND, Paris, 1720, p. 185

30 LE CLERC, S., Traite D'Architecture Avec Des Remarques et Des Observations Tres-Utiles - Pour Les Jeunes Gens, Qui Veulent S'appliquer a Ce Bel Art, Paris, 1714 volume 1, preface

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This subjective mode of thinking which had been extremely popular in the first

half of the eighteenth century was defined by the Académie d’Architecture on

the 30 May 1712-

‘Bon goût in architecture consists in that which manifests the simpler relationship in all its

parts, and which, communicated more easily to the mind satisfies it more deeply.”31

This definition, which takes into account the importance of the observer,

provides us with further evidence that buildings for the learned noble society

were moving away from aesthetics and in the direction of dependence on

function.

With the new thinking of bon goût, and the real creative forces shifting from the

outside to the inside there grew up a more flexible language of forms which,

though tied to the observation of the accepted proportions, preferred the

undulating line of the curved surface. For some thirty years France was gripped

by a mania for curves and naturalism. The very contrast between the noble

simplicité of the façades and the wealth of the interiors constitutes one of the

most fundamental characteristics of the Rococo.

On 12 April 1734, Germain Boffrand (1667-1754), presented to the Académie

his Dissertation sur ce qu’on appelle le bon goust en architecture,32 which appeared at the

31 ‘bon gout en architecture consiste en ce qui a un rapport plus simple dans toutes les parties et qui, se faisant

connoitre plus aisement a l’aime, la satisfoit advantage.’, LEMONNIER H., L'Art moderne (1500-1800). Essais et esquisses, Paris, 1912, p. 10

32 LEMONNIER H., Proces-Verbaux de l’Architecture 1671-1793, Paris, 1915, pp.31-34

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beginning of his Livre d’architecture of 1745. Unlike his contemporaries he

opposed to making the idea of taste entirely subjective and used the definition

of bon goût as ‘a faculty that distinguishes the excellent from the good’, a product

of reflection by ‘more enlightened men’. These views are similar to a definition

given by the Académie in 1672, but Boffrand also links bon goût to the

fundamental principles of architecture, which he argued had been developed

over centuries and without them bon goût would not have been possible. He

viewed the principles of architecture not as constants, but as subject to

development. He claimed that a totally individualised concept of bon goût was as

a result of the predominance of fashion, which, he said proved a great

hindrance to the perfection of art.33

There is another concept that Boffrand appears to have been the first to

introduce systematically into architectural theory: that of caractère. According to

Boffrand, every house, should, from its external construction to its internal

furnishings, clearly express the caractère of its builder.34 He went even further,

requiring that every building should express its function. This concept of

caractère, nowadays felt to be ambivalent, remained current throughout the

eighteenth century.

‘The character of the master of the house …can be judged by the manner in which it is

arranged, decorated, and furnished.’

In his own buildings and plans, Boffrand arrived at a Palladian-style Classicism.

This symbolic reaction against the anti-Classical tendencies of the Rococo

33 GALLET, M., and GARMS J., Germain Boffrand (1667-1754). L’aventure d’un architecture independent, Paris,

1986, p. 8

34 FICHET, F., La théorie architecturale à l'âge classique Mardaga, Brussels, 1979, volume 1, p. 180

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begins to emerge across a wide front in France from the 1740s onwards, and

signals the end of the prolific phase of hôtel building.

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C h a p t e r t e n

THE NEOCLASSICAL HÔTEL

The great master of the period, and one whose authority reigned supreme until

the end of Louis XV’s reign was Jaques-François Blondel (1705-74).35 As a

theorist and chronicler of stylistic development for almost half a century he

exerted a wide influence on the taste of his own and the following generation.

His Hôtel de Rouillé (1732) was amongst the last hôtels built for a long while. The

increased interest in perfecting the interior decoration meant nothing much of

importance was built in Paris for the next twenty years. In 1743, against initial

opposition from the Académie, Blondel founded the École des Arts. The

teaching there, quite unlike that of the Académie, was based on modern

principles.

As the evolution of the French hôtel has so far shown, tradition and practice

provided a system within which invention took place. Even the theoretical

treatises on domestic architecture were not so much of the new, as amendments

of current practice. Reading them in succession makes it clear that they built

upon each other in a way that blurs their differences and highlights their

consistencies. The theorists, who have been described at length in the

preceding discussions, saw the refinements in planning as an expansion of

individual sentiment and concerns for sound practice and utility. Their great

triumph, which had been to perfect the hôtel as an arrangement of spaces of

35 KAUFMANN, E., Architecture in the Age of Reason, New York ,1968, p. 131

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escalating comfort and intimacy, had been emphasised as an art of planning

which had been declared the greatest of French contributions to architecture.

These ideas of compositional order, based on regularity and symmetry, were

however, beginning to take a turn by time Blondel established the École des

Arts. A social and intellectual revolution was looming, and it would indeed be

difficult to overstate the change in art and culture that began during the 1750s.

The new hôtel construction in this period and especially after the Seven Years’

War (1763) would extend rapidly to the north of the grands boulevards, which

had previously marked the limits of the city.

The development of the Neoclassical hôtel type during the second half of the

eighteenth century completes the transformation of the French hôtel and marks

a revolutionary change in thought, society and urbanism. As the hôtel became

even more rationalised, the boundaries between the aristocracy and the

bourgeoisie became increasingly blurred. In the preceding text, the bourgeoisie

societies have formed a comparatively unassuming significance. The struggle of

the bourgeoisie against the nobility as the ruling class was instigated at the turn

of the century. However it was only by the time of the mid-century, because of

their rising dominance in the economy and determination to emulate and the

aristocracy, did they succeed in realistically competing to become the real

upholder of culture. At the root of this was the confusion with social rank and

social power. The nobility, as we have seen were quite clearly the highest

ranking class, but it was by no means as clearly the most powerful class. At the

French royal court there was at any given time a fairly firm hierarchic order of

rank, in accordance with which the members of the high court aristocracy,

above all the members of the royal house, held the highest rank. But social

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rank and social power no longer coincided. By the late eighteenth century,

financers, actresses, and even architects could own their own hôtel. In the

course of increasing modernisation and urbanisation, the centre of gravity in the

independence between the traditional monopoly elites and the middle classes,

shifted towards the latter. As the limits of the social ladder expanded so did the

number of hôtels. Nevertheless it should be said, that though the construction of

hôtels continued into the nineteenth century, the development of the hôtel was

essentially complete by the time of the French Revolution.

Blondel’s manual De la distribution des maisons de plaisance et la decoration des edifices

en general, outlines the system of the hôtel near the middle of the century and sets

the scene from which the Neoclasssical hôtel emerged36 (Figure 15). Three types

of appartements were identified. The appartement de parade, although smaller, was

still obligatory for display and business meetings. There was also the appartement

de société, where a relaxed setting would receive family and friends. A new

mandatory edition was the appartement de commodité, which was specifically used

by the master and mistress of the house in winter to attend domestic affairs.

The rooms were often polygonal, oval or round ended, and Blondel advocated

the use of dégements and stairs, in an effort assure convenience. He clearly

modelled his distribution, on d’Aviler’s Cours, by covering a wide range of

topics from site plans to details of various rooms.

36 ETLIN, R., “Les dedans Jaqeus_Francois Blondel and the System of the Home, c 1740” Gazette des Beaux Arts, Paris,

April 1978, pp. 137-47

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Blondel’s theoretical works not only served to publicise architectural knowledge

among laymen, but also contributed to the discussion of stylistic problem of the

age. Developments in archaeology and philosophy at the time had questioned

the reliability of old rules and established new visions of both the past and the

future.

The Architecture française of 1752 by Blondel, was a comparison of contemporary

architecture with that of the seventeenth century. This manual was to mark the

passing of the period of the Rococo hôtel and, to an extent, prefigured the rise

of the Neoclassicism through its reaffirmation of classical models and its

rejection of the style rocaille. The influence of Boffrand’s Livre d’architecture is

here quite evident. Boffrand’s writings on caractère and his rejection of fashion

as the judge of taste, and his warnings against excessive use of decoration all

find numerous echoes in Blondel.37 Like Boffrand, he calls for a close

relationship between interior and exterior, in which the ‘exterior decoration

announces the interior distribution of the building’.38 Blondel gives long lists

assigning particular caractéres to particular types of building: he associates

temples with décence, public buildings with grandeur, monuments with somptuosité,

promenades with élegance, etc.39 He associated caractére with style, which marked

the modern concept of style into architectural theory.

The doctrine of caractére was also accepted by a matter of course by the Abbé

Marc-Antoine Laugier (1713-69), who was one of the most important

37 KAUFMANN, E., Architecture in the Age of Reason, New York ,1968, p. 446

38 ETLIN, R., “Les dedans Jaqeus_Francois Blondel and the System of the Home, c 1740” Gazette des Beaux Arts, Paris, April 1978, p. 26

39 BLONDEL, J.-F., L’Architecture francoise, Paris, 1752, Facsimile reprint Paris, 1904, p. 26

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representatives of the anti-Rococo style in architectural theory and held a strong

Enlightenment attitude. Laugier believed in absolute ‘essential’ beauty, found in

Nature, from which all rules were derived. As well as finding his ‘natural

principles’ in the English landscape garden, he supposed a primitive hut as the

origin of all possible forms in architecture (Figure 16). The column, entablature

and pediment were all seen as originating in the primitive hut, which he

regarded as natural, functional and rational. He regarded the Orders, not as

ornamental features but as constituent parts of a building.40 In this way he was

able to incorporate the use of the Orders into his structural logic, at the same

time overcoming the dichotomy between structure and applied ornament.

Asymmetry in the arrangement of the parts and picturesque assemblage of

forms of the building would now be seen as providing more functional

planning and greater emotional response. The changing views on the correct

application of planning which had been attributable to the recent interest for

the rules of Classical antiquity, would produce a new architecture of sharpness

and precision of geometry, which at the same time would be responsive to the

fullest range of human feelings. The new interest in the Greek temple was to

be of great importance to architecture. Julien-David Leroy, was the first

architect to provide a convincing record of the buildings in classical Greece, he

explored the sensations that could be experienced in different architectural

applications. Roman buildings too were considered to be perfect in their

distribution. Marie-Joseph Peyere regarded them as ideal models of Antiquity,

which all one need do is adapt to contemporary use, ‘de les adapter à nos

40 LAUGIER. M.-A., An Essay on Architecture, Los Angeles, 1985 p. 4

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usages’.41 Peyre’s imitation for antiquity was overlaid with the idea of caractère.

He carried over the concept caractère into the realm of psychological effect,

which was taken as pictorial composition rather than reality. The

monumentality and overwhelming Nature of Peyre’s designs were indeed

striking and his attempt to outdo Antiquity surely secures him as a

Revolutionary Architect.

The new sensibilities required the destruction of the geometric gardens

previously mandatory for the Baroque and Rococo hôtels, and to replace them

with naturalistic picturesque gardens. In his History of the arrangement and different

forms given to their churches by Christians, Leroy stated that sensations experienced

when walking through the noblest classical portico, might be aroused equally

successfully by an avenue of trees, this gave a new value to the importance of

Nature in architecture. The aesthetics based on feelings and personal

experience in the contrived form of the landscaped garden, enabled architecture

to be seen in a new way. An interest in the overgrown formal garden was also

influenced by the Dutch and Flemish paintings that were being collected by the

more astute connoisseurs of the time. Claude-Henri Watelet, a rich amateur

painter was credited with the making of the first picturesque garden in France at

Moulin-Joli. The layout of the paths were geometric through the garden itself

was wild and unkempt. However it was not Watlet who established the theory

of the picturesque in France, this was done by Thomas Whateley in his

Observations on modern gardening, who laid down the rules for the picturesque style.

Whateley however, was determined to separate landscape design from the

painterly vision, and considered landscape design a superior art to painting. He

41 PEYRE, M.-J., Oeuvres d’Architecture, Paris, 1765 reprint Farnborough, England, 1967, p. 6

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remarked that prime natural elements must be used to provoke emotions, and

whilst he offered hints as to the ways the heightened sensual pleasures of the

body and mind may be reached, he remarked that a ‘marvellous sequence of

moods could be achieved with ignoring his rules’. Jean-Marie Morel, who

wrote Theory of gardens, 1776, also thought that landscape design, was more

affective than painting. He believed that contrary to painting, landscapes

offered a thrust of sensations in constant flux. The good designer ‘must also

consider the changing effects of the seasons’, where the aim was to enhance

Nature and raise it to an ideal form, but ultimately the Nature of the site itself

should determine the caractère. He describes how the same elements can conjure

different emotions. For example in the deep shaded forest of oaks, heavy

sublime feelings are roused whereas the dappled shadows of slender trees can

become a charming retreat.

The innovative interest in sensations was to have a profound effect on aesthetic

theory because it sought to make clear the direct and immediate relationships

between physical objects and mental state. It opened new horizons for thinking

about how architecture conveyed meaning and how those meanings could be

manipulated. The aesthetics and sensual qualities of architecture were of great

significance when considering the developments of the hôtel and theorists and

architects began to draw on the two. Nine years before the French Revolution,

the effect of architecture and specifically the hôtel, on the human senses became,

significantly, the subject of investigation entitled, The genius of architecture, or The

analogy of that art with our sensations by the architect Nicolas Le Camus de

Mezieres. He provides a handbook of the French hôtel and extended his

investigation from merely the practical, to encompass the whole realm of

decorum and the proper manner of stirring ideas and emotions through

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architectural means. For the first time an architectural treatise was concerned

with movement through a sequence of spaces and the sensual qualities of

materials. Le Camus applied a mechanistic approach to architecture, stating that

‘each object possess its own character… and that by looking at the exterior of a

building, one should be able to see how it is distributed inside’,42 thus placing

the theory of caractère on an objective footing. The caractère of a building, which

is determined by the characteristics of its occupant or by its function, exercises

the same effect on every observer – one is here reminded of Boffrand, Blondel

and Peyre. Le Camus takes the idea further by employing the concept of

proportion, rather than to mean a geometric relation, but rather a harmony of

solid masses, which he says, is determined by the caractère of the building and

drawn directly from Nature.43 In his introduction he deals with the way in

which feelings are aroused by architectural forms, followed by a section on the

role of the five Orders in providing a traditional language of architectural

expression, and a detailed analysis, room by room of the planning and

arrangement of the hôtel. In total he described a total of 85 different spaces,

which highlights the trend for the increased refinement of la distribution which

was common in late eighteenth-century hôtels. It reflects the increased

requirements of the plan, whilst also emphasising the caractère and sensation – in

the “message” of the building and its role as an expression of taste.

Le Camus dedicated his Genius of architecture to Watelet, and referred to his

Essays on gardens. The treatise had sought to stimulate the entire range of senses,

42 LE CAMUS DE MEZIERES, N., BRITT D. (translator), The Genius of Architecture: Or, the Analogy of That

Art With Our Sensations, Santa Monica, California: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1992, p. 3

43 Ibid., p. 56

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even the sense of smell and sound which included decorating the boudoir with

informally arranged flowers and songbirds; this was a novel suggestion for the

hôtel, which for so long had based its decoration on regal adornment. Contrary

to earlier models of the hôtel he laid no emphasis that the apartment should be

the basic planning unit for the hôtel, and was rather concerned with its

integration into the total organisation. Le Camus’s theory is not always fully

worked out, and remains uncertain, though he greatly enlarged architectural

understanding of empirical aesthetics, based on sentiment and feeling. What is

special about Le Camus’s treatise is his emphasis on the potential or

architecture to affect our senses. He stated that the more he examined Nature,

the more he recognised that “every object possesses its own special character,

and that often a single line, a simple contour suffices to express it.”44

Étienne-Louis Boullée, emphasised the impact of architecture on the senses in

his Essai sur l’art, which corresponds to the theory propounded by Le Camus

Mézières. He virtually defined the Nature of architecture as the realisation of

the pictorial power of solid bodies: ‘to present images through the disposition

of solid bodies’,45 by which he meant only regular geometric bodies. It can be

noted that Boullée claimed the principles of architecture originated directly

from Nature, and repeatedly described proportion as ‘one of the chief beauties

in architecture’,46 and as flowing from Nature.47 His concept of proportion was

one which corresponds to symmetry. The analogy between regular solids and

44 Ibid., p. 1

45 BOULLEE, E.-M., Architecture. Essai sur l'art. Textes réunis et présentés par Jean-Marie PEROUSE DE MONTCLOS. (Miroirs de l'art.), Paris, 1968, p. 48

46 Ibid., p. 67

47 Ibid., p. 65

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their effects on the human senses was described by Boullée, as the caractère.

That he should describe it as an ‘effect’ was surely as a consequence of Le

Camus Mézières arguments; that he should link it more to the effect of regular

solids than to the expression of architectural use is what constitutes the crucial

difference. Boullée regards the regularity and symmetry of solid bodies as

epitomising Nature and therefore included the total effect of Nature in his

definition. It is therefore clear that for him architecture is the only art that ‘sets

Nature to work’.48 Boullée’s architectural theories were a radical extrapolation,

of the current ideas, described in the preceding text which had lost contact with

reality.

By the 1780’s the transition in attitudes had produced a more romantic form for

the hôtel type, illustrated in the work of Perre Rousseau at the Hôtel de Salm

(Figure 17). Here a powerful Corinthian portico, an arched gateway and a

rotunda, reinforced by colonnades, engaged columns, niches, large areas of

plain wall and extensive rustication, created striking, simple forms in which

freely interpreted classical features produced a very evocative and romantic

effect. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux too reflected and expressed the conflicting

tendencies of romantic qualities. So much so that his Hôtel Thélusson which

occupied three buildings closely set in an informal garden, had been, in effect

turned around on the site so that what would normally have been the garden

front would face the main entry, and what would normally been the forecourt

would terminate the site. The garden plan and the section reveal a poetic

blending of architecture and landscape, provoking an image of classical

48 Ibid., p. 34

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fragments in a romantic landscape. These two examples display a progression

that parallel the overall development of the French hôtel.

Architects had also found fresh inspiration in the personalities of their clients,

which added a new dimension to l’art de la distribution. The theoreticians had

alerted public assertion of the importance for the decoration and detail to

reflect the caractère and personalities of the owner, which led to great diversity in

the simple format of the Neoclassical hôtel. Ledoux’s design for the Hôtel de

Montmorency shows the fundamental concept of the building, and la distribution,

to be very much a function of the nature of the client. The patrons, husband

and wife, were each independent members of the house of Montmorency.49

Consequently the diagonal public sequence divides the house into two equal

halves: the princess’s bedroom is located on the main floor behind the

columnar frontispiece facing the boulevard, and the prince’s bedroom is in a

similar location facing the side street so, as to give equal expression and equal

facilities to each (Figure 18).

This personalisation based on the client, worked best when an important client

required a unique house like in the case of the Montmorency. However the

freer interpretation of antiquity had more normative applications, as it became

characteristic of late-eighteenth century hôtels. Though not as rich and famous,

on the whole clients of these hôtels aspired to the same ideals, and they did

desire approximately similar accommodations, albeit on a reduced scale.

Ledoux’s treatise L’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurs et de la

legislation assumes his designs directly related to the ‘social order’: I have

49 GROETHUSEN, B., The Bourgeois: Catholicism Versus Capitalism in 18th Century France, London, 1968, p. 115

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included all the kinds of buildings demanded by the social order’.50

Architecture reflects the social order: ‘The house of the poor man, by its

modest exterior, enhances the splendour of the mansion of the rich.’51 In his

later years, in the course of evolving his aesthetic ideas of caractère, Ledoux lights

upon the notion of equivalence in architecture. Where equality was a ‘moral’

equality52 within the social order, and the Orders were no longer badges of class

but may be used so long as they were justified by their caractère. These ideas on

caractère appear unsure to us: the caractère should express the function of the

building yet not in a practical or structural sense, but symbolically, in a way that

evokes associations and at the same time fulfils a set of heuristic objectives.

The usability of a building gave way to this expressive task, and internal

functions were often sacrificed – caractère took priority over usage. The

concept, which was central to architectural theory in the first half of the

eighteenth century, disappears almost completely by the end of the century.

Architecture had become a language of signs which would celebrate itself.

50 LEDOUX,C. N., VIDLER, A. (translator) L’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurs

et de la legislation, Prinston, USA,1983, p. 222

51 Ibid., p. 13 52 Ibid., p. 18

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Figure 15

I) Project for a country house, ground floor plan, Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution.

II) Project for a country house, upper floor plan, Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution.

III) Project for a country house, garden elevation, Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution.

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IV) Project for a country house, detail plans of dinning room, Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution.

V) Project for a country house, Elevation of the dinning room, Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution.

VI) An orangerie with an appartement des bains, plan and elevation, Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution.

VII) Detail plans of a lieux à soupape (flush toilet), Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution.

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Figure 16 Frontispiece of Laugier’s Essai sur l’architecture.

Figure 17 De Machy’s painting of Hôtel de Salm under construction, with the stonemasons’ yard in the foreground. The masonry blocks were still shaped on site, in contrast to the nineteenth century when they were prepared to order at the quarry.

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Figure 18 Plans, section, and elevations from Hôtel de Montmorency, by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux.

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C h a p t e r e l e v e n

REVOLUTION OF THE ARTS

The construction of hôtels in the last two decades of the eighteenth century in

Paris reached a level so frenzied that Sebastian Mercier observed that a third of

Paris had been rebuilt during this period.53 Though this proliferation inevitably

produced a wide variety, some general tendencies may be observed.

Overall the size of the hôtels gradually became smaller, and in most cases the

elevation showed the building to be freestanding. The plans of these buildings

tended to be either two of three zones deep and three or five bays wide, with

the two-by-three-bay plan apparently preferred. They were asymmetrically

organised behind symmetrical and centralized façade, and the central bay of the

plan was usually emphasised by implying a sequence from front to back.

Finally, the axis of symmetry was maintained from font to back even of the site

was irregular. In most of the hôtels, the services were separated from the main

block and were located in the forecourt. A common version of the

Neoclassical type was one in which a modest, square corps-de-logis three bays

wide spanned the entire width of the site and was contained by lower garden

walls.

Following the temporary disruption in architectural building during the French

Revolution, hôtel construction continued to be designed with classical and

natural forms as the main themes until the end of the century. The changes in

53 GALLET M., Stately Mansions: Eighteenth Century Paris Architecture, New York, 1972 p. 4

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the balance of powers between the main groups increasingly meant the former

social badges were increasingly attainable to a wider group.

The Hôtel Chenot (1790) by Branau, illustrates the way this interplay of classical

and natural forms, was adaptable to even the most modest of budgets. The

services and entry were located on street level around a courtyard that was

articulated by rusticated pilasters of natural rock, while the public spaces were

above the entrance on the next floor, facing the romantic garden. The garden

was furnished with small temples – a grand concept in spite of its simplicity

(Figure 19).

However by the end of the eighteenth century, the symbolic sovereignty of

classical vocabulary had died and the form of the hôtel was essentially complete

by the 1800.54 The Marie plan of 1808 shows Paris at a complete stage of

development; with all Neoclassical hôtels of the last quarter of the century

indicated (Figure 20). These hôtels were published by Krafft and Ransonnette in

Plans, coupes, elevations des plus belles… hôtels…à Paris…just after 1800. They did

not provide any theoretical text to accompany the plates but their introduction

and conclusion, published in French, German and English do however clearly

summarise the three periods of hôtel building. They argued that the hôtels of

Louis XIV were highly developed on the exterior but not on the interior; the

hôtels of Louis XV were highly developed on the interior, but not on the

exterior; and that the hôtels of Louis XVI, were highly developed on the exterior

and interior, therefore making the Neoclassical hôtel the “masterpieces” of

domestic architecture. The passage quoted below reveals their awareness of the

54 For examples of later hôtel see: HAUTECOEUR, L., Histoire de L’Architecture Classique en France, Paris,

1943, volume 5, pp. 325-32, volume six pp. 123-25

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historical context to which the Neoclassical hôtel stood and serves as a summary

of the revolution which took place in the arts at the end of the century.

‘Knowledge, which has spread itself throughout every class of society, a passion for travelling,

and education have brought about remarkable changes in the art of building…A great

number of private houses have been erected in the new parts of town for opulent proprietors,

who have brought back with them from their travels in Italy and other countries the taste for

novelty, and a certain propensity for deviating from the old, servile method of building, thus

freeing themselves from many received prejudices. This has totally changed the physiognomy of

our architecture; and those foreigners, who fancy acquire a perfect idea of this art by consulting

old collections of our buildings, or in deriving their principles from those treatise which have

formerly dealt with the subject, are vastly mistaken. We look upon it as an important service

rendered to society to publish what may well be called the monuments of architecture

regenerated in the nineteenth century, and those, which towards the end of the eighteenth

century, have prepared this regeneration.'

The reference to the regeneration of architecture at the end of the eighteenth

century is rather vague, but it would seem it refers to the new freedom in style

and comfort that replaced the classical system of absolute standards. The

preference for freestanding buildings facilitated this choice of style and caractère,

because they could more easily convey the “message”. This of course is an

ironic condition, as it was given at the beginning of a period of unprecedented

urban expansion, in which the management of urban space would be critical.

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Figure 19 Plans, section, and elevations from Hôtel Chenot, by Brunau.

Figure 20 I)

The Marie Plan, 1808, key plan showing the twenty detail sections.

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II) The Marie Plan, detail sections showing the north-western area of Paris.

III) The Marie Plan, detail sections showing the north-eastern area of Paris.

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IV) The Marie Plan, detail sections showing the south-western area of Paris.

V) The Marie Plan, detail sections showing the south-eastern area of Paris

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Chapter twelve

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Architectural preoccupation in the nineteenth century in Paris was with the

apartments, the maison à loyer, for the bourgeoisie society, but the hôtel was not

without influence. In a sense the French hôtel planning system was applied to a

new problem, and provided a distinct model for the apartments. That the hôtels

of the very rich should lend itself so readily to the cause of mass housing is very

ironic, especially when we refer back to the rules of decorum for the aristocratic

society in the early part of the eighteenth century. With the pressure of

urbanism and prominence of the bourgeoisies, Haussmann, and Napoleon III,

used the apartment as a vehicle to develop vast new districts.

The most important source for the principles of this building type was César

Daly’s journal the Revie générale de architecture et des travaux publics (1839-88). In

accordance with Haussmann’s policies, it produced articles on apartment house

design. However by 1864 Daly’s earlier enthusiasm for maison à loyer, had

changed to great reservation. For Daly, the hôtel was still the ideal type; unlike

the maison à loyer, it was all physiognomy and moreover had a sophisticated plan.

It provided an ideal housing type, halfway between the private house and the

phalanstére. He observed that the Neoclassical hôtel had a capacity for expression

and carried the social implications of a progressive community. He believed

that this had not been the case for the urban apartments; which had been built

to extend the benefits of the city to a new class of society.

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CONCLUSION

“Ingenious French, our century beholds with astonishment the brilliant extent

of your talents,” proclaimed Le Camus de Mézières in 1780, reiterating the

widespread belief among eighteenth-century French architects that their

contribution had been in the realm of domestic design.55 The extraordinary

sophistication of French planning of domestic spaces, with the hôtel at its

summit, has long been celebrated. French architects, decorative artists, and

other craftsmen – prodded by their elite clientele devoted their talents to every

nuance of domestic design. The derivation and refinement of the eighteenth

century French hôtel type has been made clear throughout this study. It has

acknowledged how the ensembles of planning and decoration served as the

representational needs of the French nobles, where as a typology it encoded

multiple and complex social meanings that became affixed to spaces and objects

through systems of representation – both strategic and ideological.

This dissertation has reflected on the overlapping of two cultures – the ancien

régime and the beginnings of modern society. As Rudolf Wittkower pointed out

“Classical Theory and Eighteenth Century Sensibilities,” it was during the

eighteenth century that “deeply rooted classical convictions, maxims and

beliefs” were finally demolished and that “before the eighteenth century,

sensibility never led to or sanctioned relativity.” Wittkower also notes that it

55LE CAMUS DE MEZIERES, N., BRITT D. (translator), The Genius of Architecture: Or, the Analogy of That

Art With Our Sensations, Santa Monica, California: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1992, p. 82

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was primarily non-artists who were responsible for revolutionary speculations

on art during the eighteenth century, while artists and particularly architects

never strayed far from theories that were “embedded in a classical idealist

framework of reference focused on absolute standards.” 56

The eighteenth century French hôtel forms a typological system related to, but

somewhat separate from, the mainstream of French architecture. In their hôtels

architects demonstrated a freer attitude to the unified order seen in the public

buildings that paralleled their development, which therefore anticipated a

modern thinking: order is relative. It has been seen that developments in

planning, of this extraordinary archetype affected not only other building genres

of the time, but have continued to be used as precedent since its infancy.

The changing attitudes to royal practice, and manners and decorum, were of

significant importance with the developments in the arrangement of the hôtel.

As the physical backdrop of what was an elaborate and important society

altered, the hôtels revealed the social and cultural changes that signalled the

coming of mass democratic society, and due course the term hôtel lost its rigid

application. The new philosophy of sensation which was seen in the last part of

the eighteenth century proved moreover, to have significant effect on the

structural expression and provoked new debate for architectural meaning. It

became possible even to argue that architecture had an equal, if not superior,

effect on emotions and thoughts to the representational arts. In architectural

terms, the hôtels exemplify plan techniques and characteristics that offer an

important reference for an attempt to bridge modern and traditional modes of

building and spatial development. The techniques that have been discussed,

which combine principles of symmetry and asymmetry, stability and instability,

56 WITTKOWER, R., Classical Theory and Eighteenth century Sensibility, New York, 1983, pp. 193-204.

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continuity and discontinuity, suggest the grounds for a new kind of symbolic

space.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADAMS, W. H., The French Garden 1500-1800 New York, 1979 ADAMSON, J., The Princely Courts of Europe. Ritual, Politics and Culture Under the Ancien Regime, 1500-1750 London, 1999 BABELON, J.-P., Demeures parisiennes sous Henri IV et Louis XIII Paris, 1965 BAILLIE, H M., Etiquette and the Planning of the State Apartments in Baroque Palaces Archaeologia, Society of Antiquaries, London, 1967 BLONDEL, J.-F., L’Architecture francoise Paris, 1752, Facsimile reprint Paris, 1904 BLOOMFIELD, SIR R., History of French Architecture 1661-1774 Two volumes, London, 1921 BLUNT, A., Art and Architecture in France 1500 to 1700 Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1957

BLUNT, A., Baroque & Rococo Architecture & Decoration New York, 1978 BOULLEE, E.-M., Architecture. Essai sur l'art. Textes réunis et présentés par Jean-Marie PEROUSE DE MONTCLOS. (Miroirs de l'art.) Paris, 1968 BRAHAM, A., The Architecture of the French Enlightenment London, 1980 CAROLINE, V. E., Germain Boffrand. Book of architecture containing the general principles of the art and the plans, elevations and sections of some of the edifices built in France and in foreign countries London, 2002 CONNOLLY, C., and ZERBE, J., Les Pavilions of the Eighteenth Century London, 1962 D’ AVILER, Cours d Architecture Paris, 1691 D’AVILER, Cours d Architecture 2nd edition by A. LE BOND, Paris, 1720

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ETLIN, R. A., “Les dedans Jaqeus_Francois Blondel and the System of the Home, c 1740” Gazette des Beaux Arts Paris, April 1978 ETLIN, R. A., Symbolic Space - French Enlightenment Architecture & Its Legacy Chicago, 1996 FICHET, F., La théorie architecturale à l'âge classique Mardaga Brussels, 1979 FORD, F., Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XIV, 2nd edition New York, 1965 FRANCE-LANORD, A., Germain Boffrand 1667-1754.L'Aventure d'un Architecte Independant Paris, 1986 GALLET, M., and GARMS, J., Germain Boffrand (1667-1754). L’aventure d’un architecture independent Paris, 1986 GALLET, M., Stately Mansions: Eighteenth Century Paris Architecture New York, 1972 GROETHUSEN, B., The Bourgeois: Catholicism Versus Capitalism in 18th Century France London, 1968

GUADET, J., Eléments et théorie de l'architecture. Cours professé à l'Ecole Nationale et Spéciale des Beaux-Arts Paris, 1905 HAMLIN, T., Architecture Through the ages New York, 1940 HAUTECOEUR, L., Histoire de l’architecture classique en France Paris, 1955 HEMPLEL, E., Baroque Art and Architecture in Central Europe Great Britain, 1965 JOMBERT, C., Architecture moderne ou l'art de bien bâtir pour toutes sortes de personnes tant pour les maisons des particuliers que pour les palais Paris, 1728 KALNEIN, W. G., Architecture in France in the Eighteenth Century New York, 1995 KALNEIN W. G. and LEVEY M., BRITT, D. (translator), Art and Architecture of the Eighteenth Century in France New Haven, 1995 KAUFMANN, E., Architecture in the Age of Reason New York ,1968

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KAUFMAN, T. D., Court, Cloister and City: The Art and Culture of Central Europe 1450-1800 Chicago, 1995 KIEVEN, E. and MILLON, H., “Mostrar l’inventione—The Role of Roman Architects in the Baroque Period: Plans and Models,” The Triumph of the Baroque. Architecture in Europe 1600-1750 New York, 1999 KIMBALL, F., The creation of the Rococo Decorative Style New York, 1980 KJELLBERG, P., Le Guide Du Marais Paris, 1967 LAVIN, S., QUATREMERE DE QUINCY AND THE INVENTION of a Modern Language of Architecture Cambridge, 1992 LAUGIER, M.-A., An Essay on Architecture Los Angeles, 1985 LE CAMUS DE MEZIERES, N., BRITT, D. (translator), The Genius of Architecture: Or, the Analogy of That Art With Our Sensations Santa Monica, California: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1992

LE CLERC, S., Traite D'Architecture Avec Des Remarques et Des Observations Tres-Utiles - Pour Les Jeunes Gens, Qui Veulent S'appliquer a Ce Bel Art Paris, 1714 LEDOUX, C. N., VIDLER, A. (translator), L’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurs et de la legislation Prinston, USA,1983 LEMONNIER, H., L'Art moderne (1500-1800). Essais et esquisses Paris, 1912 LEMONNIER. H., Proces-Verbaux de l’Architecture 1671-1793 Paris, 1915 MCQUILLAN, J., “From Blondel to Blondel: On the Decline of the Vitruvian Treatise,” Paper Palaces. The Rise of the Renaissance Architectural Treatise New Haven, 1998 MIDDLETON, R., ‘The Beaux-Arts’, Architectural Design Magazine, Volume 48, No. 11-12 London, 1978 MIDDLETON, R., BEASLEY, G. and SAVAGE, N., The Mark J Millard Architectural Collection. Vol II. British Books, Seventeenth through Nineteenth Centuries Washington, 1998

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MIDDLETON, R., and WATKIN, D., History of World Architecture - Neoclassical & 19th Century Architecture London, 1987 NEUMAN, R., ‘French Domestic Architecture in the Early 18th Century: The Town Houses of Robert de Cotte,’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 39 Philadelphia, PA, USA, May 1980 NEUMAN, R., Robert De Cotte and the Perfection of Architecture in Eighteenth-Century France University of Chicago, 1994 NORBERT, E., The Court Society New York, 1983 PARDAILHE-GALABRUN, A.; PHELPS, J. (translator), The Birth of Intimacy. Privacy and Domestic life in early modern Paris Oxford, 1991 PENNINGTON, D.H., Europe in the Seventeenth Century United Kingdom, 1989 PERAU, G. L. C., Description historique de l'Hôtel Royal des Invalides. Avec les plans, coupes, élévations géométrales de cet édifice, & les peintures & sculptures de l'Église, dessinées & gravées par le sieur Cochin, Graveur du Roy, & de l'Académie Royale de Peinture et Sculptur, Paris, 1756

PEYRE, M.-J., Oeuvres d’Architecture Paris, 1765, reprint Farnborough, England, 1967 RYKWERT, J., The First Moderns. The Architects of the Eighteenth Century Cambridge, 1980 SCOTT, K., The Rococo Interior. Decoration and Social Spaces in Early Eighteenth- Century Paris New Haven, 1995 SIGURET, P., Le Faubourg Saint-Germain Paris, 1974 THOMPSON, D., Renaissance Paris: Architecture and Growth 1475-1600 London, 1984 VERDIER, T., Augustin Charles D'Aviller Paris, 2004 VILLARI, R., Baroque Personae Chicago, 1995 WADDY, P., Seventeenth Century Roman Palaces: Use and the Art of the Plan London, 1991 WIEBENSON, D., The Picturesque Garden in France Prinston, 1978

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WITTKOWER, R., Classical Theory and Eighteenth century Sensibility New York, 1983

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Laura Shepherd The French hôtel

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APPENDIX I

HAUSSMANN’S VISION OF URBAN UTOPIA

An American study, using a sophisticated points system to compare some of

the world’s greatest cities, and to discover which one is regarded as the most

attractive, has found Paris to be the most beautiful and exciting city in the

world. This idea of Paris as an idyllic city is not in fact very old; and goes back

to the Second Empire, 1867, when Paris acquired the reputation of luxury and

sin as well as the city of magnificent scenic effects. However, it was only a few

decades earlier that Paris had been regarded as one of the dirtiest places in

Europe. The explanation of this astonishing change lay in the radical

transformation effected under Georges-Eugene Haussmann, who was

appointed by Napoleon III to plan a civilised urban environment. Following

the French Revolution and pressure from the new dominant economic and

political force, the middle and upper middle classes, Napoleon III had decided

to take action in Paris, which by 1850, had turned into an overpopulated and

inaccessible city of squalor and misery. Haussmann’s vision of urban utopia on

such a grand scale did however attract much criticism among the political

opponents to Napoleon’s regime, and when a liberal government finally came

to power in 1870 Haussmann was quickly dismissed.

Haussmann’s idea of building to create an empirically-designed working and

living urban environment is seen as inseparable from the philosophical notion

of utopia. The word ‘utopia’ was coined by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) in

his political satire of that name. He chose the title ‘utopia’ for his book because

it is a composed Greek word which means ‘nowhere’, a sufficiently safe title for

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a satirical work which by contrast with the imagined ideal was designed to

show up the faults and injustices in English law systems. Another tradition of

utopian thought had begun with Plato (c. 428-348 B.C.) whose Republic, was a

speculation in dialogue of the shape and laws of an ideal state. In a similar vein,

in that he set about to determine the laws by which society was governed, was

the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) he wrote that,

The world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and that its

principles are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own

human mind.57

This might not immediately seem to be crucial thought in the development of

the Haussmann’s Paris, but as a mode of perception Vico’s thoughts were

germane to the formation of our consciousness of the world around us. In this

sense alone, Vico’s principles are at variance with the medieval attitude to

society and suggest a new age where by his awareness man is capable of

changing his lot. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), produced a very different

notion, which has become famous because it popularised the idea that the

further man ‘progressed’ then the unhappier he became because he was

advancing away from his true nature. Rouseau provides important reference

for this study because he illustrates the developing principle of criticism of

society which has implicit in it the assumption that an improvement is both

necessary and possible. It was the very same notion of amelioration which

inspired Haussmann, in this case stimulated by the horrors of human and

material waste which were the excess of the age of industrialisation, to conceive

the empirically planned community. While Rousseau did not advocate

architectural forms as the solution to his quest for liberty and equality his

position as a direct intellectual antecedent of the Court Henri de Saint-Simon

57 POLLAND, S., The idea of Progress, Penguin, 1971, p. 36

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(1760-1825) is clear. Saint-Simon’s rather haphazard and irregular achievement

has set the tone which had categorised the utopian city planning movement.

Haussmann was clearly enthused by Saint-Simon who was of the opinion that

the current of history tended towards general improvement. When he wrote

that

Experience of all the known centuries has proved that mankind has always

laboured towards the improvement of its fate and, consequently, towards

perfecting its social organisation, whence it follows that it is in its nature to

improve indefinitely its political role.58

Saint-Simon was surely predicting precisely that idealism that was the generative

force behind Haussmann’s unified architectural vision and political pragmatism.

The problems confronting Haussmann were a legacy from the Middle Ages, so

it seems sensible within the scope of this study to include a brief retrospective

survey. The embryo of Paris was a Roman settlement sprawling on both banks

of the Seine, but concentrated during the Late Antiquity to the Ile de la Cite.

Cathedrals were built inside the customary Roman walls and the medieval

market place grew outside on the right banks of the Seine. During the eleventh

and twelfth centuries the population of Paris increased and the built area was

extended, above all on the right bank. The old roads out of town assumed the

character of principle thoroughfares and a larger wall was made to enclose the

whole of the built area. Because of the ever growing population the wall of

1200, meant Paris was becoming very cramped and around 1370 a new city wall

was built which subsequently increased the fortified area. However the absence

of public places and the spontaneously evolving network of narrow and twisty

streets were inadequate for the overpopulated city.

58 Ibid., p. 110

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A new era in the building history of the town began under Henri IV with the

construction of two squares, the Place des Vosges, on the eastern edge of the

northern side of the town, and the three cornered Place Dauphine at the

western point of the le de la Cite, which were typical examples of the local

design planning, characterising the urban development in Paris up to the

Second Empire. Both squares were surrounded by buildings in a uniform style

and were intended to create a worthy capital for the French monarchy, as well

as functioning as outdoor rooms in the life of the city.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century Paris was probably the most

heavily developed town in Europe. Houses were being built higher and higher,

the courtyards became more cramped and the traffic more chaotic in the

narrow streets. Despite the interventions of public squares, far more radical

efforts were needed to get to grips with the substandard urban environment

and the heavy exploitation, albeit few plans for vast improvements ever got

beyond the drawing board.

Of great importance to later developments, however was the decision in 1670,

during Lous XIV’s reign, to demolish the fortifications, which were replaced by

tree lined roads on the northern side of the town. Thus the roads which are

known today as the grands boulevards appeared. These ring roads were originally

intended as a place for elegant outings on foot or by carriage, but they gradually

became an important part of Paris’s otherwise inadequate communications

system, thus introducing the ring road as a recognised element in urban

planning. The foundations of the future ceremonial parade – the Louvre, the

Champs Elysees, the hill of Chaillot, La Defense – can also be dated back to

Louis XIV’s time, in the shape of a project for the Jardin des Tuileries designed

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by Andre Le Notre. The garden was built round a clearly marked central axis

pointing towards the hill on which the Arc de Triomphe was later built.

In the eighteenth century conditions in Paris continued to deteriorate as a result

of the constantly growing pressure of the population. Although there were no

longer any fortifications to prevent the spread of building, Paris retained its old

structure with the population concentrated in the central parts.

Characteristically it was during the Enlightenment that the question of the

embellishment of Paris seriously began to be discussed in a quest to make Paris

a more healthy and convenient and efficiently functioning town. The

shortcomings and disorder of the urban environment were identified and

described with remedies suggested. Pierre Patte reflected a growing

understanding in the need for improving the street network and creating

efficient marketplaces and buildings for public activities. Others that launched

ideas which made people aware that action was essential included Voltaire and

Lauguer, nevertheless none led to any concrete results. The French Revolution

did however, pioneer new ideas. 1783 saw the ratification of a building code,

with stipulations regarding the width of the streets, the height of buildings and

building permits. That same year Louis XVI authorised the preparations for a

town map. A few years later a street improvement proposal was submitted by,

Charles de Wailly, providing several new principle streets running from the

Louvre to Rue St Antoine. After the Revolution work on a master plan

continued, extensive areas had been taken over by the state, primarily from the

Church, and major thoroughfares and avenues were introduced. However, the

situation was altogether too chaotic for any really significant achievement. The

opportunity for using the nationalised land was also missed; instead it was sold

to development.

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The most influential urban design theorist in Paris around 1800 was J.N.L.

Durand, who advocated that solutions to current problems be sought in the

Greek and Roman art of urban planning. He emphasised particularly the

important role of loggias along streets and round open places.59 Two decisive

markers of the townscape at this time were the construction of the Arc de

Triomphe and the building of the Rue de Rivoli – the east-west axis which had

been suggested by Wailly. Plans were made for water conduits and other things

necessary to make the capital a more comfortable city to live in, but by 1812

few of these projects had even been started. During the first half of the

nineteenth century the population increased from 548,000 to 1,053,000.

Epidemics, social unrest and chaotic traffic conditions made it difficult to avoid

taking action, and under Louis Phillippe attempts were begun to improve

conditions in the inner city. The dominating urban development issue of the

1840’s concerned the central wholesale market, Les Halles, which generated a

great deal of traffic in the centre of the city, it was absolutely vital that the

capacity of the streets into and around the market should be increased, and

some moves to achieving this were made in 1847.

When Louis Napoleon assumed power in 1848, he was determined to initiate

radical action in Paris. He was not satisfied with completing projects which had

already been started, and wanted to launch his own extensive development.

Haussmann was appointed the position of Prefet de la Seine in 1853, and was

responsible for achieving Napoleon’s grandest ambitions of urban utopia. He

was given planning power on a grand scale and indeed responded accordingly,

59 Ibid., pp. 183

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though it may seem surprising that no overall master plan was drawn up and

published, as was to be done later in other capital cities.60 This may have been

partly because it was feared that the extent of the planned intervention would

arouse protests, and because the street improvement proposals were regarded

as a package of measures rather than as parts of an overall plan.

The new moneyed middle classes, who were politically right wing, demanded

favourable conditions for the conduct of their affairs, nice places to live and

recreational centres for their leisure hours. These requirements were what

Haussmann met admirably. He began by reducing urban unrest by demolishing

old popular neighbourhoods that were ‘chronic trouble spots’. He rationalised

and streamlined the street network for rapid communication, weaving into it

adequate business facilities. The streets, gas lit at night had standardised street

furniture. The mansarded houses, built of grey stone and holding to uneven

skyline, provided gracious living for families no longer content with meagre

flats on side streets. The Opera, the new parks and the Champs-Elyses

provided opportunities for leisure. The poorer classes, although not directly

catered to, reaped some benefit. The most ameliorative circumstance was the

overhaul of services. The freshwater supply was more than doubled, and

sewers drained northwest away from the inhabited sector. There were also new

hospitals and asylums, schools, administrative centres and prisons, created on a

scale which may seem inconceivable today.

Aesthetically, Haussmann’s vision for urban utopia appears conservative and

included principles taken from the Baroque period. He used straight, tree-lined

avenues and arterial thoroughfares, symmetrical compositions and elaborately

60 HAUSSMANN E., Paris, Paris,1893,pp. 48-55

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contrived vistas of formal squares framed by uniform frontages. Its axes

achieved finite links between nodes of monumental character that

corresponded to a readable scheme of real and symbolic power. They shunned

outright destruction and dashed through undeveloped or sparsely built land

beyond the tight urban texture. Haussmann cut through the densest quarters

and nearly levelled the Ile-de-la-Cite, the core of Parisian history. The cathedral

of Notre Dame stood in open space, and big institutional buildings blocked the

area with regularity.

The result was extraordinarily pioneering, and Haussmann should be given

credit for achieving coherence in a chaotic city which had been made in certain

respects unliveable by the onrush of technological and social changes. He took

a patchwork of independent quarters, organised around parish churches, or

residential squares, and made it unified. The guiding logic was circulation. A

map of Haussmann’s streets albeit somewhat confusing, conveys the guiding

ideas of the communication system. The chief components of this were two

intersecting axis and a double ring of outer boulevards. Within the general

framework a number of tributary systems were created, each organised around a

public space, which was seen as a traffic node. A main objective was to connect

the railway stations with the functioning centres of the city life. The network

was so extensive and interlinked; roads and squares were fused into one another

so that open spaces were now not experienced as enclosures, but something

fluid and unsealed.

As far as the ideas, it has already been noted in the preceding discussion, that

they were by no means new; this kind of action to organise Paris, had been

realised since the middle of the eighteenth century, however, what Napolean III

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and Haussmann managed was the implementation on such a scale which had

previously been deemed unachievable. In addition to systematising the city they

also managed to combat the very high unemployment in Paris, which was one

of the must important reasons for the discontent that exploded periodically and

which often had been exploited to generate political upheaval. The street

improvements generated an enormous number of jobs. The fact that almost 20

per cent of the people in work in Paris in the middle of the 1860’s were engaged

in the building trade is proof enough of the importance of the building boom in

this context.61 This also tells us something about the lines along which

Napolean III thought. A kind of vague socialism, a desire to show energy and

drive, and a romantic vision of empire combined with a liberal faith in the free

market.

The picture conjured up here may seem remarkably lacking in shadows. The

rationale of Haussmann’s work is indeed plausible from the perspective of our

own industrial-capitalistic age; however there were of course mistakes made. To

the contemporary witness who was reared in the old city, its passing may have

caused painful disorientation and dissatisfaction. They may indeed have

mourned the loss of beloved places. Evidence shows many ordinary citizens

were physically uprooted, with their lives transformed. Though the suffering

may have only been short lived Haussmann’s vision should surely be criticised

from their perspective- the city, that millennial matrix of community, would no

longer be the same. In the past, the city had been the rock of their existence for

those who lived within its walls. It had palpable shapes and hard edges, both

physically and emotionally. Now the city had been haved erratically and

showed protean impatience beyond the common will. One had to seek an

61 Ibid., p. 6.

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anchor elsewhere against the vagaries of human life. The great poet of the era,

Charles Baudelaire, said it simply:

The old Paris is no more; a city’s form, alas, changes faster than the human

heart.

Furthermore Haussmann should be condemned as so little was done to

improve the housing of the workers. There was great interest in demolishing

the slums, but no attempt was ever made to provide alternative arrangements.

Haussmann’s clearances simply meant that the slums were shifted from one

area to another.

Controversy which also faced Hausssmann was regarding his intricate financial

arrangements, required for the reformation, which exploited both public and

private capital and the large loans which were clearly outside authorisation of

the legislative body. The high cost of acquiring the land along with demolition

and the construction of the streets, meant that the urban renewal scheme was

becoming extremely expensive. By 1869, according to Haussmann’s

calculations, Paris had invested 21/2 billion francs in urban improvements since

1851. The fact that this sum was forty five times greater than the city’s total

costs in 1851, gives us some idea of the enormous size of the amounts

involved.62 Napoleon and Haussmann, found it perfectly justifiable to borrow

for making improvements in the city: ‘it was a question of productive

investment which would increase revenues in the long run’. However in the

end the enormous burden of debt in the shape of delegation bonds was too

much for Haussmann, and in April of 1868, a government bill proposed the

bank’s claim for 398 million francs should be converted into a long-term bond

loan. The reaction to what was regarded as official confirmation of

62 PATTE, P., Monuments eriges en France a la gloire de Louis XV, Paris, 1765, pp. 45

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Haussmann’s abuses was a powerful one, and it heralded one of the greatest

scandals of the Second Empire.

As was seen earlier in the discussion Utopian socialists like Saint-Simon had

predicted developments such as those seen in Paris, however there also began

to appear a new school of thought somewhat divorced from this model as the

urban ideal – that of the new generation of town planners. Foremost among

these planners were Josef Stubben whose book Der Stadtebau (City Building)

appeared in 1890 and Camillo Sitte whose Der Stadtebau nach seinen kunstlerischen

Grundsatzen (City building according to artistic principles) appeared the year

before. Sitte analysed old European towns and, from their apparently random

plans, he extracted basic principles of harmonious town-planning. These

opposed Hausmann’s planning system, which Sitte described as barren and

dehumanising. It was clear from Haussmann’s memoirs that he considered the

different street projects one by one, not as an organic whole. In his influential

book, The Art of Building Cities, 1889, Sitte, directly challenged

Haussmannesque design and the rules of geometry, - of straight boulevards

with uniform frontages, vast formal squares, and monumental vistas. He spoke

in favour of curving streets, intimate panoramas that could be taken in at a

glance like pictures, and interlinked public spaces of dissimilar shapes. Sitte’s

books underscored the appeal of the historic city core from the standpoint of

sensory experience and social compatibility. Nevertheless Haussmann argued

that the established quarters, which were transformed, were run down,

unhealthy and conductive to vice, and in any case of no historic interest. In his

memoirs at the end of his life, he could in earnest challenge his detractors to

“cite even one old monument worthy of interest, one building precious of art,

curious by its memories” that his administration had allowed to be torn down.

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All the same his ignorance to the value of contexts was apparent as in the same

breath he would report without embarrassment, that his clearances wiped out

19,722 houses in greater Paris of which 4, 349 were in the old core.

Though it may have been condemned by generations of writers representing

different schools of urban development, one may feel that Paris has been

judged harshly and by looking at Paris at large, several of the city’s otherwise

most extreme critics have found it difficult to quell a certain, albeit unwilling,

admiration. For instance, writing in Town Planning Review in 1913, Patrick

Abercrombie said ‘Haussmann’s modernisation of Paris is the most brilliant

piece of Town Planning in the world’.63 Paris at the beginning of the 1850’s

was according to Pinkney, a city of ‘alley-like streets without issue, slums

without light and air, houses without water, boulevards without trees, crowding

unrelieved by parks, and sewers spreading noxious odours.’64 Admittedly not all

the problems had been solved by the time Haussmann left his post in January

1870, but great results had been achieved in the shape of new streets and parks,

a new sewage system and a greatly improved water supply. Medieval Paris had

been transformed into a modern city, no longer a warning example, but

undeniably a source of inspiration, which would influence developments in

many other cities. One last point: Haussmann and Napoleon III were patriots.

It was abundantly clear to them both that France should lead developments in

Europe, and Paris be the heir to Rome. To create a modern version of the

metropolis of the ancient world was their ambition. And in that respect one can

only say they succeeded.

63ABERCROMBIE, P.,. Town Planning Review, London, 1913, p. 193

64 Ibid, pp.24.

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APPENDIX II

THE PRINCIPAL HÔTELS OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD IN PARIS

CLASSIFIED BY ARRONDISSEMENT AND STREET

Right Bank of the Seine (from west to east)

VIII ARRONDISSEMENT Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore: 31. Hôtel de Blouin (H. Pillet-Will) 39. Hôtel de Charost (British Embassy) 51. Hôtel d’Evreux (Elysee Palace) 85. Hôtel de La Vaupaleire 96. Hôtel La Camus de Mauzieres (Ministry of the Interior) I-II ARRONNDISSEMENTS Palace Vendome The whole. Rue des Petits-Champs: 8. Hôtel du President Tubeuf (Bibliotheque nationale) 45. Hôtel de Lulli Rue Colbert: 12. Hôtel de Nevers Rue La Vrilliere:

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1 and 3 Hôtel de La Vrilliers (Bank of France) Palace du Palais-Royal: Palais Cardinal (Palais-Royal) Rue de Richelieu: 21. Hôtel Dodun IX-X ARRONDISSEMENTS Rue de la Rochefoucaild: 66. Hôtel Rousseai Rue des Petites Ecuries: 44. Hôtel Botterel-Quintin Rue de la Tour-des-Dames: 1.Hôtel de Mlle Mars 3. Hôtel de Mlle Duchesnois 9. Hôtel de Talma Rue de Trevise: 32. Hôtel de Bony Rue du Faubourg Poissonniere: 30. Hôtel Cheret Rue d’Hauteville: 44. Hôtel Bourrienne Rue Pierre-Bullet 6. Hôtel Gouthiere

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III-IV ARRONDISSEMENTS Rue Michel-le Comte: 28. Hôtel d’Hallwyl Rue du Temple: 57. Hôtel Titon 71. Hôtel d’Avaix 79. Hôtel de Montmor Rue de Archives: 78. Hôtel Amelot de Chaillou Rue des Francs-Bourgeois: 60. Hôtel de Soublise (Archives de France) Rue Vielle-du-Temple: 47. Hôtel de Hollande 87. Hôtel de Rohan (Archives de France) Rue Francois-Miron: 68. Hôtel de Beauvais 89. Hôtel du President Henault Rue Geoffroy-l’ Asnier: 26. Hôtel de Chalons-Luxembourg Rue de Jouy: 7. Hôtel d’Aumont Rue Saint-Antoine: 21. Hôtel de Mayenne 62. Hôtel de Sully Rue Pavee: 24. Hôtel de Lamoignon Rue de Seevigne: 23. Hôtel Carnavalet (Musee Carnavalet) 29. Hôtel Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau (Bibliotheque Historique de la Ville de Paris)

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Rue de Thoringny: 5. Hôtel Sale Rue de Turenne: 23. Hôtel Colbert de Villacerf Place des Vosges: The whole. Rue des Tournelles: 28. Hôtel Mansart de Sagonne Quai des Celestins: 1.Hôtel de Fieubet Rue de Sully: 30 Arsenal (Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal) (A) Ile Saint-Louis Quai de Bourbon: 13 and 15. Hôtel Le Charron 21. Hôtel de Jassaud 29. Hôtel de Boisgelin Quai d’Anjou: 1.Hôtel de Lambert 17. Hôtel de Lauzun Quai de Bethune: 16 and 18. Hôtel d’Astry 20. Hôtel Lefebvre de la Malmaison Rue Saint-Loues-en-l’ Ile: 51. Hôtel Chenizot

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(A) Left bank of the Seine (From east to west) V ARRONDISSEMENT

Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine: 49. Hôtel od the painter Le Brun VI ARRONDISSEMENT Boulevard Saint-Michel: 60 bis. Hôtel de Bendome (Ecole des Mines) Rue de Vaugirard: 17. Palais du Luxembourg Rue de Tournon: 6. Hôtel de Brancas 10. Hôtel de Concini (Bararacks) Rue Garanciere: 8. Hôtel de Rieux Rue de l’Abbaye: 3. Abbatial palace of Saint-Germain-des-Pres Rue des Saint-Peres: 28. Hôtel de Garsaulan 56. Hôtel de La Meilleraie Quai Malaquais: 5. Hôtel de Garsaulan 9. Hôtel de Hillerin 17. Hôtel de La Bazineire (Ecole des Beaux-arts) Rue Visconti: 21. Hôtel de Rannes Boulevard Montparnasse:

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25. Hôtel de Vendome VII ARONDISSEMENT Rue de Varenne: 45. Hôtel Janvry 47. Hôtel de Boisgelin (Italian Embassy) 57. Hôtel de Matignon (Presedency of the Council of Ministers) 73. Hôtel de Mme Juillet 77. Hôtel Biron (or de Moras) (Musee rodin) 78. Hôtel de Mlle Desmars (Ministry of Agriculture) Rue de Grenelle 15. Hôtel de Berulle 75. Hôtel de Furstenberg 79. Hôtel d’Estree (Russian Embassy) 87. Hôtel Paris de Marmontel 101. Hôtel Rothelin (Ministry of Commerce) 110. Hôtel de Rochechouart (Ministry of Education) 116. Hôtel Le Coigneux (Marie of the VIIth arrondissement) 127. Hôtel du Chatelet (Ministry of Labour) 138. Hôtel de Noirmoutiers 142. Petit Hôtel de Chanac (Swiss Legation) Rue Saint-Dominique: 1.Hôtel Amelot de Gournay 14-16. Hôtel de Mailly et de Brienne (Ministry of War) 28. Hôtel d’Auvergne (Maison de la Chimie) 57. Hôtel de Monaco (Polish Embassy) Boulevard Saint-Germain: 246. Hôtel de Roquelaure (Ministry of Public Works) Rue de l’Universite: 24. Hôtel de la Monnoye 51. Hôtel du President Duret 126. Hôtel de Bourbon (Chambre des Deputes) Rue de Lille: 64. Hôtel de Salme (Leion d’honneur)

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78. Hôtel de Boffrand (German Embassy) Rue Saint-Guillaume: 14. Hôtel de Mortemart 27. Hôtel de Mesme (Ecole des sciences politques) Rue du Bac: 46. Hôtel de Roye 118 Hôtel de Clermont –Tonnerre Rue Bertrand: 11. Hôtel Masserano Rue Monsieur: 12. Hôtel de Mlle de Bourbon-Colnde.

sample dissertation

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sample dissertation

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