Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/543

 JuNE 28, 1872. THE BUILDING NEWS. 521 NN eS —— — ———————————— ee which of course started and flew in every direction when the columns settled. Instead of trying to decorate these sets of four columns and making of them a feature of his building, the architect had turned them into square piers by filling up the spaces between them with brickwork, held together by im- mense angle irons and wrought-iron bands, over which he doubtless meant to place some marble de- coration of Classical orders. Marble had been freely used inside and out. Inside in the corridors were Doric columns of red granite with steel caps, which it would be interesting to examine after an opera- ball on a snowy night. Outside, the marbles were generally of a perishable nature, the chocolate- coloured marble of the facade being composed almost entirely of little pieces stuck together with mastic. The plan was moderately good, but the stage and auditorium only occupied about one-fifth of the total area, the grand staircase alone, with its landings, being about three times as large as the auditorium. Finally, the building was estimated to cost 22,000,000 francs. It had already cost 44,000,000 francs, and the interior finishings were not even begun. Such was the architecture produced by the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Undoubtedly much of it was characterised by great beauty of detail, a thorough appreciation of theatrical effect, and a great facility of composition. This was exemplified in the Church of the Trinité, and still moreremarkably in the Chateau d’Eau or Palais de Longchamps at Marseilles, by M. Esperandieu, which formed, as it were, the apotheosis of the Durance, that river which the Marsellais brought into their parched-up territory at a cost of £2,500,000. It was a most splendid piece of decoration. The steps led up to the public gardens on the hill above. The buildings at either end of the screen were museums. Asa grand piece of scene-painting in stone it was most effective, carefully studied, and well-detailed, and strange to say, in Marseilles especially, where they built even worse than in Paris, the construction had reaeived as much care asthecomposition. It showed what the Ecole could produce at its best in a pro- gramme of pure decoration—in which aloneit was thoroughly at home. yen there, however, they constantly failed, as in the Pavillon Moliére of the New Louvre, where the projecting columns originally supported caryatides, which were changed for vases, which were finally replaced by consoles turned topsy-turvy. This somewhat costly system of studying buildings full-size appeared rather a favourite with M. Lefuel. This building was a worthy sister of the New Opera House, and its construction was worthy of its design. It would be unfair, however, to include in the sweeping con- demnation merited by buildings such as the New Opera, the New Louvre, and, in a somewhat less degree, by the Tribunal de Commerce and the greater part of the street architecture of France, the works of such men as Duban, Duc, Vaudremer, Vaudoyer, and Labrouste. Duban was chiefly known by the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Hotel Pourtales, in the Avenue Tronchet. His detail was invariably exquisite, but he was a most unpractical man, and his design had seldom anything to do with his construction. He had, however, ceiled the vestibule of the Ecole on the quay with terra-cotta plates resting on the iron joists, but the thing was timidly done, and was evidently chosen and studied for its effect, so that the building was very costly. ‘The new Palais de Justice, by Duc, who designed the July Column, was certainly the most remarkable building in Paris. The detail was sometimes inclined to become cold and wiry, but much of it was really very beautiful, and there was an earnest attempt to found the decoration upon the construc- fion. Still, the form evidently occupied the first place in the architect’s mind, and the construction, honest though it was, was bent to the form, as in the doors and windows of the Salle des Pas Perdus, which were made smaller at the top than at the bottom, in order to look Greek. The Church of Montrouge, by M. Vaudremer, was, on the whole, wery satisfactory, especially internally, but here there were about three times as many trusses as would be really necessary, each of about double the fequisite force, in order to get one cover each pier, and make the building resemble a basilica. The prison of the Madellonettes, by the same architect, was, from the outside at least, a thoroughly straight- forward building. In Paris, M. Vaudoyer had only restored the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. His chief work was the cathedral at Marseilles, which in many respects seemed likely to prove a most satisfac- tory building. The facade was not so good as the cest, but the interior was grand and broad in its effect. Even he, however, would rather endanger the safety of his building by putting a stone cross than a metal one on the summit of his towers, where 2 lightning conductor was necessary, than sacrifice a cherished form to a constructive necessity. One side of this building stood exposed to the full force of the mistral, which would drive the beating rain through anything, and in that climate, where the object was rather to exclude than to admit the light, it would have been but logical to have made the windows on the exposed side smaller than those on the other, or even to have suppressed them altogether. M. Vaudoyer always studied his building more by models than drawings. The chief works of M. Labrouste were the National Library and that of 8. Genevieve. Both of these, and the latter in particular, were very satisfactory buildings on the whole, although in some respects they formed a connecting link between the two extremes of ignorance and contempt for construc- tive science as professed and practised by the present rulers of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and a pedantic attempt to show off—a determination to drag in new materials anywhere and everywhere, in season and out of it. The tendency of the teaching of the Ecole Centrale was somewhat towards this extreme. The best example of it in Paris was the new College Chaptal, still unfinished, where, as in the Biblio- théque S. Genevieve, the cornice gutters were of terra-cotta—a material scarcely fitted for that use, since it could only be had in short lengths, and it was next to impossible to render the joints water- tight. Brick and terra-cotta were often used where stone would have been far more suitable, and the windows had great iron lintels where a simple hoop- iron would have sufficed. One of the best-abused buildings in Paris was the Church of S. Augustin, by M. Baltard; its unsatisfactory effect was, how- ever, due in no small degree to its trapezoidal plan. But it was worthy of study, since it was an earnest, though not altogether successful, attempt to use stone and iron together. The mistake, however, was made of building rather thick walls and binding the iron to them, whereas it should have been quite separate, and a mere half-brick wall would have sufficed to shut in the building. M. Baltard was the reputed architect of the Halles Centrales. All that was really due to him, however, was the stone fortress-like pavilion, which was soon condemned to be destroyed. M. Baltard then adopted and carried out the design of MM. Flachat and Trelat, making certain alterations which were certainly not improve- ments. Still they were well planned, well ventilated, and well lighted, and well worthy of study, as were also the new markets and slaughterhouses of La Villette, by M. Janvier, though the pigs’ slaughter- house had been made to resemble a Gothic cathedral with iron columns and vaults! The best of the railway stations were the Orleans and Lyons, especially the former. The usual roof was some modification of the Polonceau truss, one of the finest examples of which was, perhaps, in the S. Lazare station. The Strasburg station still remained the most satisfactory outside, for M. Hittorff’s Northern station was most absurd, with its Greek Doric columns, some big and some little. In the theatres and churches there was little or nothing to learn, except in the way of whattoavoid. In conclusion, Mr. West warned the architectural student to avoid the failing of modern French architects, who, by divorcing design and construction, had reduced them- selves to therank of mere decorators. The resources of their country were, perhaps, greater than those of any other, and the artistic feeling of the people was exquisite, and yet such had been their ignorance and ineapacity, that they had thrown away all those advantages, and were letting themselves be driven out of their own territory by their rivals, the engineers, This age must have the great buildings it required—railway stations, hotels, markets, ware- houses, and manufactories of every description, and the architecture of the present age must be one adapted to those requirements, and one capable of using freely and rightly all the resources of modern industry and science. Since the architects had re- fused to supply these wants, since they had refused to make themselves thorough masters of construc- tive science, and had preferred to continue making costly and feeble copies of past styles, totally un- fitted to the present age, the engineers were setting to work to make themselves artists, and were beating the architects out of the field, for they would soon have churckes and theatres and private houses in their hands, as well as railways and drainage works. Indeed, there were signs of this in France already. The vile and meretricious style of the Second Empire, whose only merit consisted in its being a true product of its time, was done with for ever. Common sense, common carefulness, and common honesty would carry the day. The engineers were wealthy, prosperous, united, consulted, respected ; architects were disunited, and were beginning to be despised and condemned, for their opinion never overruled that of an engineer, Let them look to it. Let them remember that architecture was a science, aboye all, to start with, an art to finish with. Let them inerease their slender baggage, burn their pre- cedents, and learn their business as engineers had learnt theirs. DISCUSSION. Mr. Pune Sprers expressed himself as greatly surprised at the conclusions to which Mr. West had arrived, and could not understand how it had taken that gentleman a year and ahalf to find out that the French system of education for architects was so entirely wrong. He (Mr. Spiers) had no hesitation in saying that the Ecole des Beaux Arts would not exist a day longer if one tithe of the blame laid upon its shoulders was deserved. He had been maintaining for the past ten years the principle of academical education, and he now had to hear that as carried out in France it was entirely wrong! In justice to himself, he must deny the correctness of some of Mr. West's conclusions. The principal question raised was whether the French school was right or wrong. He (Mr. Spiers) believed that the pre- liminary education given to architects in the French school was the finest preliminary education that could be had in the world, although, perhaps, the pupils began to go wrong after the second or third year of their training, in consequence of not giving sufficient attention to what he would call economy of construction rather than the principles of con- struction. He believed that the principles of con- struction were learnt quite sufficiently in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and it only remained for the students to enter offices to acquire the requisite practical know- ledge. As to the student being thirty-five years old before he could commence to practice (including the five years spent at Rome), and then did not know how to frame a door, how many were there in France who studied up to the age of thirty years? Exceedingly few ; not 1 in 20, for the fact was that after the third or fourth year the students were obliged to get their own livings, or partially so, and assisted architects in their spare time. Although sufficient attention was not paid in the Ecole to construction, still, he did not think that, as a rule, the works of the students were impossible of con- struction. So far as to the Ecole des Beaux Arts. The Ecole Centrale d@’Architecture commenced under very favourable auspices, M. Viollet-le-Duc being one of its supporters and promoters, but it had lately become so wild that M. Viollet-le-Duc had with- drawn from it. Its results, as contrasted with those of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, were ridiculous, and its best works would not compare, either as regards design or construction, with the very worst productions of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. At the latter school the designs by the students were, as a rule, perfect in their proportions. The Ecole Centrale, though it had started under such favourable auspices, with elaborate courses of lectures and about thirty pro- fessors, had proved a failure. As to M. Garnier’s New Opera House, though he (Mr. Spiers) was not an ardent admirer of it, he could see nothing in it to justify the utter condemnation which had been passed upon it by Mr. West. On the contrary, there were many very great beauties in the work, which, as a whole, exhibited great power and talent on the part of its architect. The waste in con- struction, of which the building was said to be an illustration, was not solely due to the French system of architectural training, but was due partly to the evil influence of despotic power, and partly to peculiarity of materials and modes of work. For several of the eyesores of the elevation M. Garnier, the architect, was not responsible: they were the result of the Emperor's interference. In conclusion, Mr. Spiers proposed a vote of thanks to Mr. West. Mr. H. C. Boyss, in seconding the proposal, said he knew very little of modern French architecture, and still less of the French system of architectural education, but it appeared to him that, on Mr. Spiers’s own admission, the charges which had been brought against that system had been fully made out. Mr. West, in reply, said he was quite at one with Mr. Spiers in admitting the extreme beauty of detail and the great excellence of the designs of French architects as designs merely ; what he complained of and protested against in the French system was that from first to last students were not taught to think, in making their designs, of anything besides form, and, as a consequence, most of their designs were made irrespective of the possibility of their being carried into actualexecution. He did not depreciate the Ecole des Beaux Arts, but only those who entered it with a thorough knowledge of what they wanted to learn would benefit by its teaching. Much of the teaching of the Ecole was of a most valuable de- scription, especially the scientific part of it, though this was, perhaps, pushed a little too far. A student could not do better than spend a year or two at the Ecole, provided that he went there with a substratum of knowledge to work upon, as he had already stated.