X848.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



99 



merest indication of detail and finish would answer the purpose just 

 as well as that degree of the latter which is now deemed indispens- 

 able, although the parts to which it is applied may he out of sight, 

 or nearly so. Therefore, I cannot help taking the river front of 

 Uie new Palace of Westminster to he a very great mistake, anda very 

 costly one also. However exquisite may be its beauties of detail, 

 they are valueless if, as really is the case, they are invisible, and 

 cannot be enjoyed by being admired. 



X. AVhat is or is not a palace seems to be difficult to say, when 

 we hnd among the examples referred to under that designation, in the 

 index to Cresy's translation of Milizia's Lives, not only Barbers' Hall, 

 tlie Horse Guards, Heriot's Hospital, and other buildings which do 

 not seem to belong at all to that class, but also the Monument on 

 Fish Street Hill ! We may therefore congratulate ourselves on 

 having besides that, two more palaces which we have not reckoned 

 before — namely, the Nelson and the York Palaces. A most agree- 

 able surprise must it be to Mr. Railton, to find that he has erected 

 an entire palace when he attempted only to stick up a single 

 column. 



THE HOTEL DE VILLE, PARIS. 



Hotel (le Ville ds Paris, Mesure, Dessine, Grave, el Publie, par 

 Victor Calliat, Architecte ; avec une histoire de ce monument, par hE 

 Roux DE LiNCY. Grand folio. Paris, 1844. 



As the seat of the Provisional Government of the new French 

 Republic, this edifice has recently acquired a degree of interest 

 even with those who would be wholly indifl'erent to it as a work of 

 architecture. Of course, it is as the latter alone that we notice it, 

 and had the same means of doing so been afforded us, should have 

 done so before. Still, late as we are in our notice of the splendid 

 architectural publication whose title heads this article, we are not 

 at all behind others, for we are, we believe, the very first to make 

 mention of it in this country. It may sound oddly to say that we 

 hn.iten to give our readers some account of it ; nevertheless such is 

 the case, because, anxious to speak of it without further delay, 

 just at the moment when circumstances give the building an inci- 

 dental importance, distinct from that which it possesses as an ar- 

 chitectural subject, we are at j)resent prepared for reporting only 

 of the graphic part of the work, having no time to examine the 

 literary one. The latter is, in fact, so exceedingly copious, and 

 contains such a vast mass of historical matter, as to require very 

 patient study, more especially as the form in which it is given is a 

 highly inconvenient one for either perusalor reference. In our opinion, 

 it would have been greatly better to publish the plates by them- 

 selves, or with only so much letter-press as was requisite for ex- 

 plaining them, and describing the present edifice architecturally ; 

 tlie history being made to form a separate octavo volume, either 

 as a distinct work or not, as might be deemed expedient. Had 

 that been done, both the folio volume or atlas of plates, and the 

 octavo of text, would have answered their respective purposes much 

 better than is now accomplished. The former would not have 

 been so inconveniently bulky ; the other would have been a read- 

 able volume, whereas now, however readable the matter itself may 

 be, hardly can it be said to be in a readable shape ; whence the pro- 

 bability is, that very few will encounter the fatigue of reading it 

 at all. The perusing the text continuously in its present shape 

 would, to ourselves at least, be a formidable task ; yet, fortunately, 

 we are not particularly solicitous about matters of mere historical 

 record, — events and transactions which have no other relation to 

 the edifice itself than what is derived from the latter having been 

 the locality where they occurred. 



Leaving M. Le Roux de Lincy's portion of the work, we shall 

 confine ourselves to M. Victor Calliat's department of it, who, we 

 should observe, holds, or lately did hold, the office of Inspecteur of 

 the building, and who employed five years in carefully measuring 

 and delineating the various parts of the structure, having, besides, 

 free access to the designs of MM. Godde and Lesueur, the archi- 

 tects employed for the new work. Until the recent amplification 

 and alterations, which have rendered it one of the most important 

 monuments of the French capital even in its present greatly im- 

 proved and embellished state, the Hotel de Ville was of little ar- 

 chitectural note, except as a souvenir of old Paris. The style of 

 it had been voted " Gothique" and obsolete ; and the actual design 

 showed much more of the grotesque than the beautiful. All that 

 Woods says of it in his " Letters, " when speaking of the buildings 

 of Paris, is : " It has a certain richness of appearance, although it 

 is not in a style of architecture capable of great merit (?) and even 



not one of the best examples of the sort. It is, however, as good 

 as our Guildhall." As good as our Guildliall ! — as well might he 

 have called it at once intolerably bad. 



The original edifice that forms the nucleus of the present 

 greatly extended mass, was commenced in the reign of Francis I., 

 viz., in 1533, after the designs of Domenico Boccadoro, or Boccardo, 

 otherwise called Domenico di Cortona, assisted by Maitre Jehan 

 Asselin, and the fatade and the " Cour d'Honneur," now the middle 

 one of the three courts, were completed in 1541 ; and much was 

 subsequently done from time to time. At the period of the first 

 Revolution, the edifice suffered greatly ; many sculptures and em- 

 bellishments that were obnoxious to the enlightened populace 

 were destroyed; among others, a series of portraits from the 16th 

 century, and a number of large paintings by Porbus, de Troyes, 

 Largilliere, Mignard, Vanloo, and other masters, — or if not actually 

 destroyed, removed, nor is it now possible to ascertain what has 

 become of them. 



During the Empire and the Restoration, the edifice underwent 

 some partial alterations ; but it was not until 183G that it was de- 

 termined to undertake improvement upon a comprehensive scale ; 

 and great as it was, the scheme has been carried out so successfully 

 that the Hotel de Ville may be placed foremost among the ar- 

 chitectural monuments that mark the reign of Louis Philippe. 



If not particularly remarkable in itself, remarked it may be, that 

 this edifice, which is, in some degree at least, similar in purpose, is 

 also contemporaneous with our own new Palace of Westminster, 

 except that it is already completed, whUe the completion of the 

 other cannot at present be calculated upon. Further, being in 

 the Renaissance style, it shows vvhat might have been made of our 

 our own building at Westminster, had the stipulated-for Eliza- 

 bethan or Anglo-Renaissance style been adhered to, but at the 

 same time treated with the same freedom and refinement as are 

 shown by MM. Godde and Lesueur, in their rifacciamento and 

 enlargement of the Parisian Hotel de VUle. Among the improve- 

 ments which the structure has received from them, not one of 

 the least is that whereas it before showed only a single front — that 

 towards the Place de la Greve — it now forms an entirely insulated 

 mass (405 feet by 272), with four regular facades, the original or 

 west one (now greatly extended) towards the aforesaid Place, the 

 corresponding or east one towards the Rue Lobau, and of the two 

 shorter ones, that facing the north towards the Rue Tixerandie, 

 and that on the south facing the Quai de la Greve. So far, if in 

 no other respect, it has greatly the advantage over our Palace of 

 Westminster, one side of which, and that which according to the 

 design is the principal facade, is altogether inaccessible, so that 

 its elaborate decoration, requiring as it does the closest inspection, 

 is completely thrown away. 



The former west front, or that towards the Place — which was 

 all of the edifice that then showed itself externally — was not quite 

 200 feet, but is now extended to upwards of twice that length, by 

 the addition of two more lofty pavilions, similar in character, but 

 somewhat varied in design, from the original ones. Hence, the 

 general composition is now increased from three to seven divisions 

 or compartments, two of them being the intermediate corps de 

 bdtiment connecting the two pavUions (the old and the new one) 

 on either side of the centre. We may refer our readers to two 

 difi'erent views, which they will probably be able to turn to at 

 once, one of them being in Pugin's '^ Paris," the other in Allom's 

 " France ;"* for from them they will immediately perceive how 

 great is the improvement as well as change that has taken place. 

 That fa9ade, however, is not the one which best satisfies us, there 

 being in the original portion of it a good deal in a rather mesquin 

 taste, to which the architects were obliged to conform for the rest ; 

 whereas in the three other fronts, and also the inner courts, they 

 have, instead of allowing themselves to be tied down to precedent, 

 given artistic scope to their ideas, seizing on the better spirit of the 

 style by which they were to be guided, and refining upon it by 

 preserving all its really valuable characteristics and motifs, and 

 avoiding its uncouthnesses, its harshnesses, and its mere eccentri- 

 cities. Compared with the other principal front — the eastern one, 

 facing the Rue Lobau — the original one has, in spite of all im- 



* Pugin's representation of the building is 80 excjedingly poor as to be scarcely intel- 

 ligible; all the features being so very rudely expressed, that it is impossible to make out 

 more than the mere general design. Allom's, on the contrary, is tastefully touched, and 

 shows as much as can be expected in a general view of the whole front in so small an en- 

 graving; at the same time, there are inaccuracies in it which ought to have been guarded 

 against. That so able an architectural artist as Wr. Allom is, should have given only a 

 single exterior, and not so much as one interior view of so important a public monument, 

 is to be regretted. Perhaps he himself, or his publishers, regret it now that circum- 

 stances have given a particular interest to that particular building. Let us hope then, 

 that Mr. A. will visit the French capital once more, and give us a " Paris after the Third 

 Revolution," since he may there liud many subjects for his pencil which he had passed 

 over;— among others, the Church of St. Vincent de Paule, and the Kcole des fieaux 

 Arts, both of which would require to be illustrated by more than one drawing. 



