THE FRENCH HÔTEL

By sample Linda Student

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

of Bachelor of Arts in Architecture dissertation

University of Nottingham

2005

Linda Student The French hôtel - i - THE FRENCH HÔTEL

By Linda Student

Chairperson of the Supervisory Committee:

R. Quek sample 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 todissertation 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.

Linda Student The French hôtel - ii -

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, samplehelpful 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. dissertation

Linda Student The French hôtel - 1 - 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 sampleChapter 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 Nineteenthdissertation Century ...... 71 Conclusion ...... 72 Bibliography ...... 75 Appendix I ...... 80 Appendix II ...... 92

Linda Student The French hôtel - 2 - LIST OF FIGURES

Number Page

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 3 - 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

From De la distribution. sampleIII) Project for a country house, garden elevation, Jacques-François Blondel. 61

From De la distribution.

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,dissertation Elevation of the dinning room, 62 Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution.

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

Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution.

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

From De la distribution.

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 4 - 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 sampleV) The Marie Plan, detail sections showing the south-eastern area of Paris 70

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Linda Student The French hôtel - 5 - 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 sampleto 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 beendissertation 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. Linda Student The French hôtel - 6 - 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 sampledesigners. 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 significantdissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 7 - 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 samplethe 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 notdissertation 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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 8 - 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 samplecentury. 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 maydissertation 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.

Linda Student The French hôtel - 9 - Chapter one

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COURT-ARISTOCRATIC FIGURATION

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 10 - 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. sample 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 wasdissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 11 - 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 sampledistinctive 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 lowerdissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 12 - 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 sampleproduct 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 profoundlydissertation 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

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 13 - Chapter two

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 samplecenturies 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 Louisdissertation 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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 14 - 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 samplein 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 dissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 15 - 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 samplethe 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 lateraldissertation 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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 16 - 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. sampleEach 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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Linda Student The French hôtel - 17 - 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 sample rooms and even in their relationship, despite the vagaries of the site conditions. Illustrated in Jaques- Francois Blondel, Cours d’architecture.

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 18 - Chapter three

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 samplesociety 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 Invalidesdissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 19 - 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 samplereputable 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 basicdissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 20 - 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. sampleIn 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. dissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 21 - 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 sampleunusually 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 whodissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 22 - 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 samplenow 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 dressingdissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 23 - sample

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.

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 24 - sample

Figure 5 Ground floor plan, Hôtel de Rothelin by Lassurance

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Figure 6 Ground floor plan, Hôtel de Desmarets by Lassurance

Linda Student The French hôtel - 25 - Chapter four

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 samplewhich 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 theydissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 26 - 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 sampleare 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 dissertation 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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 27 - 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. sample

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Linda Student The French hôtel - 28 - sample

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

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Figure 8 Court, Hôtel d’Amelot by Germain Boffrand

Linda Student The French hôtel - 29 -

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dissertation Figure 9 Figure 10 Ground floor plan, Hôtel Ground floor plan, Hôtel d’Estrées by Robert de Cotte d’Humiéres by Armand- Claude Mollet

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 30 - Chapter five

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 sampleconverse 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 dissertationin 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 31 - 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 sampleHôtel 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 Hôteldissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 32 - 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. sample

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Linda Student The French hôtel - 33 -

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 34 - Chapter six

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 samplegreat 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 developeddissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 35 - 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 sampledecoration 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, wheredissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 36 - Figure 13 sample 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.

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 37 - Chapter seven

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 sampleservants. 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,dissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 38 - 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 sampletheir servants, and that there was a deep-seated feeling that the nobles were concerned with a different race.

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Linda Student The French hôtel - 39 - Chapter eight

ETIQUETTE, CEREMONY AND THE POWER STRUCTURE OF NOBLE SOCIETY

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 40 - 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 sampleon 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 dissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 41 - 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 sample 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 distinguishdissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 42 - 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. sample

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 resultingdissertation 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.

Linda Student The French hôtel - 43 - Chapter nine

DEBATES ON ARCHITECTURAL THEORY AND THE FRENCH HÔTEL

The resumption of extensive private building provided a fertile ground for sampletheoreticians, 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 functionallydissertation 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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 44 - 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 samplesoon 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 Traitedissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 45 - 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 sampleThis 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 dissertationbon 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 46 - 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 sampleviewed 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 intodissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 47 - begins to emerge across a wide front in France from the 1740s onwards, and signals the end of the prolific phase of hôtel building. sample

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Linda Student The French hôtel - 48 - Chapter ten

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 sampletheorist 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 unlikedissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 49 - 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. sampleThe 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 completesdissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 50 - 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 sampleessentially 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.dissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 51 - 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 samplearchitecture 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 dissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 52 - 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 sampleornamental 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 woulddissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 53 - 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. sample

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 avenuedissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 54 - 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 sampleconsider 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.dissertation

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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 55 - 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 samplethe 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 dissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 56 - 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 sampleunderstanding 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 dissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 57 - 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 sampleNature 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 dissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 58 - 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 samplethe 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 facingdissertation 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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 59 - 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 samplecaractère 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, disappearsdissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 60 -

Figure 15

sample I) Project for a country house, ground floor plan, Jacques- François Blondel. From De la distribution.

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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.

Linda Student The French hôtel - 61 - IV) Project for a country house, detail plans of dinning room, Jacques-François Blondel. From De la distribution. sample

V) Project for a country house, Elevation of the dinning room, dissertationJacques-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.

Linda Student The French hôtel - 62 -

sample

dissertation 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.

Linda Student The French hôtel - 64 - Chapter eleven

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 sampleParis 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 symmetricaldissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 65 - 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 sampleabove 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 dieddissertation 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 Linda Student The French hôtel - 66 - 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 samplenumber 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 publishdissertation 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.

Linda Student The French hôtel - 67 - sample

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

Figure 20

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 68 - sample II) The Marie Plan, detail sections showing the north- western area of Paris.

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 69 - sample

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

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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 70 - 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 samplewithout 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 vehicledissertation 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.

Linda Student The French hôtel - 71 -

CONCLUSION

“Ingenious French, our century beholds with astonishment the brilliant extent of your talents,” proclaimed Le Camus de Mézières in 1780, reiterating the samplewidespread 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 typedissertation 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

Linda Student The French hôtel - 72 - 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 samplearchitects 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 withdissertation 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. Linda Student The French hôtel - 73 - continuity and discontinuity, suggest the grounds for a new kind of symbolic space. sample

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Linda Student The French hôtel - 74 - BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Linda Student The French hôtel - 75 - ETLIN, R. A., “Les dedans Jaqeus_Francois Blondel and GUADET, J., the System of the Home, c 1740” Gazette Eléments et théorie de l'architecture. Cours des Beaux Arts professé à l'Ecole Nationale et Spéciale des Paris, April 1978 Beaux-Arts Paris, 1905

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LAVIN, S., MCQUILLAN, J., QUATREMERE DE QUINCY “From Blondel to Blondel: On the Decline AND THE INVENTION of a of the Vitruvian Modern Language of Architecture Treatise,” Paper Palaces. The Rise of the Cambridge, 1992 Renaissance Architectural Treatise New Haven, 1998 LAUGIER, M.-A., An Essay on Architecture MIDDLETON, R., Los Angeles, 1985 ‘The Beaux-Arts’, Architectural Design Magazine, Volume 48, No. 11-12 LE CAMUS DE MEZIERES, N., London, 1978 BRITT, D. (translator), The Genius of Architecture: Or, the MIDDLETON, R., BEASLEY, G. Analogy of That Art With Our Sensations and SAVAGE, N., Santa Monica, California: The Getty The Mark J Millard Architectural Center for the History of Art and the Collection. Vol II. British Books, Humanities, 1992 Seventeenth through Nineteenth Centuries Washington, 1998

Linda Student The French hôtel - 77 - MIDDLETON, R., and WATKIN, PEYRE, M.-J., D., Oeuvres d’Architecture History of World Architecture - Paris, 1765, reprint Farnborough, Neoclassical & 19th Century Architecture England, 1967 London, 1987 RYKWERT, J., NEUMAN, R., The First Moderns. The Architects of the ‘French Domestic Architecture in the Early Eighteenth Century 18th Century: The Town Houses of Robert Cambridge, 1980 de Cotte,’ Journal of the Society of sampleArchitectural Historians 39 SCOTT, K., Philadelphia, PA, USA, May 1980 The Rococo Interior. Decoration and Social Spaces in Early Eighteenth- NEUMAN, R., Century Paris Robert De Cotte and the Perfection of New Haven, 1995 Architecture in Eighteenth-Century France University of Chicago, 1994 SIGURET, P., Le Faubourg Saint-Germain NORBERT, E., Paris, 1974 The Court Society New York, 1983 dissertationTHOMPSON, D., Renaissance Paris: Architecture and Growth PARDAILHE-GALABRUN, A.; 1475-1600 PHELPS, J. (translator), London, 1984 The Birth of Intimacy. Privacy and Domestic life in early modern Paris VERDIER, T., Oxford, 1991 Augustin Charles D'Aviller Paris, 2004 PENNINGTON, D.H., VILLARI, R., Europe in the Seventeenth Century Baroque Personae United Kingdom, 1989 Chicago, 1995

PERAU, G. L. C., WADDY, P., Description historique de l'Hôtel Royal des Seventeenth Century Roman Palaces: Use Invalides. Avec les plans, coupes, élévations and the Art of the Plan géométrales de cet édifice, & les peintures & London, 1991 sculptures de l'Église, dessinées & gravées par le sieur Cochin, Graveur du Roy, & de WIEBENSON, D., l'Académie Royale de Peinture et Sculptur, The Picturesque Garden in France Paris, 1756 Prinston, 1978

Linda Student The French hôtel - 78 - WITTKOWER, R., Classical Theory and Eighteenth century Sensibility New York, 1983

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Linda Student The French hôtel - 79 - 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 sampleattractive, 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 dissertation 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 Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 80 - 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 sampleprinciples 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 principlesdissertation 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 Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 81 - (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 sampleperfecting 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 confrontingdissertation 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 Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 82 -

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 sampleand 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 dissertation 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

Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 83 - 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 samplestructure 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 needdissertation 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.

Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 84 -

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 sampleTriomphe 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 underdissertation 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 Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 85 - 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 samplefavourable 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 mansardeddissertation 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 Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 86 - 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 samplearea 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 madedissertation 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

Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 87 - 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 samplein 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.

dissertation 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. Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 88 - 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. sampleHaussmann’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 largedissertation 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 Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 89 - 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 sampleurban 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 planningdissertation 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.

Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 90 - 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 samplemost 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 sewersdissertation 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. Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 91 - APPENDIX II

THE PRINCIPAL HÔTELS OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD IN PARIS

sampleCLASSIFIED BY ARRONDISSEMENT AND STREET

Right Bank of the Seine (from west to east)

VIII ARRONDISSEMENT

Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore: dissertation 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: Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 92 - 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 sample

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 Duchesnoisdissertation 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

Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 93 - 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 sample 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) dissertation 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) Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 94 -

Rue de Thoringny: 5. Hôtel Sale

Rue de Turenne: 23. Hôtel Colbert de Villacerf

Place des Vosges: The whole. sampleRue 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 dissertation

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

Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 95 - (A) Left bank of the Seine (From east to west)

V ARRONDISSEMENT

Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine: 49. Hôtel od the painter Le Brun

sampleVI 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 dissertation 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: Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 96 - 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) sample73. 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 Rochechouartdissertation (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) Laura Shepherd The French hôtel - 97 - 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 sampleRue Bertrand: 11. Hôtel Masserano

Rue Monsieur: 12. Hôtel de Mlle de Bourbon-Colnde.

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