The Nineteenth Century
The restoration of legitimate monarchy after the fall of Napoleon stimulated a revival of interest in older Gothic and early Renaissance styles, which offered a symbol of dynastic reassurance not only to the state but also to the newly rich. So in the private and commercial architecture of the nineteenth century these earlier styles predominate - in mine-owners' villas and bankers' headquarters. By the mid- nineteenth century , a neo-Baroque strain had established itself, a style exemplified by Charles Garnier's Opera in Paris (1861-74), which, under the heading of Second Empire and with its associations of voluptuous good living, seductive painting and general "ooh-la-la", provides probably the most persistent image of France among the non-French. In addition to the correct, official Classicism and the robust, exuberant and commercial Baroque, there is a third strand running through the nineteenth century that was ultimately more fruitful. The rational engineering approach, embodied in the official School of Roads and Bridges and invigorated by the teaching of Viollet-le-Duc, who reinterpreted Gothic style as pure structure, led to the development of new structural techniques out of which "modern" architectural style was born. Iron was the first significant new material, often used in imitation of Gothic forms and destined to be developed as an individual architectural style in America. In the Eiffel Tower (1889), France set up a potent symbol of things to come. A more significantly French development was in the use of reinforced concrete towards the end of the century, most notably by Auguste Perret , whose 1903 apartment house at 25 rue Franklin, Paris 16e, turns the concrete structure into a visible virtue and breaks with conventional facades. Changes in the patterns of work and travel were making the need for new urban planning very acute in such cities as Paris. Perret and other modernists were all for the high-rise buildings that were going to better the haphazard layouts in America by a rational integration to new street systems. Some of their designs for gigantic skyscraper avenues and suburban rings now look like totalitarian horror-movie sets. But it was tradition, not charity, that blocked their projects at the time.
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