![]() When France’s fortunes declined after the Franco-Prussian War, which was a disaster for the French, the prestige of things French suffered as well. This Topsfield, Massachusetts, house with a concave curved roof retains the usual dormers, a fine left-side bay window, and a distinctive console hood over the double front door.Īs it happened, the purely French influence waned fairly rapidly in the architecturally freewheeling days of latter-19thcentury America. One-story mansard houses pop up periodically, but certainly not in large numbers. In the same way, many Stick- Style houses have mansard roofs-but they are not Second Empire because it is the Stick Style features that dominate the design. Such a house is still a Queen Anne, not a Second Empire. You might, for example, have a Queen Anne house with a gabled main roof and a mansard-roofed tower. In Second Empire buildings, the mansard roof must be the dominant feature, not a subsidiary one. While it is true that every Second Empire house has at least one mansard roof (and some have many), does the presence of a mansard roof always signify a Second-Empire house? In a word, no. Second Empire features and mansard roofs are so often found together that the style itself is frequently referred to as the Mansard Style. Whatever the exact shape of the roof, there are always numerous dormer windows to light the living space within. Sometimes the mansard roof is two stories high. ![]() The lower pitch may be convex (outwardly curving, possibly in an S or bell shape), concave (inwardly curved or flaring), or steeply angled. The top of a mansard roof is generally broad and flattish in order to maximize the volume of space beneath it-think of a hipped roof with its top surface spreading almost to the edges of the building. The point of Mansart’s dual-pitched roof was to squeeze a full floor of living space above the cornice line of a building without increasing the technical number of stories in the structure-an economically appealing bit of architectural legerdemain in a city like Paris where upward mobility, at least in buildings, was restricted or heavily taxed. Mansart is remembered by architectural historians as the Father of French Classical Architecture, but he clearly had a practical nature as well. The emblem of the style is the distinctive mansard roof, a device attributed to the 17th-century French architect Francois Mansart (1598-1666). This 1870s house in Rhinebeck, New York, has traditional Second Empire features, with distinctive window ornaments and lintels. ![]() Not all mansard houses were spread out many were designed to fit narrow lots while keeping their hallmark rooflines and towers. The Second Empire style, with its ubiquitous mansard roofs and heavy ornament, remained the first choice of wealthy homebuilders and their architects because it was, in their eyes, not only thoroughly “modern,” but also fashionably flashy in what was a very flashy era indeed. ![]() Even after the Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871, Second Empire-style buildings continued to ride high on a tide of huge, newly minted, post-Civil War fortunes that were amply equipped to handle these extravagantly decorative houses. It is a type that might be found anywhere from Maine to California in the 1870s and 1880s.įor a time in the middle of the 19th century, what set the pace of architectural taste for well-heeled Americans was not some ideal of the ancient past but all things in vogue during the regime of Louis Napoleon (1852-1870), or the era called the French Second Empire. ![]() Typical of a towerless middle-class house is this Red Hook, New York, example with a handsome veranda across the front and a projecting upper bay in lieu of a tower. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |