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THE BEAUX ARTS STYLE
BACKGROUND
Introduction:
It was sometimes loosely called the “American Renaissance” -- that rage for stately Roman architecture that came to the United States under the pervasive influence of L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, the French national school of architecture. Seduced by the muscular glory that was Rome, as taught by the French, American architects at the turn of the twentieth century, as one wag has remarked, “put up little Romes everywhere.” This style, known as Beaux Arts, after the school of the same name, became the preferred expression for all manner of official buildings – state capitols, courthouses, banks, libraries, even lodge halls. It was what the clients wanted.
If American intellectuals of the day sought to foster a true and fresh, genuinely American art form, the Beaux Arts Style was no doubt their greatest disappointment. Americans became enthralled anew, perhaps more so than ever, with European style and influence. Some have noted America’s continuing “cultural inferiority complex” to Europe. And it may fairly be said that Beaux Arts architecture was, perhaps, its most egregious and spectacular symptom.
But the style did provide some rich and compelling ornaments for our cities and towns. In a poetical sense, these often bespeak the importance and/or rock-solid stability of local institutions. In a broader sense, the style brought an element of order and planning to our townscapes. More importantly, it brought a strong measure of learning, venerability and social standing to the American profession of architecture.
L’Ecole des Beaux Arts:
From time immemorial the French nation has regarded itself, on the whole rightly, as a global center of art and culture. In the nineteenth century its L’Ecole des Beaux Arts was similar to today’s broadly prestigious graduate schools of the fine arts (painting, sculpture and architecture). The Ecole traced its origins to the Academie des Beaux-Arts , founded in 1648 by Cardinal Mazarin under the patronage of Louis XIV. The Academie , as it developed, played a most consequential role in European architecture. Among other things, it introduced scholarly debate on the theory of architecture, and it raised architects from the status of master artisans to that of philosophers. The Academie remained a fixture of government throughout the tumultuous years of the French Revolution and beyond. It figured prominently in the early preservation movement in France, beginning in the 1830s. In 1863 it was made independent of the French
government by order of Emperor Napoleon III, wherein it was rechristened L’Ecole des Beaux Arts.
As a school, it attracted students from many countries, most notably, the United States. The Ecole trained young architects to have an indepth understanding of architectural history and to be able to design in “the manner of” (i.e., in the manner of great architects and styles of the past). Indeed, quotation from well-known landmarks of antiquity was considered a sign of cultivation rather than poverty of invention or originality. Although hundreds upon hundreds took the five-part entrance exam (which was a mark of the Ecole’s prestige), the school only admitted sixty students per term, 45 French and 15 foreign. Students received broad instruction in painting, sculpture, history, geometry, philosophy and mathematics. Student training at the Ecole was uncommonly rigorous. Students were driven with punishing workloads. Projects routinely required dozens of highly detailed architectural drawings accurately produced in a short time – these, then, to be roundly critiqued by elevated faculty or atelier (studio) masters. It could be a humbling experience for many a young man.
Skills were honed at creating architectural renderings that would amaze – rich and heavy with detail, plenty to look at in them, and in color, watercolor being, then as now, a most difficult medium. And there were fiercely selective design competitions, the greatest being the Prix de Rome (Prize of Rome), which provided a scholarship to the honored one to study in Rome, then regarded as the fountainhead of classicism. It was that robust, manifestly imperial classicism that the Ecole saw as one of the great and eternal truths of architecture.
The Ecole Approach Comes to America:
As late as the final third of the nineteenth century, being a professional architect, or for that matter an attorney, did not require a university education. Indeed, as one observer put it, architects were “simply carpenters putting on airs.” There were no architects, as we understand the term, in early America. Such designing of buildings as took place was either carried out by
- gifted builders or carpenters with access to European (generally British) published style guides and pattern books, or 2) gentlemen amateurs who cultivated their exquisite taste, studied the classics, and designed homes for themselves, their friends and social equals. It was a fine hobby for a gentleman but one for which he did not expect to be paid. Thomas Jefferson is the greatest, but by no means the only, example.
London trained Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764 – 1820) is generally regarded as America’s first professional architect. He trained others as he was trained, through apprenticeship. A young man might start as a floor sweeper or general doer of menial tasks, watch, learn to draw the classical orders, be promoted to junior draftsman, hone his skills, make senior draftsman grade, and finally take his place alongside the “great man” as a junior partner in the architectural practice. The finished architects who emerged through this system were essentially job trained businessmen with no higher aspirations. Late in his life, architect George
downtowns in the fair’s image, with classical buildings, grand vistas, Parisian style boulevards, etc. All this is remembered today as the City Beautiful Movement. It is discussed only briefly here because it had little impact in Louisiana.
Character-Defining Features:
The Beaux Arts is a classical style with the full range of Greco-Roman elements: the column, arch, vault and dome. It is the showy, almost operatic, manner in which these elements are composed that gives the style its characteristic flavor. General character-defining elements include:
Symmetrical articulation Lavish and intensive surface decoration A single architectural element set as a grand gesture – often an over-scaled archway, triple archway or short but dramatic colonnade as the center of the composition Coupled columns Facades composed around advancing and receding wall planes. The transition from one plane to another is often highlighted with multiple corner elements. Entablatures that advance and recede to mark the locations of columns below An active roofline (for a classical style) with dramatic roof-top figure sculpture Fully and boldly formed ornamental sculpture employed elsewhere on the facades (as opposed to more subtle bas relief) Monumental (sometimes multiple) runs of steps approaching a building’s entrance Floor plans that culminate in a single grand room Axial floor plans that establish vistas through different spaces
Building Materials:
Beaux Arts buildings were designed to make a formal statement. Thus their materials tend to be of the best and most expensive quality. In most the predominant material is light- colored stone, often limestone, and often richly worked with strong bas relief, rooftop sculptural elements, quoins and rustication. Rock-face stone is virtually never used. Sometimes stone is used in combination with light-colored brick (to save money). Sometimes the material is cast stone or, in lesser examples, cast concrete. For lamp standards, fittings and details, glazed terra cotta is sometimes used as well a wrought iron-looking material.
Materials of note on interiors include marble (often colorful and richly veined), polished woods (usually dark), alabaster, terrazzo floors, polished brass and bronze (for ornament and
fittings), and, on fine examples, gold leaf. Interiors may also feature painterly effects, fresco (looking) murals and the like.
Beaux Arts Urban Planning:
The Beaux Arts approach to design had a strong urban planning component. In this it was solidly in the tradition of a style of town planning that emerged during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe. It is still known to this day as Baroque city planning. It relies on grand, tree-lined avenues; axial cross streets; and long vistas terminating at carefully placed classical façades. A central feature is the so-called “crow’s foot” -- three or more avenues starting at a single central point (on a grand public square) and fanning out in different directions to give dynamic vistas through a city. City plans of this type were sometimes created in the United States, L’Enfant’s plan for Washington D. C. for instance. In palace gardens it took the form of immaculately clipped hedge parterres setting off avenues and vistas – nature made to look rather unnatural – sometimes called the French Garden. This is in contrast to the naturalistic English Garden tradition.
THE LOUISIANA STORY
In Louisiana local architects took up the Beaux Arts style as did their counterparts in other states. They were mostly based in New Orleans (historically the state’s largest city), with a few in Shreveport (historically the second largest city). While the state has only a modest number of examples, the buildings by their very nature make major architectural statements. Hence their impact upon our city and townscapes is greater than numbers alone would indicate. In some Louisiana communities, the single Beaux Arts style building that might exist is clearly the landmark of the town, providing an anchor – a sense of place.
Beaux Arts-inspired city planning, French as it was, made virtually no impact in Louisiana. The only significant exceptions would be Theodore C. Link’s original (1922) plan for the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge (since altered) and Barksdale Air Force Base, Bossier City (1931). (For the latter, see Photo 2.)
Property Types:
In Louisiana almost all extant Beaux Arts style buildings are of the following property types:
courthouses (photos 3 & 4) banks (photos 5-8) fraternal organization halls (photos 9 & 10)
National Significance: The authors, based on over 60 years field experience in Louisiana, cannot imagine a Beaux Arts building in the state that would meet the high threshold of national significance.
A major consideration confronting any National Register candidate is architectural integrity. This is typically not a issue for Beaux Arts buildings. They were constructed of materials meant to last (stone, terra-cotta, etc.) and are not as subject to rapid decay and feature replacement as are wooden buildings. (Decay aside, it’s harder to knock off or cover Beaux Arts features by definition.)
The kind of alterations Beaux Arts buildings might receive typically would be bad window replacement or subdivided interiors – neither of which are generally severe enough to make a building ineligible due to loss of integrity. In the aforementioned scenario, the surviving original exterior features (grand columns, arches, etc) are generally of sufficient architectural prominence to “carry the day” so-to-speak. In other words, the strong Beaux Arts character visually dominates the window replacements.
Bibliography:
Fricker, Jonathan; Fricker, Donna; Duncan, Patricia. Louisiana Architecture: A Handbook on Styles. Lafayette, Louisiana: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1998.
Harmon, Robert B. Beaux Arts Classicism in American Architecture: A Brief Style Guide. Vance Bibliographies, 1983.
Poesch, Jessie and Bacot, Barbara SoRelle, editors. Louisiana Buildings, 1710-1940. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.
Brooklyn Museum. The American Renaissance, 1876-1917. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979.
This document was prepared for the Louisiana Division of Historic Preservation by:
Jonathan and Donna Fricker Fricker Historic Preservation Services, LLC First Draft: September 2009 Final Draft: February 2010
PHOTO GALLERY
Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.Photo 1. Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.
Photo 2. Beaux Arts planning at Barksdale Air Force Base, 1931, Bossier City, Louisiana. Courtesy LSU-Shreveport Archives.
Photos 5-6. Beaux Arts banks in Opelousas (above) and Donaldsonville (below).
Photo 7. The richly detailed Ruston State Bank (1910), complete with a central Roman triumphal arch.
Photo 8. This bank in the small town of Hessmer is a fairly restrained example of the Beaux Arts taste.
