Second Empire architecture in the United States and Canada is an architectural style that was popular in both nations in the late 19th century between 1865 and 1900. Second Empire architecture was influenced by the redevelopment in the mid-19th century of ancient Paris, the capital city of France, under former President of the French Republic (1848–1852), and later Emperor Napoleon III's Second French Empire (1852–1870), and was influenced partly by the architectural styles of the earlier French Renaissance (15th to 17th centuries).
Second Empire architecture is typically characterized by a mansard roof, elaborate ornament, and a strong massing. It was common in public buildings, commercial buildings, and some residential structures.
Terminology
In the 19th century, the standard way to refer to this style of architecture was simply "French" or "Modern French", but later architectural historians / authors came up with the more accurate and descriptive term "Second Empire" or more precisely "French Second Empire". Currently, the style is most widely known as Second Empire,Minnesota History, Vol. 63, No. 4 (Winter 2012–13) Second Empire Baroque,Roth, Leland M., A Concise History of American Architecture, ICON Editions, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York 1980 pp. 128–132 or French Baroque Revival;Dorsey, John and James D. Dilts, A Guide to Baltimore Architecture, Tidewater Publishers, Centerville, Maryland, 1981, p. 86 Leland M. Roth refers to it as "Second Empire Baroque."Roth p. 128. Mullett-Smith terms it the "Second Empire or General Grant style" due to its popularity in designing government buildings during the Grant administration.Mullett-Smith p. 29.
Characteristics Key features
The central feature of the Second Empire architectural style is the mansard roof, a four-sided gambrel roof with a shallow or flat top usually pierced by dormer windows, and usually covered by shingles or stone slate wedges. This roof type originated in 16th century France and was fully developed in the following 17th century by Francois Mansart, after whom it is named. The greatest virtue of the mansard is that it can allow an extra full story of space without raising the height of the formal facade, which stops at the entablature. The mansard roof can assume many different profiles, with some being steeply angled, while others are concave, convex, or s-shaped. Sometimes mansards with different profiles are superimposed upon one another, especially on towers. For most Second Empire buildings, the mansard roof is the primary stylistic feature and the most commonly recognised link to the style's French roots.
A secondary feature is the use of pavilions, a segment of the facade that is differentiated from surrounding segments by a change in height, stylistic features, or roof design and are typically advanced from the main plane of the facade. Pavilions are usually located at emphatic points in a building such as the center or ends and allow the uniformity of the roof to be broken for dramatic effect. While not all Second Empire buildings feature pavilions, a significant number, particularly those built by wealthy clients or as public buildings, do. The Second Empire style frequently includes a rectangular (sometimes octagonal) tower as well. This tower element may be of equal height to the highest floor, or may exceed the height of the rest of the structure by a story or two.
A third feature is massing. Second Empire buildings, because of their height, tend to convey a sense of largeness. Additionally, the facades are typically solid and flat, rather than pierced by open porches or angled and curved facade bays. Public buildings constructed in the Second Empire style were especially built on a massive scale, such as the Philadelphia City Hall and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and held records for the largest buildings in their day. Prior to the construction of the Pentagon during the 1940s, for example, the Second Empire–style Ohio State Asylum for the Insane in Columbus, Ohio, was reported to be the largest building under one roof in the U.S., though the title may actually belong to Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, another Kirkbride Second Empire asylum.
Plans Second Empire plans for public buildings are almost entirely cubic or rectangular, adapted from formal French architectural ensembles, such as the Louvre. Sometimes they include interior courts. Most Second Empire domestic plans are adapted from prevailing plan types developed for Italianate designs by authors such as Alexander Jackson Davis and Samuel Sloan. The prime distinction between the designs is a preference for a central focus rather than a diffusion of forms. Floor plans for Second Empire residences can be symmetrical, with the tower (or tower-like element) in the center, or asymmetrical, with the tower or tower-like element to one side. Virginia and Lee McAlester divided the style into five subtypes:McAlester p.241.
Simple mansard roof – about 20% Centered wing or gable (with bays jutting out at either end) Asymmetrical – about 20% Central tower (incorporating a clock and\or belvedere lookout room) – about 30% Town house
Ornament
There are two variations of Second Empire ornamentation: the high style, which followed French precedents closely and employed rich ornamentation, and the more vernacular styles, which lack a strongly distinctive ornamental vocabulary. The high style is mostly seen in expensive public buildings and the houses of the wealthy, while the vernacular form is more common in typical domestic architecture. The exterior style could be expressed in either wood, brick or stone, though high style examples on the whole prefer stone facades or brick facades with stone details (a brick and brownstone combination seems to be particularly common). Some Second Empire buildings have cast iron facades and elements.
High-style Second Empire buildings took their ornamental cue from the Louvre expansion. Typical features include quoins at the corners to define elements, elaborate dormer windows, pediments, brackets, and strong entablatures. There is a clear preference for a variation between rectangular and segmental arched windows; these are frequently enclosed in heavy frames (either arched or rectangular) with sculpted details. Another frequent feature is a strong horizontal definition of the facade, with a strong string course. Particularly high-style examples follow the Louvre precedent by breaking up the facade with superimposed columns and pilasters that typically vary their order between stories. Vernacular buildings typically employed less and more eclectic ornament than high-style specimens that generally followed the vernacular development in other styles.
The mansard roof ridge was frequently topped with a decorative iron trim, known as "cresting". Often, lightning rods were integrated into the cresting, as pinnacles.
History The mansard roof, a defining feature of Second Empire design, had evolved since the 16th century in France and Germany and was often employed in 18th- and 19th-century European architecture. Its appearance in the United States was relatively uncommon in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Mount Pleasant in Philadelphia is one of the few early examples, including mansard roofs on its side pavilions.
In Canada, because of French influence in Quebec and Montreal, the mansard roof was more commonly seen in the 18th century and used as a design feature and never entirely fell out of favour. The earliest Second Empire style private residence in English Canada that was built with a mansard roof was for the commercial druggist and land speculator Tristram Bickle between 1850 and 1855.
In the mid-19th century, Second Empire architecture in the United States and Canada began to blossom. A series of major projects and events in French urban planning and design provided the inspiration for Second Empire architecture. Haussmann's renovation of Paris under Napoleon III in the 1850s and the creation of baroque architectural ensembles employing mansard roofs and elaborate ornament provided the impetus for the development and emulation of the style in the US. Haussmann's work was targeted to renovating the decaying Medieval neighborhoods of Paris by wholesale demolition and new construction of streetscapes with uniform cornice lines and stylistic consistency, an urban ensemble that impressed 19th century architects and designers.
The reconstruction of the Louvre Palace between 1852 and 1857 by architects Louis Visconti and Hector Lefuel was widely publicized and served to provide a vocabulary of elaborate baroque architectural ornament for the new style. Finally, the Exposition Universelle of 1855 drew tourists and visitors to Paris and displayed the new architecture and urbanism of the city, an event that brought the style to international attention. These developments worked together to excite interest in design under the Second Empire in the US, particularly among francophiles and those interested in French fashion, then under the sway of Empress Eugenie whose tastes influenced clothing, furniture, and interior decoration. Despite the historicism of the ornamentation, Second Empire architecture was generally viewed as "modern" and hygienic as opposed to the revival styles of Italianate and Gothic Revival which hearkened to the Renaissance and Middle Ages.
The European born and trained architect Detlef Lienau, who studied architecture in Paris and emigrated to the U.S. in 1848, is credited with designing the first Second Empire house in the US, the Hart M. Schiff house in New York City, built in 1850. Lienau remained a prime designer of Second Empire houses, designing the Lockwood-Matthews Mansion in Norwalk, Connecticut (designed 1860). Despite Lienau's work, Second Empire did not displace dominant styles of the 1850s, Italianate and Gothic Revival and remained associated with only particularly wealthy patrons.
The first major Second Empire structure designed by an American architect was James Renwick's gallery, now the Renwick Gallery designed for William Wilson Corcoran (1859–1860). Renwick's gallery was one of the first major public buildings in the style, and its favorable reception furthered interest in Second Empire design. These early buildings display a close affinity to the high-style designs found in the new Louvre construction, with quoins, stone detailing, carved elements and sculpture, a strong division between base and piano nobile, pavilioned roofs, and pilasters.
The outbreak of the Civil War limited new construction in the US, and it was after the end of the war that Second Empire finally came to prominence in American design. The architects Alfred B. Mullett, who was supervising architect for the Treasury Department, and John McArthur Jr. a major designer of public buildings in the Mid-Atlantic, helped popularize the style for public and institutional buildings. Mullet, in particular, who favored the style, was responsible from 1866 to 1874 for designing federal public buildings across the US, spreading Second Empire as a stylistic idiom across the country. His massive and expensive public buildings in St. Louis, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, New York City, and Washington D.C., which closely followed the precedents set by the Louvre construction with grand mansard roofs and tiers of superimposed columns, made a strong impression on the architects in cities with new Mullett designs. Because of its first major appearance in public buildings, Second Empire quickly became the dominant style for the construction of large public projects and commercial buildings. Ironically, buildings in the style built in the US were often closer to their 17th-century roots than examples of the style found in Europe.Copplestone, p. 311.