Leith, James A.

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

Comptes rendus / Book Reviews 221sculpture, he was able to turn a collection consisting largely of funerary monumentsand architectural fragments into an extraordinarily popular and influential museum.The story of Lenoirs museum illustrates even more clearly than the Louvre thecontradictory forces of the revolutionary period and the way these were resolved bythe museum. It also reveals the strange way in which the Revolution revived aninterest in the past which it had vowed to abolish.Nearly all the items in Lenoirs collection had religious, royal, or aristocraticroots, and none was an acknowledged masterpiece. Despite the fact that they wereall French, there was little reason to expect the Revolution to preserve them, muchless exhibit them. However, Lenoirs masterful arrangement of the pieces accordingto century in a series of galleries decorated to evoke the spirit of the period wasintended to tell the story of the evolution of French art, as he claimed, from itsbarbaric roots to classical excellence. Here a royal tomb lost its regal and religioussignificance and became a bit of evidence of the progress of French art and culture.Ironically the romantically decorated galleries and the elysian garden containingthe actual remains of a number of famous Frenchmen also revived an interest in thepast, especially the medieval past. The museum was ahead of its time in thatclassical era, and by the blossoming of the historically oriented Romantic move-ment, it had been disbanded and its contents returned to their former owners.Throughout his book McClellan has attempted, usually successfully, to set themuseological and aesthetic story into its political and social context, a difficult jobconsidering the confusion and turbulence of the period. This is a very successfulbook, which should appeal as much to students of French history or the history ofideas as to those concerned with the history of arts and museums. There are 84well-chosen black-and-white illustrations.Christopher GreeneTrent UniversityDavid Van Zahnten  Building Paris: Architectural Institutions and the Transform-ation of the French Capital, 1830–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1994. Pp xix, 360.One of a series by David Van Zahnten on the architecture of nineteenth-centuryParis, this book deals with the transformation of the capital during the July Monar-chy, the short-lived Second Republic, and the Second Empire. This was a period ofexplosive growth when central Paris took on many of the features of the present-daycity  the expansion of the Hôtel de Ville, additions to the Palais de Justice, thenew opera by Garnier, extension of the École des Beaux-Arts, the completion of theLouvre, erection of new libraries such as the Bibliothèque Nationale, the piercingof the great boulevards under the direction of Haussmann, and the opening of publicspaces such as that in front of the Comédie française. It was also the period of theerection of grand hotels, huge department stores, imposing banks, and impressiverailway stations.222 Histoire sociale / Social HistoryMuch of this development is familiar to historians, but more than previousscholars Van Zahnten analyzes in detail the administrative framework within whicharchitects worked. He underlines the fact that architectural practice in France, andespecially its capital, was very different from that in the United States and Britain.Architects in Paris worked under strict government discipline, whereas Anglo-American architects worked largely as free agents. Even private builders had toconform to regulations about alignment, continuity between cornices along blocksof buildings, and allowable heights. Private buildings thus had to be planned toserve as background for major public monuments.An unusually broad span of public buildings fell under state control besides majorstate buildings  theatres because of censorship, churches because since theRevolution they were owned by the state, and even thermal baths. Most architectswere prepared for their public role by training at the École des Beaux-Arts. Despitethese forces for uniformity in style, Van Zahnten shows there were tensions andrivalries among various government services  the Bâtiments Civils, the Travauxde Paris, the Palais Royaux (or Impériaux), the Édifices Diocésains, the MonumentsHistoriques, the corps of Commissaires-voyers, who supervised local construction,and the Bureau of the Plan de Paris.Van Zahnten argues convincingly, however, that despite overall control and thefact that most architects worked on retainer in offices provided by the state, therivalries among state agencies and sheer force of personality allowed leadingarchitects considerable room to express their personal visions. One of the authorsbest chapters deals with individual architects. He provides a valuable table showingwhich architects worked for various agencies and which ones taught at the Écoledes Beaux-Arts. Synthesizing these lists, he concludes that four personalities wereof central importance in mid-nineteenth-century Paris: Pierre Fontaine, Félix Duban,Victor Baltrard, and, ça va sans dire, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. In addition he lists 12others of secondary importance: Auguste Caristie, father and son Charles andHubert Rohault de Fleury, Jean Hugyot, Louis Visconti, Hector Lefuel, Joseph Duc,Henri Labrouste, Émile Gilbert, Gabriel Davioud, Théodore Ballu, and CharlesGarnier. Van Zahntens sketches of the careers and ideas of these architects makean invaluable contribution to the field.Van Zahnten sees a major development linking all the series of architects andbuildings: the transition from a dominant goût de roi (or emperor) toward a morevaried and more modern architecture. Royal architecture had been designed torepresent the authority and glory of the ruler. According to the author, the lastgreat example of such representational architecture was the additions to the Louvrecompleted in 1857, just over a dozen years before the overthrow of the emperorwhose power it was intended to express. The new architecture expressed itself inmodern building types and novel materials such as iron and glass sheds. The newtypes included such buildings as the Bibliothèque Nationale, the market known asLes Halles, the huge modern hotels, the new department stores, and the imposingrailway stations. Although Van Zahnten does not say so, these too were oftenrepresentational, not of the regime, but of the financial power of industrializedFrance.Comptes rendus / Book Reviews 223Despite its impeccable scholarship, new insights, and wealth of illustrations, thisbook is still primarily about architectural history in the traditional sense. There isonly passing mention of the actual social changes which lay behind the new devel-opments or of their impact on social life. How was life different because of theapartment blocks or department stores? How did the railway stations changepeoples habits? What happened to the people who were ousted from their tradi-tional dwellings as Haussman cut his broad boulevards through the old city? Howwas everyday life influenced by new sidewalks, sewers, and the coming of freshwater, the conquête de l’eau as one historian calls it? Thus social historians will belargely disappointed by this otherwise impressive book.James A. LeithQueen’s UniversityGinette Kurgan-van Hentenryk et Serge Jaumain, dir.  Aux frontières des classesmoyennes. La petite bourgeoisie belge avant 1914, Bruxelles, Éditions de lUni-versité de Bruxelles, 1992, 147 p.Once upon a time, it was thought the petite bourgeoisie was slated for extinction,caught in a suffocating squeeze between capital and labour. The departure ofshopkeepers and artisans from the historical stage might be accompanied byexplosions of resentment and political extremism, but such rear-guard actions couldonly prolong an inevitable decline. There were currents in Marxism and in politicaleconomy, more so in the late nineteenth century than in our own times, whichbelieved in this scenario. The present volume of essays, ably edited by GinetteKurgan and Serge Jaumain, lays the thesis of inevitable decline to rest, replacingit with a picture of petit-bourgeois life at once more nuanced and open-ended. Fin-de-siècle Belgium is the chosen terrain of discussion, and it yields interesting resultsin three respects.There is first the question of petit-bourgeois identity. Workers may identifythemselves as workers, bourgeois as bourgeois, but what about the various strata inbetween? Pharmacists, as Diana Vazquez Martinezs article in this volume demon-strates, liked to think of themselves as members of the liberal professions. Theyheld university degrees, wore white coats at work, and sometimes had quasi-labora-tories on their shop premises. The cabaretiers studied by Rudy Ankaert, on theother hand, were more inclined to align themselves with the labouring classes,among whom they often lived and worked.Yet however fluid class frontiers might have been, there were markers distin-guishing petits bourgeois from their social neighbours. They were possessors of asmall capital, whether material or intellectual in nature; they had the resources tostart an enterprise; and they had a smattering of education. Politics helped to bringclass boundaries into yet sharper focus. The socialist Parti ouvrier belge (POB) wasfounded in 1885. Alongside the POB and with its encouragement burgeoned apowerful co-operative movement which threatened the livelihoods of many shop-

David Van Zahnten — Building Paris: Architectural Institutions and the Transformations of the French Capital, 1830-1870

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David Van Zahnten — Building Paris: Architectural Institutions and the Transformations of the French Capital, 1830-1870

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)