Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 24

Second Empire Style in Canadian Architecture

by Christina Cameron and Janet Wright

Second Empire and Napoleon III of France

Second Empire style takes its name from the Second Empire of Napoleon III of France. During his reign, which began in 1852 and terminated abruptly in 1870, the emperor and his wife, the Empress Eugénie, sought to make their court the cosmopolitan centre of fashion. It is not a mere accident that two of the first four international exhibitions took place in Paris during the Second Empire, in 1855 and 1867,¹ the earlier one being honoured by the presence of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort of England.²

Determined to establish his capital as the symbol of his power, Napoleon III found himself a brilliant accomplice in the person of Baron Georges Haussmann whom he named Prefect of the Seine: together they undertook a vast programme of public works that in less than 20 years transformed the face of Paris. In addition to strictly functional projects such as the improvement of the sewer system and the distribution of drinking water, they carried out broad schemes of urban planning. Several slum districts were razed to make way for the famous network of boulevards and wide avenues:³ parks and squares were created to offer oases of greenery in the heart of the city.

This programme did not escape notice. Enthusiastically endorsing Napoleon III's efforts, a contemporary American observer reported,

the present Emperor spends enormous sums in beautifying his capital and provincial cities; old quarters have been demolished, new boulevards have been cut through, streets widened and extended, elegant and costly residences replace those torn down, the Louvre extended and connected with the Tuileries, a Grand Hotel, a new Grand Opera House, churches, and public offices; all upon a scale of magnificence heretofore unknown, astonish the visitor at every turn.⁴

In this urban renewal programme, the most significant building — the building that would become for the outside world the symbol of Napoleon III's Paris — was the New Louvre.⁵ The extension of the Palace of the Louvre in the 1850s to meet the emperor's residence in the Tuileries became the model for this architectural fashion.

The design of the New Louvre (Fig. 2) included several features that came to be considered standard ingredients for the Second Empire style. There is the use of pavilions, for instance, which mask the lack of parallelism between this wing and the older parts of the Louvre. The mansard roof is chosen, naturally enough, to harmonize with similar roofs on the Old Louvre and the Tuileries, Introduced in the 17th century, the mansard roof never totally disappeared from French architecture probably for practical reasons, since its particular form allows for maximum use of the attic space. At the New Louvre, however, the curved profile of the mansard roof introduced a new bombastic element that was unlike the more restrained 17th century type. This sculptural treatment of the roof was spiritually akin to the sumptuous classicizing decoration of the diverse façades.

Paradoxically, in spite of the international influence of the New Louvre, this monument had little impact on the public and domestic architecture of Paris. Except for the Grand Hotel and the Opera, few public buildings reflected the compositional scheme or the sculptural richness of the New Louvre. The private residences and apartment houses erected following Napoleon III's code (uniformity of height, roofline and street alignment) showed Second Empire influence mainly in the use of the mansard roof; though the articulation of the façades often followed a grid-like pattern of horizontal and vertical divisions, the intermediate decoration, based on a play of classical motifs, rarely reflected the plasticity or three-dimensionality, usually associated with the Second Empire style (Fig. 3).

To understand why the Second Empire style made more impact in other countries than it did in France itself, it may be useful to consider the context from which these buildings emerged. The international renown enjoyed by Paris and the lavishness of the emperor's court were perhaps best exemplified in the Louvre project. This grandiose undertaking appealed to a very particular and socially conscious audience, for the New Louvre, after all, was grafted onto a building that for centuries had symbolized the glory of French monarchs. It is probably these courtly associations rather than the number of Parisian buildings in the Second Empire mode that explain why the reign of Napoleon III gave birth to an architectural style.