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Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 24
Second Empire Style in Canadian Architecture
by Christina Cameron and Janet Wright
England: Early Advocate of Second Empire
The emergence of the Second Empire style in England occurred almost
simultaneously with its appearance in Paris. It was used for buildings
of such importance that it soon gained wide publicity and official
support.
In 1852, the very year that Napoleon III was proclaimed emperor, the
Great Western Railway Company completed the construction of Paddington
Station and Hotel (Fig. 4) in London, a gigantic structure that
anticipated in several ways the Second Empire style.1 Indeed,
a writer in the Illustrated London News of 1852 noted that this
monument inaugurated the "French of Louis XIV or later"
style.2 Pavilions and mansarded towers were already part of
the design, but they were less organically integrated into the mass than
in later compositions of this type. On the other hand, the various
façades, though soberly decorated, already showed an attempt to achieve
plastic effects in the play of light and shadow. Because of its
grandiose format and the high quality of its service, the Great Western
Hotel at Paddington Station gained wide publicity.
This project was certainly not the only one to launch Second Empire
fashion in England. In 1857, only five years after the New Louvre was
begun, the British government held architectural competitions for the
War Office and the Foreign Office. The two winning designs, those of
Henry B. Garling for the War Office (Fig. 5), and Coe and Hofland for
the Foreign Office, were both in the Second Empire style, proving to
what point this fashion had already invaded the British architectural
milieu. A tacit recognition of England's role in disseminating the style
may be found in some remarks made in 1866 by the building committee for
Boston City Hall:
A striking proof of this tendency [toward the Renaissance] is to
be found in the fact that besides being long naturalized in France, and
being the only style in which all the great works of improvement of
modern Paris are composed, it has been so recognized and studied
elsewhere, that in the great English competition for the projected new
Government buildings, at Whitehall, the designs to which all the highest
premiums (£800 each) were awarded, by a commission consisting of the
most accomplished judges in the kingdom, were without exception in this
style only.3
The publicity surrounding the Whitehall competition drew public
attention to the Second Empire style and enhanced its popularity in
England and, by extension, in North America.
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