What the Previous Rialto Bridge Looked Like

One of Venice's most famous tourist sites is the Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal. It is shown above in a fine 1932 story illustration by the great Mead Schaeffer.

And this is how it appeared on a drizzly 29 October 2019.

As the link mentions, it is not the only bridge at that location. A pontoon bridge was first, built in 1181. It was replaced in 1255 by a wooden bridge that was later damaged by fire in 1310 and collapsed in 1444. A rebuilt version again collapsed in 1524. The present stone arch bridge was completed in 1591, nearly 430 years ago.

Any Venice visitors curious about the Rialto's predecessor can view a painting featuring it in the Accademia art museum directly across the Grand Canal's Accademia Bridge from the San Marco side. That painting is Miracolo della reliquia della Croce al ponte di Rialto (1494) by
Vittore Carpaccio, Wikipedia entry here.

Here is a detail view featuring the bridge via my iPhone. Click on the image to enlarge.

Mario Chiattone - Overshadowed by Antonio Sant'Elia

Mario Chiattone (1891-1957) is not nearly as famous as Antonio Sant'Elia (1888-1916), who I wrote about here. Both were architectural theoreticians caught up with extending the ideas of Otto Wagner while embracing the Italian Nuovo Tendenze and Futurist movements (Chiattone less so for the latter than was Sant'Elia).

I could find almost nothing about Chiattone on the Internet. A short Italian Wikipedia entry is here. A short sketch in Dutch is here. A longer piece, but with little biographical information is here, though it has many examples of Chiattone's and Sant'Elia's drawings.

The most detailed information I have is from this book. On pages 99-100 Esther da Costa Meyer writes:

"The only other architect [besides Sant'Elia] in the [Nuove Tendenze] group, Mario Chiattone, is a key figure in the understanding of Sant'Elia. Young, wealthy, and well schooled, Chiattone had a thorough grounding in modern art. His father, Gabrielle Chiattone, himself an artist and connoiseur of contemporary art, became one of the earliest patrons of [the Futurists] Boccioni and Carrà. Sant'Elia and Chiattone met in 1909 at Brera, where both were studying architecture... Between 1913 and 1914 they shared a studio building owned by Chiattone's father...

"On the whole it was Chiattone, not Sant'Elia who presented the most dazzling and, with the benefit of hindsight, the most prophetic vision of the modern metropolis... But although the verticalism is more pronounced and the antihistoricism more radical, this cityscape is less complex than Sant'Elia's. There is less emphasis on circulation, and the traffic levels are limited to two. Unlike [Sant'Elia's] Città Nuova, it is situated on the waterfront, although water itself is not exploited for transportation.

"Surprisingly enough, while Sant'Elia's projects were extolled for their modernity, Chiatttone was all but ignored by the critics [of the Nuove Tendenze exhibit]... Why Chiattone's contemporaries failed to notice him remains a mystery."

I do not know if Chiattone served in the Great War (Sant'Elia was a junior officer and killed in action). But by the early 1920s he had moved to Ticino, the Italian-speaking Swiss canton where it seems he spent the rest of his life.

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Sant'Elia - combined train and aircraft terminal, 1914.

Sant'Elia - Città Nuova scene.

Sant'Elia study.

Chiattone - Buildings for a Modern Metropolis, 1914.

Chiattone - City with raised railways, 1914.

Chiattone- Industrial building - 1914.

Chiattone - Apartment building with balconies.

Chiattone - Cathedral.

Two Building by Marcello Piacentini

Marcello Piacentini (1881-1960) was an important Italian architect whose career spanned the years from eclectic Classicism through Mussolini-vintage modernism to postwar modernism. His English Wikipedia entry is here, but the one in Italian has much more detail.

I was in Italy in Novemeber and came across two of his works. One was the Tribunale di Messina -- Messina courthouse. The project began in 1912 but the Great War interrupted work until the early 1920s. It was completed in 1927 and dedicated the following year.

The other was the former Bank of Naples building renovated by Piacentini in 1939 for the 400th anniversary of the creation of the bank (which has gone through many name and management changes: it's now Intesta Sanpaolo). Some background is here.

They are of interest because they bookend the era of what is called "Fascist Architecture," a term I find somewhat misleading.  The basic style is similar to the stripped-down ornamentation buildings found in non-fascist countries such as the United States in the 1930s.

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The Messina courthouse, a large, sprawling building.  Piacentini modified some exterior design details when construction was resumed after the Great War.  Technically, this was pre-Mussolini and not "Fascist."  However, modernist influence is present in that ornamentation is fairly limited, though not to the extremes found ten or 15 years later.

Window detail on the side of the building.  Note the deterioration.

An entrance on a side wing. Classical elements, but severely styled.  Again, some damage above the sculpted head.

Corner of a side wing.  Considerable undecorated areas, harking to the future style.

Banco di Napoli, renovated by 1939.

As it appeared in 1929, before its renovation.

Showing plaque noting the 1939 renovation.

Main entrance.  Mussolini-era modern featured little ornamentation.  Windows and entrances became the main "decorative" elements.  Arched shapes were common, something International Style architects and critics probably frowned upon because those arches were usually non-functional.

Plaque citing the bank's 1539 founding.  Note the sculpture on the wall.

Close-up view of the sculpture.  These sculptures are the main ornamentation besides the forms used for windows and entrances.

Fascist-Era Roman Hotel

One of my pet peeves regarding the naming of architectural styles is the category "Fascist Architecture" (fragment of a Wikipedia entry on the subject here).

My contention is that so-called Fascist Architecture was largely the same sort of 1930s transitional (from historical ornamentation to ornamentation-free modernism) found in other countries including the decidedly non-fascist United States. Salient examples tend to be buildings built by governments. But non-government structures also sometimes followed that architectural fashion.

One example of the latter is the Hotel Mediterraneo in Rome, at Via Cavour 15, about two blocks from Rome's main railway station. The link is to the ownership group that holds three hotels clustered near the same intersection. One hotel is 19th century, but the Mediterraneo and the adjoining Atlantico were built in the 1930s -- the Mediterraneo in 1936, designed by Mario Loreti.

The Mediterraneo caters to tour groups, which is how I first stayed there a few years ago. Recently I booked myself on a western Mediterranean cruise and stayed two nights at the hotel before heading to the Civitavecchia cruise port. Below are a few snapshots I took before departing.

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Mediterraneo exterior.  The entrance is at the near corner.  To the left is the Atlantico.  Note the tour busses parked on the Via Cavour.

Lounge area off the hotel lobby.

To one side of the lounge.

Dining room at breakfast time.

Wall and ceiling décor in the dining room.
What is shown above are essentially simple shapes and rich materials accented by small amounts of detailed ornamentation. In other words, characteristic of the 1930s transition to ornamentation-free modernist forms.

University of Bristol's Mills Tower

Most tours of England's West Country take in the city of Bath, that once was a Roman site and for many is a Jane Austen mecca. But not far down the road to the west is Bristol, which also is worth a visit, though its character is different.

Architecturally, and due to its siting, the Bristol building that interests me the most is the Wills Tower on the Wills Memorial Building. It sits on one of Bristol's hills as part of Bristol University, a "red brick" institution that received its royal charter in 1909.

The tower's construction was begun in 1915, but completion was delayed until 1925 due to the Great War. Its architect was Sir George Herbert Oatley (1863–1950) who was the university's architect for a number of years. It is a tall (215 foot, 65.5 meter) structure nicely composed using plain and highly decorated areas that play off one another.

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The tower as seen looking up Park Street in 1939 where it serves as a focus.

Park Street is just off to the right of this view that I took the last time I was in town. This street is Queens Road that becomes Park Row and heads downhill as it bends left beyond the edge of the photo. The building at the left is the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery that has some interesting paintings in its collection.

The massive corners have little decoration and the rest of the tower is quite Gothic.

Street level view.  A nice touch is the shields placed above the tall windows.

Shedding Ivy from the Empress

Some older American colleges and universities have a springtime Ivy Day tradition that, among other activities, involves placing a stone plaque on a building and perhaps planting ivy nearby. They were doing that at Penn when I was there, though as a grad student I wasn't involved. Penn still has its Ivy Day, but I don't know if any ivy is still planted.

Ivy is not physically kind to building exteriors and camouflages a building's architecture. It's my impression that actual ivy is disappearing from Ivy League buildings and elsewhere: correct me if I'm wrong.

One example of disappearing ivy is the famous Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Once upon a time it was covered with ivy, and now it has none.

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The Empress as seen from a ship in the mid-1920s. The dark areas are ivy.

A view from the 1940s. The hotel got its final major enlargement in 1928 and much of that part is ivy-covered.

A July, 1948 photo with, in the background, the north side of the hotel (at the left in the previous image) covered with ivy.

A photo of the Empress I took in 2013. The north (left) part of the hotel is now ivy-free, but plenty remains on the original section.

A photo I took recently, following the hotel's latest renovation. There's no ivy to be seen. A big improvement, in my opinion.

Some London Architecture 1912 and Recent

Some European cities have chosen to keep large Modern and Postmodern buildings separated from their core areas that contain premodern architecture. Examples that come to mind are Paris (to some extent), Vienna and Prague. Other cities allow large glass-and steel structures. Berlin, for instance, has its horrible Potsdamer Platz, while Frankfurt-am-Main has hosted skyscrapers for many years now. An important reason for Frankfurt's choice besides the factor of war damage to its previous architecture is because it is the financial center of continental Europe. Lots of floor space was needed, so building up made sense.

The same applies to London, another world-class financial center that's focused in the City. The City and the Canary Wharf area downstream in the old Docklands district are where London's flashy contemporary architecture is largely concentrated. Much of the rest of the central area has preserved its old character, thank Heaven.

Aside from Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Edwin Lutyens, I find it hard to quickly come up with names of outstanding British architects. I'm sure I could do a little research and identify a few more. Nevertheless, the country lacks a reputation for outstanding architectural design when compared to other places in Europe and the USA. Some of London's new buildings were designed by architects from other countries, but the results strike me as being generally second-rate even in the Postmodern context. Makes me wonder why this characteristic persists.

To illustrate this, below are photos of two government-related building completed around 1912 along with some views along the Thames River where construction a century later appeared.

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This shows the entrance area of Middlesex Guildhall, home of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. It is located across the street from Westminster Abbey. A nice touch is the contrast between the dense sculpting and nearby plain surfaces.

Looking upwards the effect is reminiscent of entrances to Gothic cathedrals. Perhaps the intention was to relate the building to the nearby Abbey.

This is Admiralty Arch linking The Mall and Trafalgar Square. Ornamentation is much more dense than on the contemporaneous Middlesex Guildhall. It is unusual in that it combines the features of an arch (that is usefully placed) and an office/residential building (at one time the Admiralty's First Sea Lord resided here).

The dark, shaded structure to the left is a wall of The Tower of London. The classical facade beyond the park belongs to 12 Trinity Square. And the large, Postmodern structure in the distance is 20 Fenchurch Street, popularly known as the Walkie-Talkie (named after a American World War 2 communication device).

The Walkie-Talkie and other new City buildings as seen from across the Thames.

A little farther upstream towards London Bridge we find this view. the tall structure is called The Shard, and it's the tallest building in London. The designer is the well-known Renzo Piano. No doubt, as witnessed by the seemingly inefficient floor space, the building was intended to make a statement. I think the current building-as-sculpture fashion is not a large improvement over the rectangular box style of 1950s-1960s New York City, but it's what those independent architectural minds see fit to design these days. I think the Shard's best feature is the treatment at its top where the machinery area is screened by latticework.

The rue Mallet-Stevens Then and Now

A while ago I wrote about the French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens and included some period images of the rue Mallet-Stevens in Paris' 16e arrondissement, a private street containing Moderne residential buildings designed by him.

I've been both aware and curious about it for many years, so when I visited Paris in April, I made a point to track it down and take a few photos to use for this blog. It's a bit off the beaten track, about a 5-10 minute walk through a nondescript apartment neighborhood from the nearest subway stop. It's also 90 years old, but in pretty good shape, as the photos indicate. When I took the photos I didn't have reference material handy, so they don't quite match the viewpoints of photos taken when the development was new.

A much more detailed treatment of the rue is here. Besides period images, it has recent photos of the exteriors as well as some interior views.

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View of the street - c. 1927
That's a Voisin automobile -- very modern in those days.

Street view - April 2018
I happened to take this photo from a similar spot.

Rue Mallet Stevens veille de l'inauguration
Before the formal opening. The building on the left is Mallet-Steven's.

Hôtel Mallet-Stevens - April 2018

Villa de Mme. Reifenberg - c. 1927

Villa of Mme. Reifenberg - April 2018

Atelier frères Joël et Jon Martel, Sculpteurs - c. 1927
Workshop and residence of brothers who were sculptors.

Atelier Martel - April 2018

Hôtel Dreyfus - c. 1927

Hôtel Dreyfus - April 2018