Second Empire Architecture
Second Empire Architecture achieved its most ambitious American expression in Philadelphia through City Hall, the massive municipal building whose mansard roofs and French-inspired ornament dominated the city's skyline for over a century. Named for the reign of Napoleon III (1852-1870), when Baron Haussmann transformed Paris into a city of grand boulevards and uniform building facades, Second Empire brought French sophistication to American cities during the post-Civil War decades. The style's defining element—the mansard roof with its steep lower slopes and dormer windows—provided both practical benefits and fashionable appearance, making it popular for everything from rowhouses to public buildings across Philadelphia.[1]
Characteristics
[edit | edit source]The mansard roof defines Second Empire architecture, named for seventeenth-century French architect François Mansart. This double-pitched roof features a steep, nearly vertical lower slope—often curved, concave, or convex—punctuated by dormer windows, topped by a relatively flat or low-pitched upper slope. The design provides practical advantages: the steep lower section creates usable attic space with full-height walls, effectively adding an additional floor within the roof structure. Dormer windows illuminate this bonus space while contributing to the style's characteristic silhouette.[2]
Beyond the mansard roof, Second Empire buildings display rich classical ornament: columns, pilasters, entablatures, and sculptural decoration that draw from French Renaissance and Baroque precedents. Facades are typically symmetrical and highly articulated, with projecting and receding sections creating dynamic compositions. Materials vary from stone for major public buildings to brick and wood for residential structures, with iron cresting often crowning the mansard roofs. The overall effect suggests French elegance and urban sophistication—qualities that appealed to Americans seeking cosmopolitan alternatives to English architectural traditions.[1]
Philadelphia City Hall
[edit | edit source]Philadelphia City Hall represents Second Empire architecture at its most monumental and prolonged. Designed by architect John McArthur Jr. and begun in 1871, the building required nearly thirty years to complete, finally opening in 1901 as the style had long passed from fashion. Yet the building's protracted construction resulted in a structure of remarkable completeness and consistency, its Second Empire character maintained through changing administrations and architectural trends. At 548 feet to the top of the William Penn statue, City Hall ranked as the world's tallest habitable building at completion.[2]
The building's granite and marble facades display the full Second Empire vocabulary: mansard roofs at multiple levels, elaborate dormers, columned pavilions, sculptural ornament, and a tower that rises through classical stages to its statue-crowned apex. Sculptor Alexander Milne Calder created over 250 sculptural figures for the building, including the 37-foot bronze William Penn that tops the tower. The interior features equally elaborate decoration, with marble corridors, painted ceilings, and ornamental plasterwork throughout. City Hall's scale required development of new construction technologies, including early elevator systems and iron framing.[1]
City Hall's Second Empire design reflected Philadelphia's ambitions as a great American city competing with New York, Boston, and the European capitals whose architecture it consciously emulated. The choice of French style rather than British models marked a cultural statement—alignment with French urban sophistication rather than English traditions. Though often criticized as outdated during the twentieth century, City Hall has gained appreciation as an irreplaceable monument whose elaborate craftsmanship could never be duplicated today. The building remains the seat of Philadelphia government, its tower observation deck offering panoramic city views.[2]
Residential Applications
[edit | edit source]Second Empire style adapted readily to Philadelphia's rowhouse form, with mansard roofs adding fashionable French flavor to the city's characteristically attached dwellings. The mansard's practical advantage—additional usable space within roof height limits—proved attractive to builders and buyers seeking maximum house for their investment. Rows of Second Empire houses appeared throughout developing neighborhoods during the 1860s and 1870s, their steep-sided roofs and elaborate dormers creating streetscapes of distinctive character.[1]
Philadelphia's Second Empire rowhouses display various treatments of the mansard roof: straight slopes with single dormers, curved profiles with double dormers, and elaborate cresting that silhouettes against the sky. Facades below the roofline often remain relatively simple, concentrating ornament on door surrounds and window hoods while the mansard provides visual drama. These houses survive throughout the city, though many have lost their original iron cresting and some have had dormers altered. Where intact, Second Empire rowhouse blocks create coherent streetscapes that document the style's widespread popularity.[2]
Institutional Buildings
[edit | edit source]Second Empire served institutional purposes throughout Philadelphia during the post-Civil War decades. Schools, hospitals, asylums, and governmental buildings adopted the style's impressive scale and refined ornament to convey institutional authority and public investment. The mansard roof proved particularly useful for institutions requiring maximum interior space, allowing additional floors within roof structures. Many of these buildings have been demolished or substantially altered, but survivors document Second Empire's application beyond residential and governmental contexts.[1]
Decline
[edit | edit source]Second Empire architecture fell from favor rapidly after 1870, victim of shifting tastes that embraced Queen Anne picturesqueness and the solidity of Richardsonian Romanesque. The style's associations with the corrupt Grant administration, which had built Second Empire post offices and courthouses across the country, contributed to its decline. By the time City Hall finally opened in 1901, its design seemed a relic of earlier decades, its French pretensions outdated in an era of American imperial confidence. Yet the style's Philadelphia monuments—City Hall above all—proved too substantial and too central to remove.[2]
Second Empire's rehabilitation came gradually during the twentieth century's later decades. Preservation movements recognized the style's historical significance and the quality of its surviving buildings. City Hall, long derided as an embarrassing white elephant, gained appreciation as visitors and architects recognized the irreplaceable craftsmanship embodied in its construction. Today Second Empire buildings are valued as documents of Gilded Age aspiration, their mansard roofs and French ornament appreciated as distinctive contributions to Philadelphia's architectural heritage.[1]