The Arcades Project - Operi

possibilities. H A. G. Meyer Eisenbauten, p. 11. Iron as revolutionary building
material! [F3a)]
Meanwhile, how it looked in the vulgar consciousness is indicated by the crass
yet typical utterance of a contemporary journalist, according to whom posterity
will one day have to confess, "In the nineteenth century, ancient Greek architec­
ture once again blossomed in its classical purity." Europa, 2 (Stuttgart and
Leipzig, 1837), p. 20Z [F3a,2]
Railroad stations as abodes of art." "If Wiertz had had at his disposal ... the
public monuments of modern civilization-railway stations, legislative chambers,
university lecture halls , marketplaces, town halls- ... who can say what bright
and dramatic new worlds he would have traced upon his canvas!" A. J. Wiertz,
Oeuvres littl,raires (Paris, 1870), pp. 525-526. [F3a,3]
The technical absolutism that is fundamental to iron construction-and funda­
mental merely on account of the material itself-becomes apparent to anyone
who recognizes the extent to which it contrasts with traditional conceptions of
the value and utility of building materials. "Iron inspired a certain distrust just
because it was not immmediately furnished by nature, but instead had to be
artificially prepared as a building material. This distrust is only a specific applica­
tion of that general sentiment of the Renaissance to which Leon Battista Alberti
(De re aedijicatoria [paris, 1512], fo!' xliv) gives expression at one point with the
words: 'Nam est quidem cujusquis corporis pars indissolubilior, quae a natura
concreta et counita est, quam quae hominum manu et arte conjuncta atque,
compacta est'