The Arcades Project - Operi

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this kind of lighting, which was suspected of being dangerous and of polluting
breathahle air." Du Camp, Paris, vol. 5, p. 290. [T1a,2]
. .§ '''This place visited by commercial death, under this gas . .. which seems to tremhIe
at the thought of not being paid for." Louis Veuillot, Les Odeurs de Paris
S
'0 (Paris, 1914), p. 182. [Tla,3]
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" Glass is destined to play an important role in metal-architecture. In place of thick
walls whose solidity and resistance is diminished by a large numher of apertures,
our houses will he so filled with openings that they will appear diaphanous. These
wide openings, furnished with thick glass, single- or double-paned, frosted or
transparent, will transmit-to the inside during the day and to the outside at
night-a magical radiance.'" Gohard, "'L'Architecture de l'avenir," Revue
geru!rale d'architectu,re (1849), p. 30 [So Giemon, Bauen in Frankreich , 1'. 18]. [TIa,4]
Lamps in the form of vases. The rare flower "light," as done in oil. (The form on a
fashionable copper engraving of 1866.) [TIa,5]
The old gas torches that burned in the open air often had a flame in the shape of a
hutterHy, and were known accordingly as papillons. [T1a,6]
In the Carcel lamp, a clockwork drives the oil up into the hurncr; whereas in the
Argand lamp (qu.inquet), the oil drips into the hurner from a reservoir above it,
thereby producing a shadow. [TIa,7]
Arcades-they radiated through the Paris of the Empire like fairy grottoes. For
someone entering the Passage des Panoramas in 1817, the sirens of gaslight
would be singing to him on one side, while oil-lamp odalisques offered entice­
ments from the other. With the kindling of electric lights, the irreproachable glow
was extinguished in these galleries, which suddenly became more difficult to
find-which wrought a black magic at entranceways, and which looked within
themselves out of blind windows. [TIa,8]
When, on Fehruary 12, 1790, t.he Marquis de Favras was executed for plouing
against the Revolution, the Place de Greve and the scaffold were adorned with
Chinese lanterns. [Tla,9]
(,loWe said, in the first volume, t.hat. every hist.orical period is bat.hed in a distinctive
light, whether diurnal or nocturnal. Now, for the first. time, this world has an
artificial illumination in the form of gaslight, which hut'st ont.o t.he scene in London
at. a time when Napoleon's star was heginning to decline, which ent.ered Paris more
or less contemporaneously with the Bourhons. and which, hy slow and tenaeious
advances, fmally took possession of all streets and public localities. By 184,0 it was
flaring everywhere, even in Vienna. In this strident and gloomy, sharp and flickcl.'-