The Arcades Project - Operi

For the rest, people were accustomed to seeing gas in cOlunction with cast iron
at those elegant establishments that were just then starting to appear: the arcades.
The leading fancy-goods stores, the chic restaurants, the best confectioners, and
so on found it necessary to secure a place in these galleries in order to presenre
their reputations. Out of these galleries emerged, a little later on, the great department
stores, of which the pioneering model, Au Bon MarchC, was designed by
the builder of the Eiffel Tower.
Iron construction began with winter gardens and arcades-that is, with genuine
luxury establishments. Very quickly, however, it found its true range of technical
and industrial application. What resulted were constructions that had no precedent
and that were occasioned by wholly new needs: covered markets, railroad
stations, exhibition halls. Engineers led the way. But poets, as well, displayed
amazing foresight. Thus, the French Romantic Gautier declares: "A proper architecture
will be created the moment we begin making use of the new materials
furnished by the new industry. The advent of cast iron enables and calls for many
new forms, as we can see in railroad tenninals, suspension bridges, and the
arches of winter gardens:' Offenbach's Parisian Lift was the first theatrical piece
to be set in a railroad station. "Railway depots," they used to be called back then;
and they inspired the strangest notions. A decidedly progressive Belgian painter,
Antoine Wiertz, sought permission around midcentury to decorate tl,e halls of
railroad stations with frescoes.
Step by step, the technology of that era took possession of new fields; it did so in
the face of difficulties and objections of which today we can scarcely form a
conception. In the 1830s in England, for example, a bitter controversy arose over
the issue of iron rails. Under no circumstances, it was argued, could enough iron
ever be procured for the English railway system (at that time plal1l1ed on ouly the
smallest scale) . The "steam carriages" would have to nm on lanes of granite.
Alongside the theoretical battles were ongoing practical struggles with materials.
Tbe story of the bridge over the Firth ofTay is an especially memorable exanlple.
Six years were required for the construction of this bridge: 1872 to 1878. And
shortly before its completion, on February 2, 1877, a hurricane (of the particularly
violent sort that assail the inlet of the Tay and that also caused the catastrophe of
1879)1 blew down two of the biggest supporting piers. And not only bridge
construction made such denlands on the patience of engineers ; with turme1s, it
was no clifferent. When, in 1858, plans were afoot for the twelve-kilometer
tul1l1el through Mont Cenis, the estimated length of time for tl,e work was seven
years.
Thus, while in great things heroic efforts were expended on precedent-setting,
groundbreaking achievements, in little matters there was often-strange to saysomething
motley. It is as though people, and "artists" in particular, did not quite
dare to acknowledge tlns new material, with all its possibilities. Whereas we