Impressionism, Iron Architecture ·
chronological order 9
A public library in Paris facing the Panthéon, Henri Labrouste’s
masterpiece and the manifesto of civil iron architecture. The outside is
academic (blind arches, the names of 810 authors carved in stone), but
the reading room on the upper floor puts its wrought-iron frame in plain
sight: two halls under barrel vaults decorated with plant motifs, held
up by a central arcade of extremely slender iron columns. The first
public building to treat the metal frame as something to be seen. The
Sorbonne still uses it as a university library.
