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closed in 1917, it owned a stock of more than 21,000
pictures in extremely high defi nition, most of them in
the negative format of 40 × 40 cm.
Writing up the history of architectural training and
practice in the second half of the 19th century, one can
divide the exemplary images used within the common
curricula into two structural components: the Mess-
bild photographs and the collections of the ‘Mission
héliographique’ and its successors; or the plans of
Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand as structural base of a new
construction. Due to the new contruction at this time,
the teachers and their students didn’t have examples of
edifi ces. Those planning and wanting to build houses
needed examples to explain their wishes to their archi-
tects. After the erection, proud house owners ordered im-
ages from photographers to show around to their friends
and family members. Large projects often requested an
album dedicated to fi nanciers and share holders—this
tradition was started by the Baron Rothschild who com-
missioned Edouard Denis Baldus in 1853 to photograph
all stations of the new railroad line between Paris and
Toulon, and the tradition was prolonged by Prince Albert
when he asked Philip Henry Delamotte for a complete
record of the Crystal Palace’s re-erection at Sydenham
in 1854. Be it the Suez Canal, the line of bridges cross-
ing the Rhine, any of the great Western railroads in the
United States, or a construction hall at one of the Parisian
world fairs, since the late 1850s each construction of
great importance was photographed and had an album
made from its image. Although they represent a com-
mon practice of their days, the most remarkable and
widely published series of this kind is the album that
Hyacinthe César Delmaet and Louis-Émile Durandelle
photographed of the construction of Philippe Garnier’s
Paris opera house.
A predominant convention was that every large scale
project that recieved country- or world-wide fame was
imitated by those working on smaller scales. No courtBaldus, Edouard. Biblioteque
Imperiale du Louvre.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith
Foundation Gift, 1994 (1994, 137).
Image © The Metropolitan Museum
of Art.