What’s in a Name? Etienne-Louis Boullée’s Redesign of the Bibliothèque du Roi, 1780–88

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Notes

Notes

1 Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer,” in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2008), 81.

2 Villar, “Notice sur la vie et les travaux d’Etienne-Louis Boullée,” in Mémoires de l’Institut national des sciences et arts, littérature et beaux arts (Paris: 1801), 47. The original passage reads, “Boullée a conçu le projet d’un nouvel édifice, où tous les trésors littéraires, rassemblés sous un seul aspect, n’offriront plus aux sciences et aux arts des sujets de crainte trop bien fondés. Le public en a vu le modèle, en relief, exposé par l’auteur en 1790.”

3 Boullée attempted to publish this brief essay explaining his aims for the project, but he was unsuccessful. It has been translated as “Memorandum” in Helen Rosenau, Boullée and Visionary Architecture (London: Academy Editions, 1976): 104–5.

4 Paul M. Priebe, “From Bibliothèque du Roi to Bibliothèque Nationale: The Creation of a State Library, 1789–1793,” The Journal of Library History (1974–1987) 17, no. 4 (Fall 1982): 402.

5 While we cannot definitely claim that Boullée’s library bore the Bibliothèque Nationale title at the time of its public exhibition, we can confirm that before being publicly exhibited, the policies put in place by the National Assembly that would result in the foundation of the Bibliothèque Nationale were being implemented throughout Paris. Among other reforms, the transfer of books and manuscripts from ecclesiastic as well as private collections to the dépots littéraires was taking place in Paris and in various municipalities throughout France as early as the final months of 1789. See Jack Clarke, “French Libraries in Transition, 1789–95,” Library Quarterly 37, no. 4 (Oct. 1967): 366–368.

6 Bette W. Oliver, “The Bibliothèque Nationale from 1792 to 1794: Becoming a National Institution during the French Revolution,” Libraries & the Cultural Record 42, no. 1 (2007): 48.

7 Priebe, “From Bibliothèque du Roi”: 405–6.

8 Anthony Vidler, “Researching Revolutionary Architecture,” Journal of Architectural Education (1984–) 44, no. 4 (Aug. 1991): 209.

9 Vidler, “Researching Revolutionary Architecture”: 209.

10 Robin Evans, “Translations from Drawing to Building,” AA Files 12, (Summer 1986): 14.

11 Evans, “Translations from Drawing to Building”: 4. Evans characterizes this quality of architectural labor as a disadvantage when compared to arts like painting and sculpture. “Painters and sculptors who might spend some time on preliminary sketches and maquettes, all ended up working on the thing itself which, naturally, absorbed most of their attention and effort. …The sketch and maquette are much closer to painting and sculpture than a drawing is to a building…”

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Nicholas Andrew Pacula

Nicholas A. Pacula is a Ph.D. candidate in the History and Theory of Architecture at Yale University. His research addresses image-based methodologies in architectural historiography from the mid-20th century to the present. He holds an S.M.Arch.S. in Architectural Design from MIT and a B.Arch. from The Cooper Union.