House of the Musicians at Rheims

J. J. Stevenson

c. 1880

Signed with initials lower left

Source: Stevenson’s House Architecture, I, 150

Click on image to enlarge it

“Even when, in great halls built for civil and domestic purposes, pointed vaults and pointed windows were used, the lower lights, being arranged to open for air and view, were always square-headed. The glass in the upper lights was fixed, being let into grooves in the stone as in church windows.” [continued below]

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the Internet Archive and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

In a house at Rheims, of which I give a sketch, called the House of the Musicians (from the statues in pointed arches between the windows, each with a musical instrument), which was built between the years 1240 and 1250, during the highest development of the pointed style; while the pointed arch is used for all the decorative features such as the niches arid the range of little arches supporting the cornice it is frankly abandoned in the windows, where the form would riot have been practical. The same tendency to abandon the pointed arch in domestic windows is found in England. [150-51]

Bibliography

Stevenson, J. J. House Architecture. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1880.

---

Victorian
Web

Archi-
tecture

John James
Stevenson

Drawings

Last modified 22 July 2017