Church of Saint Jean de Montmartre, Place des Abbesses, Paris, France

Related people

Addison Godel (was created by)
Anatole de Baudot (was created by)

Date

1897-1905

Description

"For De Baudot, reinforced cement presented the attraction of a homogenous framework of great rigidity and extremely slender section while manifesting a level of expressiveness unattained until then. De Baudot protested against the custom of using cement in place of wood and imprisoning it in stone or brick elements and he insisted on the need to reduce if not to abandon the use of stone: "Without claiming that the use of reinforced cement applied to the general framework of any sort of building is the only proper course, I do not hesitate to assert, with entire conviction, that such a procedure will supply from now on all the ingredients for a transformation ensuring all the material order needed in modern buildings. There remains te question of appearance upon which I would not presume to pronounce, confident that the talent and ability of the contemporary architect, which are not in dispute here, will easily solve this genuine difficulty, but the latter will not be overcome until the foreman on the job takes the trouble to study in depth the possibilities of the system, instead of relying on specialists who have no feelings about the advantages of a unified system of the type represented by this new method of building and see in it only particular applications, which do not interfere with their normal routine. Begun about 1897, the church of Saint-Jean de Montmartre provided the first major practical example of De Baudot's theories on the subject of construction...After having demonstrated the function of the continuous columns extending through the two storeys of the church to the roof and the use of masonry simply as an in fill element...The vault of the roof is made of two layers, each 2 3/4 inches thick (7centimeters), separated by a space 1 9/16 inch wide (4 centimeters) for insulation; the walls of the church are 75 feet high (25 meters) and 9 11/16 inches thick (25 centimeters). Keywords: France, Ville-de-Paris, ceremonial and/or religious structures. Submitted by Keoni Fleming for ARCH 627.

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