The Parisian Parish Churches of the Second Empire: Social Forces and Church Construction in France, 1852-1870

This article examines some key issues in nineteenth-century church architecture. Of particular interest are the parish churches constructed in Paris during the Second Empire: a period during which the construction of churches and urban expansion reached unprecedented levels. The identity crisis associated with the church architecture of that era may well be reflected in the architectural style debate between Desire Raoul-Rochette and E. E. Viollet-le-Duc. However, given the great sociopolitical and economic changes occuring during this period, a different analytical approach to discuss stylistic evolution of the churches is warranted. This paper attempts to broaden the discussion of the Parisian parish churches of the Second Empire in order to show that they should be recognized as architectural projects giving precision to the descriptive social forces, such as the economizing on outlays, the formulation of two idealized new types of church architecture, a mise en scene of a theatrical effect in city fabric, liturgical requirements, and the emergence of dot parisien in the Second Empire, that exist beyond the scope of the traditional doctrinal analyses of architectural style.