Beaux-Arts architecture

Beaux-Arts architecture was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the nineteenth century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism but also incorporated Renaissance and Baroque elements and, later, modern materials such as iron, glass and steel. Training emphasized the mainstream examples of Imperial Roman architecture, Italian Renaissance and French and Italian Baroque models, which could then be applied to a broader range of settings. The style reached the apex of its development during the Second Empire and the Third Republic, and the system of instruction that produced it continued without major interruption until 1968. It was enormously influential in Europe and the Americas through the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, particularly for institutional and public buildings, and it heavily influenced the architecture of the United States between 1880 and 1920.