The new public buildings, shops and homes are of pleasing and well calculated simplicity. There is but a very faint trace of the “villa” and ultra Beaux-Arts influence, and there is apparent evidence that the older buildings often served as models for the new. Entirely in keeping with the hardness and simplicity of the courageous people who came back to their desolate home plots, their rebuilt homes are sturdy and unaffected. Above all, they are built to possess permanence and utility. A hayloft, a butcher shop, a wayside cafe and even a thing so American as a garage are often incorporated in the shells
of these new homes with none other than a frank and naive motive of utility.
The favored building material is certainly a creamy white sandstone, which saws easily, can be trimmed with a hatchet, and is supple material for the modest efforts of the Italian sculptors. It
has the additional virtue of hardening after being exposed to the weather and of being quarriedin the neigh
boring region. Huge, brilliant blocks of it are scattered in every village where building is going on.
Brick of many tones and textures is used a great deal, especially with white stone trims and
lintels, and the stone salvaged from the wreckage is often made up into an attractive rubble, particularly in the rambling farm buildings. It is gratifying to note that the fantastically awful mustard-yellow rubble houses, spotted with gaudy tiles and glaring brick ornament, and capped with weird, jutting yellow orange roofs, so plentiful in the outskirts of Paris, have not appeared in this post-war era. of building. It would seem to the casual passer-by that the French architects, under the supervision of the Ministere des Beaux-Arts, have shown a most- happy and sympathetic understanding of the characteristic needs and wishes of the country people. A rebuilt house is made to stand for centuries as its predecessor has done.
From a distance, some of the rebuilt towns look anything but hard and ugly, with their bright, slate blue and orange and red roofs, their sparkling wall surfaces set in the soft green of the trees and the multi-colored patchwork of the surrounding fields.
Wooden barracks, remnants of the war, are of
In the Marne
An interesting house in the midst of the ruins caused by the second battle of the Marne. Stucco, timbers, brick, stone and
concrete all have a fling here
Reconstruction in full swing—Reims
A skyline quite as jagged as that of an American city results here, though not on the same multi-storied scale