Marble staircase

“ Of undiminished loveliness are the fluted Corinthian columns, lofty ceilings and elaborate moldings embellished with classical motifs. An outstanding feature of the building is the winding staircase which rises at the rear of the marble-floored entrance hall. This stairway of unsurpassed beauty has been frequently honored as a masterpiece of design and craftsmanship.
A curious fact about the building is that neither a marriage, a birth, nor a death has ever taken place within its walls. ”

“ The arrangement of the latter on terrace-formed shelves covered with violet velvet, behind which are looking-glasses in one piece, is very tasteful. One of the most striking things is the marble staircase, with a railing of gilded bronze. The hand-rail of polished mahogany at the top is a curious piece of workmanship: by some contrivance, which remains a secret, the wood is so put together that it is impossible to discover a single joint from top to bottom. ”

“ The grand staircase, built of Siena marble, the finest example of the intelligent use of colored marble in this country, has until now lacked its foil, which the dull blue walls now give. The added pleasure which is apparent in viewing the stairway emphasizes the importance of the guiding intelligence which has made all this possible. There is in our experience only one other building in the country in the interior treatment of which this intelligence is evident in anything like the same degree. ”

“ The great staircase forms one of the finest coup d'oeils of the kind I ever beheld. It is in the center of the whole edifice, opposite the church gates. The dome is painted with Apollo and the Muses, in a circle, and the four seasons in the corners. The steps and balustrade are all of marble of different colours, on a very grand scale, crowned with two capital lions. If any fault can be found with this elegant piece of architecture, it is that the area below is too small in proportion to the grandeur of this part of the building. ”

“ But it was not until we found ourselves at the foot of the great marble staircase, now cracked and chipped, and humbled in the perishing gold-work of its balustrades, that he uttered a protest, and one which echoed my own inclination.
"Come now," said he, "you 're not going to climb those stairs." ”

“ From this a white marble stair lies straight in front of the window, and leads down to the garden. The balcony and staircase are quite ancient--of old Italian work, beautifully carved, and, of course, weather-worn through centuries. There is just that little tinging of green here and there which makes all outdoor marble so charming. It is hard to believe at times that it is a part of a fortified castle, it is so elegant and free and open. The first glance of it would make a burglar's heart glad. He would say to himself: "Here is the sort of crib I like when I'm on the job. ”

“ The ground floor has a great vestibule and a corridor 55 feet wide extending to the rear of the building, crossed by three others 10 or 12 feet wide. Near the entrance are quarters for the guard of honor, and farther in are rooms for police, telephone and telegraph, wardrobes, and other purposes. On the front a great marble staircase 55 feet wide leads up from the ground to the entrance on the main floor. Pedestals with costly bronze statues are designed to divide the staircase into three sections. ”

“ This ascent is made by a broad whi [440] te marble staircase of one hundred and fifty-eight steps, the end of which being reached, the visitor finds himself amid an endless variety of beautiful pinnacles, flying buttresses, statues, carvings, and tracery. Here are regular walks laid out, terminating in or passing handsome squares, in the centre of which are life-size statues by Canova, Michael Angelo, and other great sculptors. ”

“ A staircase, consisting of one hundred and eighty-three steps, and sufficiently wide to admit a man to ascend, is cut out of the solid marble, leaving a small pillar in the middle, round which the stair winds from the bottom to the top. ”

“ It dries more quickly: the surface is not so glazy and unequal, requiring no particular light to be seen to advantage. The colours are wonderfully bright: it is capable of as high a finish, and it is quite as durable as oils. Both mineral and vegetable colours can be used.
Now to return. The king's bedchamber opens into the queen's apartments, but to take these in order we must begin at the beginning. The staircase, which is still unfinished, will be in a much richer style of architecture than that on the king's side: it is sustained with beautiful columns of native marble. ”

“ Leading to the terraces, in the middle of the stage, is an "imperial stair," an inclined plane of white marble, on which an immense dragon is carved in bas-relief; and also, on either side of this, two identical marble staircases bordered by bronze and jade animals and huge censers on marble brackets. Numerous symmetrical kiosks flank the pavilion on this side and that with curved roofs similar to those of the pavilion, ornamented with small bells and monsters.
As the Curtain rises, no one is on the stage. A gentle breeze causes the small bells to tinkle at the angles of the roofs. ”

“ It is sustained on the four small detached shafts marked at p in the plan, between the two pillars at the north side of the screen; both pillars and pulpit studiously plain, while the staircase which ascends to it is a compact mass of masonry (shaded in the plan) , faced by carved slabs of marble; the parapet of the staircase being also formed of solid blocks like paving-stones, lightened by rich, but not deep, exterior carving. Now these blocks, or at least those which adorn the staircase towards the aisle, have been brought from the mainland ”

“ Our age teems with little inventions that make life really charming and picturesque. And so amusing [Pg 219] too ... especially when a man knows the game of life as I know it!"
He touched one of the marble mouldings of the mantel-piece and made it swing round on a pivot. The marble slab itself moved and the mirror above it slid between invisible grooves, revealing a yawning gap which contained the lower steps of a staircase built in the body of the chimney itself. ”

“ It is chiefly built of a reddish kind of granite, but the white which appears in the upper part is very fine marble: there is a spiral staircase leading up to the top, with occasional openings to the balconies, which were originally defended by battlements ”

“ For the same reason, it is best to treat the walls with a decoration of stone or marble. In simpler houses the same effect may be produced at much less cost by dividing the wall-spaces into panels, with wooden mouldings applied directly to the plaster, the whole being painted in oil, either in one uniform tint or in varying shades of some cold sober color. This subdued color-scheme will produce an agreeable contrast with the hall or staircase, which, being a degree nearer the centre of the house, should receive a gayer and more informal treatment than the vestibule. ”

“ Let the reader imagine, if he can, a splendid stairway, sixty-five feet from balustrade to balustrade, consisting of two vast flights, each of one hundred and twenty-five steps of eight inches in height by three feet broad, connected by a flat resting-place sixty feet in length, and running from the palace wall on the edge of the precipice down to meet a waterway or canal cut to its foot from the river. This marvellous staircase was supported upon a single enormous granite arch, of which the resting-place between the two flights formed the crown; that is, the connecting open space lay upon it. ”

“ The ascent of the staircase is facilitated by pretty regular but modern footings cut in the floor; and at the top is a small platform, in which is a thick block of granite, resembling an immense chest, imbedded in the solid building, and hollowed out so as to leave alternate projections and retirings, into which are let blocks of the same material, with corresponding grooves and projections, intended forever to conceal and protect the entrance to the principal chamber which is behind them. ”

“ The risers, or faces of the steps, are of deal. The stairs are supported by cast-iron girders, following the slope, the lower ones being fixed at the foot to stout timbers under the flooring, and the upper ends bolted to the cast-iron columns which support the landing. These columns are of the same pattern as the rest throughout the building, but only five inches in diameter. They are supported on concrete, and eight of them are required for each staircase. The floor of the landing is carried by lesser cast-iron girders, with flooring-joists. ”

“ On such staircases as these furniture can be conveyed up and down without damage to the walls, or injury to the furniture. Architects who build modern narrow and steep staircases, forget that often a coffin has to be conveyed with its tenant down them; and this can be done neither with convenience nor dignity upon them.
But let us think of the staircase on a brighter occasion than a funeral. The grand old flight of steps with its landings, and with sometimes its bay-window with seats in it on one of the landings, how it lends itself to the exigencies of a sitting-out place at a ball. ”

“ Beckford, “and to do away with the cold and uncomfortable appearance you generally have in staircases.” The effect of the whole is so novel that you lose all idea of stairs, and seem merely going from one room to another. As you stand on the landing the vaulted and belted ceiling behind you has the appearance of a row of arches in perspective. The same solemn and mysterious gloom pervades the staircase. The architect has frequently entreated to be allowed to introduce a little more light, but in vain. ”

“ Usually they communicate with each floor through a sort of lobby. The stairs are always of stone. As the steps at each angle do not suit the same level of the mural gallery, these latter are coaxed and accommodated, usually very clumsily. Now and then the arrangement is different, the stair stops at the first floor, and is continued at the opposite diagonal. Sometimes, as at Carlisle, Ludlow, and Bamburgh, where the outer door is at the ground-level, the staircase commences in the side of the doorway, and ascends straight in the wall, and, on reaching the next angle proceeds as a well-stair. ”

“ The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence. It winds through the midst of the house by flights of broad steps, each flight terminating in a square landing-place, whence the ascent is continued towards the cupola. A carved balustrade, freshly painted in the lower stories, but growing dingier as we ascend, borders the staircase with its quaintly twisted and intertwined pillars, from top to bottom. ”

“ This gives them the appearance of grotesque little men, with bent legs, resting one arm on the spire, and might have caused a serious loss of beauty if the whole work had been less perfect in its conception. A curious outside staircase, reached from within, goes over the south window of the transept, giving it a deeply recessed appearance; and the bold buttresses, terminated with crocketed pinnacles, throw broad shadows during the afternoon, which add immensely to the charm of the building. ”

“ In the ruined wing you can look through windows defended by iron bars, into the dismantled rooms of a brick building; the English Guards were ambuscaded in these rooms, and the spiral staircase, hollowed out from ground-floor to roof, appears like the interior of a broken shell. The staircase has two landings; the English, besieged on this landing and massed on the upper stairs, broke away the lowest. They are large slabs of blue stone which form a pile among the nettles. ”

“ The thickness of the walls immediately above the solid is twelve feet; at the top of the stone staircase they are eight feet, and where the walls are thinnest, immediately under the cornice, they measure two feet. A drop hole formed in the courses of the staircase and solid, provides for the range of the weight of a revolving light. The ascent to this building, as at the Bell Rock, is intended to be by an exterior stair or ladder of brass, and the interior communication between the several apartments by means of flights of circular oaken steps. ”

“ This part of the building, where Catherine and Mary Stuart held magnificent court, had in the middle of the façade a hexagonal hollow tower, up which winds a staircase in stone, an arabesque device invented by giants and executed by dwarfs to give this front the effect of a dream. The balustrade of the stairs rises in a spiral of rectangular panels composing the five walls of the tower, and forming at regular intervals a transverse cornice, enriched outside and in with florid carvings in stone. ”

“ To the right of the entrance a second door opened into a mural stair, a fragment of the cylindrical shell of which remains. This led to the second floor and battlements. For its support the external wall is thickened by a half-round buttress, solid below, and ascending to the summit. The door and the staircase are utterly ruined. In this floor are two window openings in flat-sided recesses, apparently round-headed. The windows, probably large loops, are broken away, and the ashlar face of the recesses is gone, but the relieving arch in the wall is flat pointed. ”

“ The right-hand wall is an open arcade, modern, but probably representing an older wall, shutting off the well-chamber. The south end is now open, but was crossed by a wall 10 feet thick, which no doubt contained the inner door leading into the great ground-floor chamber. On the left is first the door of the great staircase, then a niche 8 feet broad and 9 feet high and 7 feet deep, and semi-domed. A short passage, vaulted and groined, leads into the great staircase, a cylinder 16 feet diameter, with a newel of 2 feet. ”