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Comment by matt4077 | Hacker News Reader

Never noticed that art nouveau apparently didn't make it to the US. Or is that because the chart only focuses on the single-family home? It's probably the most characteristic style of most cities from Brussels to Russia.

Examples: http://www.rhein-ruhr-region.de/info/wp-content/uploads/wett... or https://birgitrehse.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/planufer-1.j...

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For whatever reason, I think Art Deco ended up supplanting Art Nouveau in US cities. Art Deco didn't have much of an influence on single-family homes either, but it certainly left its mark on everything from small apartments to skyscrapers.

It's a shame: while I certainly enjoy Art Deco, I miss the incredible design and ambiance of the Art Nouvea neighborhoods in St. Petersburg and Barcelona. I've never found anything with quite that feel in other cities, especially in the US...

> For whatever reason, I think Art Deco ended up supplanting Art Nouveau in US cities.

Art Nouveau was not well fitted for large buildings: it was expensive to build and wasn't easily replicable. Even in Europe, large buildings on Art Nouveau are scarce and were more a proof of concept than a standard way of building. Casa Milá in Barcelona is probably the most relevant example and for sure a must-see.

For a public building you can (pay) to go through, the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels is a very good example of an Art Nouveau building. (located on Coudenberg at Place Royale)

It's beautiful and unlike the periods before it they are quite spacious on the inside. If you go further back in time, it sometimes gets a bit cramped (i. e. stairs half a meter wide, half the depth of your foot and at an 120 degree angle – basically a ladder).

It's interesting to see that everyone wants to life in them here, but nobody would attempt to build like it again. Even the most luxurious new apartments may have floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides, but the ceilings are at 3m instead of 4.5m+.

May be the costs of the solid walls and increased heat loss, or it'd just feel tacky to have ornaments of ivy and topless women on the front of a new building.

It's basic economy: instead of 2, the building company sells 3 floors using almost the same materials and licences. Even if the 'floor price' decreases a bit is certainly a sure bet.

> Even the most luxurious new apartments may have floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides, but the ceilings are at 3m instead of 4.5m+.

Having friends living in apartments in such high ceilings (in my city, Kraków, there's lots of those old buildings, so even poorest students often get to live in them), the number one complaint is heating - warm air rises and accumulates under the ceiling, so you have to heat a lot to even feel it at floor level.

When that buildings are properly renovated (e.g. new insulation on external facade) the thermal problem is solved and you remain with the sensation of living in a "palace". Living in an old kamienica with a ceiling on 3,50m+ is an "order of magnitude" better than living in a Soviet style building with ceilings on 2,40m or less. It's liberating.

Man I grew up with seven foot cielings (under 2.2m) and saw no problems with it. The house is super cozy. Now I've got roughly ten foot cielings and just changing a light bulb or replacing smoke detector batteries is a real pain.

Chandeliers, sconces, pendants, and wall-mounted smoke detectors take care of that problem.

I'm not saying that high cielings are terrible, I just see a minor disadvantage (plus the actual heating issue) and am used to low cielings, so it bugs me. Oddly, I dislike the aesthetics of all of those options as well. And I haven't got a ladder (this place is a rental so it's not that long term and ladders are big things to haul around when you move frequently and only need them rarely).

Or, I don't know, ladders?

Create plenum space with drop ceiling 3-ft below actual ceiling?

I wished every Texas contractor who builds great rooms with 20 foot ceilings but still puts HVAC ducts in hot unconditioned attics did this.

> I miss the incredible design and ambiance of the Art Nouvea neighborhoods in St. Petersburg and Barcelona. I've never found anything with quite that feel in other cities..

If you have the chance, Budapest is full of art nouveau buildings.

Your pictures aren't very representative of Art Nouveau in France & Belgium. Here are other examples:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Ma...

https://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/belgiu...

http://avenue-montaigne.be/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Horta....

On the contrary, the second link in the grandparent's post is basically how all distinguished buildings in the center of Paris and Madrid were built at the time - a subtler form of modernism, still with strong classic influence, but Art Nouveau nonetheless. The ones you link are more artistic and emblematic, but that kind of building is much less frequent.

Have in mind that Art Nouveau is a pretty wide and heterogeneous movement, and not all of it is of the "flowery" nature.

Paris, even though it may not be what is pictured, is also what I immediately thought of, from the GP's second link.

No idea what style the first is, or the relevance of the third image, but the second image looks like Art Deco to me.

> No idea what style the first is

Art Nouveau, no doubt about that.

> or the relevance of the third image

That's the inside of 'the first true Art Nouveau building', the Tassel Hotel. Unesco world heritage and all that.

The page it's from explains it's a more geometrical style of nouveau.

https://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/belgiu...

Riga: https://www.flickr.com/photos/20792787@N00/sets/721575944110...

I suspect some college campuses will have it.

Ex: https://www.flickr.com/photos/geronimo819/9481473363/

That definitely feels more Roman. Art Nouveau is more playful, sometimes symmetry-breaking etc. I think the US was mostly doing Art Deco at the same time, which is obviously beautiful in its own right.

I would call that Second Empire - the style of the classic haunted house in US TV and film.

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