Desgodets, (Antoine)
Les loix des bâtimens, suivant la coutume de Paris, traitant de ce qui concerne les servitudes réelles, les rapports des jurés-experts, les réparations locatives, douairieres, usufruitieres, bénéficiales, &. Enseignées par M.Desgodets, Architecte du Roi, dans l’Ecole de l’Académie d’Architecture, avec les notes de M.Goupy, architecte expert bourgeois.
(No publisher’s imprint, but Paris), 1748.
Full Description
8vo. 2 parts in 1. xxxvi + 437 + (3) + 204 + xxxvii + (1)pp. Contemporary mottled calf, gilt spine, the spine chipped at head and foot and with a small split at the top of the front joint (but binding sound), worn at outer corners. Neat oval late eighteenth century or early nineteenth century ownership stamp of “A.Calonne, Receveur des Domaines” on title leaf and on recto of final leaf. An old stain at lower outer blank corner, intermittently visible from p.367 onwards and principally affecting pp 367-386 in the first part of the volume, pp 15-34, 51-66 and 179-192 in the second part of the volume, and pp xv-xxiii of the index. George Atkinson’s copy.
First printing of a course of lectures on the building regulations in force in the city of Paris by Antoine Desgodets (or Desgodetz) (1653-1728), who had made his reputation as a young man as the author of Edifices Antiques de Rome, 1682, and had subsequently been appointed Architecte du Roi and, in 1719, a Professor at the Académie Royale d’Architecture, where these lectures had been delivered. These had remained unpublished in his lifetime but they provided an excellent detailed treatment of the topic, embodying both the regulations themselves and relevant case law, and in their present published form, updated with extensive notes by the Parisian architect Martin Goupy (died 1766), they proved extremely useful to their mid-eighteenth century and subsequent readership, new editions being issued in the 1760s, 1770s and later. It should be noted that the entry for Martin Goupy in Michel Gallet’s Les Architectes Parisiens du XVIIIe Siècle, although identifying him as an “expert-bourgeois” and as the architecte of “quelques jolies maisons Parisiens de style Louis XV”, fails to mention his role in bringing Desgodetz’s lectures to publication. BAL Cat 861 (1766 edition); Berlin Cat 2546 (this edition).