Note 66 — CHAPTER 3 FRANCE AND THE REST OF THE CONTINENT

The history of this project is very complicated. As might be surmised from its character, a design was at one point prepared by Gilbert, the principal Louis Philippe architect for this sort of work. The actual construction of the Hôtel Dieu by Diet followed only after a decade of changes of plan, yet the executed work probably incorporates something of Gilbert’s design; in any case, what was built is still wholly in the spirit of Gilbert’s Louis Philippe work and not at all in that of the Second Empire (see Chapter 8). Diet was Gilbert’s son-in-law.