Hôtel de Sens, Paris

Whitney Warren Jr., American architect and painter, captured this Gothic Revival mansion in watercolor during his studies in Paris. The Hôtel de Sens, a fifteenth-century townhouse in the Marais district, exemplifies late medieval urban architecture with its round towers, steeply pitched roofs, and ornamental stonework. Warren's handling of light across the façade and his careful attention to architectural detail reflect the academic training American architects received abroad in the late nineteenth century. This work documents both a historic building and the visual methods through which architects studied and recorded European precedents.