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The Building of the New Districts in 19th Century Florence

The New Districts - The chronology of the new districts is per se significant: between 1862-64 the Maglio district was built to plans by the engineer L. Del Sarto; between 1864 and 1866 the Mattonaia district, around Piazza d'Azeglio and the neighborhood between the railroad station, the walls and Via della Scala. Even in the Mattonaia district the only facility built was a theater, the "Principe Umberto", which twenty years later would be destroyed in a fire. The park with the fountain in the middle was fenced in like English squares.

The problem of working class housing was further aggravated by the demolition of some blocks in order to build the central food market 1870. In 1859 Ubaldino Peruzzi, Pietro Adami and the architect Giuseppe Martelli submitted plans to the government for new markets in the cities of Florence and Livorno.

The construction problem that developed when Florence became capital offered new opportunities for the Società Anonima Edificatrice that had been established in 1848.

The initiatives of the this new company, that was legally recognized by the new provisional Italian government, coincided with private speculation and enlightened paternalism. The Società Anonima Edificatrice's works, to plans by the architect Guidotti were the following:

1. the Barbano building, between Viale Filippo Strozzi, Via Dolfi, Via di Barbano and Via XXVII Aprile (101 apartments) built between 1849-51, with another story added (132 apartments) in 1868;
2. building between Via Montebello, Via Garibaldi, Via Magenta, (partly used as a school) built in 1862;
3. building at San Gallo, between Via Pier Capponi, Viale Don Minzoni, Via Fra Bartolomeo, and Via Leonardo da Vinci (596 rooms, partly used as a school) between 1865-66 and 1867-68);
4. building in the Mattonaia district, at the corner of Via Mattonaia and Via Niccolini (524 rooms) built between 1865-66;
5. building in Via del Campuccio, built between 1867-68);
6.building in San Niccolò between Via G. Paolo Orsini and Via Baldovini, built between 1866-67 and torn down after it was damaged in the 1966 flood;
7. Piagentina building, between Via Arnolfo, Via Giovanni Angelico, and Via Cimabue, built between 1866-69;
8. building in the Savonarola district;
9. building at Porta a Pinti, between Piazza Donatello, Via La Farina and Via Dei Della Robbia, 1868-69;
10. building in San Jacopino, Via Del Ponte all'Asse, built between 1869-70, destroyed in 1944;
11. Building in S. Frediano between Via Cavallotti and Via Pisana, 1869. In all, the buildings erected by the Società Anonima Edificatrice provided housing for 773 families, that is over three thousand people.

Measures were taken and plans for the internal roads were prepared; it was resolved, among other things, to widen Via de' Martelli (Guidotti) and to rearrange Piazza del Duomo at the end of the same street. The Tivoli, a recreational venue with cafe, beer hall, trattoria, theater, dance hall, and concert hall was built at Piazzale Galileo on Viale dei Colli.

Public baths were opened in Corso dei Tintori on the site of a former wash-house that had belonged to the Woolmakers' Guild. In the summer of 1869 work on Lungarno Torrigian proceeded at a fast pace. Near Palazzo Serristori Prince Anatoli Demidoff built a monument to his father, sculpted by Lorenzo Bartolini. The "building transformation" continued. In addition to new buildings in the old sections and the new expansion zone, a typical phenomenon was the spread of restorations and remodeling of the old buildings in the ancient city center.

Needs of decorum, aspirations to adapt to the taste of "bourgeois elegance" and uniformity introduced by construction in the new parts of the city; a desire for functional upgrading, and this too drew on the bourgeois examples - the utilitarian and essential typologies of the old buildings converged in these modernization phenomena that were evident mainly in the work on the façades in the replacement of steep old staircases with newer ones set at easier angles, in the modifications to internal layouts to eliminate passageway-rooms seeking to create independent rooms such as the "salon" or "drawing rooms" and in the arrangement of carriage houses.

When Florence became capital, many merchants came from Turin, they brought the tastes and luxuries of new shops. Many intellectuals, Diego Martelli, for example lamented the disappearance of the simplicity of Florence's old establishments. During the early years of Florence's tenure as capital, the newspapers raced to gather the most varied and unusual ideas such as the proposal that instead of being paved with stone, the city's streets should be cobbled, like Turin.

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