A baluster ( / ˈ b æ l ə s t ər / ) is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe -turned form found in stairways , parapets , and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle . Common materials used in its construction are wood, stone, and less frequently metal and ceramic. A group of balusters supporting a handrail , coping , or ornamental detail is known as a balustrade .
25-538: The Athenaeum on Princess Street in Manchester , England, now part of Manchester Art Gallery , was originally a club built for the Manchester Athenaeum, a society for the "advancement and diffusion of knowledge", in 1837. The society, founded in 1835, met in the adjacent Royal Manchester Institution until funds had been raised for the building. The society survived financial difficulties to become
50-483: A "manufactory for working up the raw intelligence of the town". By 1838, there were over 1,000 members, each paying an annual subscription of 30 shillings . The club then hit upon and survived financial difficulties to become the centre for Manchester's literary life. A report about the society in the Sheffield Times in 1847 noted that it catered for the "mental and moral improvement" of the intelligent among
75-401: A basement. It has a symmetrical nine-window façade with raised rusticated quoins at the corners and an inscribed frieze under a prominent mutuled cornice . The inscriptions on the frieze are, "INSTUTVTED MDCCCXXXV ATHENAEUM ERECTED MDCCCXXXVIII" and "FOR THE ADVANCEMENT AND DIFFVSION OF KNOWLEDGE". The building's interior was damaged by fire in 1874 and was remodelled and an attic floor
100-489: A development of the 18th century in Great Britain (see Coade stone ), and cast iron balusters a development largely of the 1840s. As balusters and balustrades have evolved, they can now be made from various materials with a few popular choices being timber, glass and stainless steel. The baluster, being a turned structure , tends to follow design precedents that were set in woodworking and ceramic practices, where
125-503: A newsroom on the ground floor, and a library, lecture hall and coffee room. A billiards room and gymnasium were added later. Richard Cobden was instrumental in promoting education in the city and spoke at the opening. He, along with a significant number of other members of the Anti-Corn Law League 's Council, was an important figure in both instigating and developing the society during its early years. He described it as
150-528: A residential street it became the site of many textile warehouses and large office buildings during the 19th century. Some of these have since been demolished but most have been converted to other uses. The road is two-way as it passes Albert Square , St Peter's Square and its tram stop . It then becomes one-way southbound but with a contraflow lane for buses, cycles and taxis, and for access. After Portland Street , it becomes fully one-way southbound until Major Street, and resumes fully two-way. It then crosses
175-633: A stairway. It may be used to include its supporting structures, such as a supporting newel post. According to the Oxford English Dictionary , "baluster" is derived through the French : balustre , from Italian : balaustro , from balaustra , "pomegranate flower" [from a resemblance to the swelling form of the half-open flower ( illustration, below right )], from Latin balaustrium , from Greek βαλαύστριον ( balaustrion ). The earliest examples of balusters are those shown in
200-474: Is one of the main streets in the city centre of Manchester , England. It begins at Cross Street and runs approximately eastwards across Mosley Street , Portland Street and Whitworth Street until the point where it continues as Brook Street and eventually joins the A34 . It is not clear whether the street was actually named after a princess and the second part of it once bore the name of David Street. Originally
225-510: The Red Fort of Agra and Delhi , in the early seventeenth century. Foliate baluster columns with naturalistic foliate capitals, unexampled in previous Indo-Islamic architecture according to Ebba Koch , rapidly became one of the most widely used forms of supporting shaft in Northern and Central India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The modern term baluster shaft is applied to
250-545: The Rochdale Canal , Whitworth Street , Charles Street and the River Medlock where it becomes Brook Street and then immediately Upper Brook Street. Balustrade The term baluster shaft is used to describe forms such as a candlestick, upright furniture support, and the stem of a brass chandelier. The term banister (also bannister) refers to a baluster or to the system of balusters and handrail of
275-611: The bas-reliefs representing the Assyrian palaces, where they were employed as functional window balustrades and apparently had Ionic capitals. As an architectural element alone the balustrade did not seem to have been known to either the Greeks or the Romans , but baluster forms are familiar in the legs of chairs and tables represented in Roman bas-reliefs, where the original legs or
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#1732766061766300-511: The turner's lathe and the potter's wheel are ancient tools. The profile a baluster takes is often diagnostic of a particular style of architecture or furniture, and may offer a rough guide to date of a design, though not of a particular example. Some complicated Mannerist baluster forms can be read as a vase set upon another vase. The high shoulders and bold, rhythmic shapes of the Baroque vase and baluster forms are distinctly different from
325-515: The 16th century. Wittkower distinguished two types, one symmetrical in profile that inverted one bulbous vase-shape over another, separating them with a cushionlike torus or a concave ring, and the other a simple vase shape, whose employment by Michelangelo at the Campidoglio steps ( c 1546), noted by Wittkower, was preceded by very early vasiform balusters in a balustrade round the drum of Santa Maria delle Grazie ( c 1482), and railings in
350-678: The 1840s. Manchester Corporation acquired the building in 1938, when the society ceased operations. Sir Charles Barry , who designed the Royal Manchester Institution in the Greek Revival style , designed the Athenaeum in the Italian palazzo style, the first such building in the city. The building is constructed of sandstone ashlar under a slate roof on a rectangular plan and originally had two storeys and
375-470: The Athenaeum. It is linked to the art gallery by a glass atrium . The Athenaeum is a grade II* listed building . The Manchester Athenaeum for the Advancement and Diffusion of Knowledge was founded in 1835, with James Heywood as its first president. It met initially at the Royal Manchester Institution until funds had been raised for its own building, which was completed in 1837. Their new premises had
400-685: The cathedrals of Aquileia ( c 1495) and Parma , in the cortile of San Damaso, Vatican, and Antonio da Sangallo 's crowning balustrade on the Santa Casa at Loreto installed in 1535, and liberally in his model for the Basilica of Saint Peter . Because of its low center of gravity , this "vase-baluster" may be given the modern term "dropped baluster". Balusters may be made of carved stone , cast stone , plaster , polymer , polyurethane / polystyrene , polyvinyl chloride (PVC), precast concrete , wood , or wrought iron . Cast-stone balusters were
425-412: The centre for Manchester's literary life. It ceased operations in 1938. Sir Charles Barry designed the Athenaeum building in the Italian palazzo style, the first such building in the city. Manchester Corporation acquired the building in 1938. In 2002, Manchester Art Gallery was extended by Hopkins Architects following an architectural design competition managed by RIBA Competitions to take in
450-455: The inventor of the baluster and credited Giuliano da Sangallo with using it consistently as early as the balustrade on the terrace and stairs at the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano ( c 1480), and used balustrades in his reconstructions of antique structures. Sangallo passed the motif to Bramante (his Tempietto , 1502) and Michelangelo , through whom balustrades gained wide currency in
475-933: The middle-classes and that the shared pursuit of "rational amusement" was an aid to bridging the social gap between masters and men. That report, and thus the society, directly inspired two societies with similar goals in Sheffield , confusingly both calling themselves the Sheffield Athenaeum . The society was promoted as "an institution for the benefit of the tradesmen, commercial assistants and apprentices, professional students, clerks, of this very populous and flourishing town". It also emphasised its admission of women, although in practice until 1844 they had limited membership rights, being barred from full engagement in its activities and from its management. Charles Dickens and Benjamin Disraeli addressed its membership in
500-676: The models for cast bronze ones were shaped on the lathe, or in Antique marble candelabra, formed as a series of stacked bulbous and disc-shaped elements, both kinds of sources familiar to Quattrocento designers. The application to architecture was a feature of the early Renaissance architecture : late fifteenth-century examples are found in the balconies of palaces at Venice and Verona . These quattrocento balustrades are likely to be following yet-unidentified Gothic precedents . They form balustrades of colonettes as an alternative to miniature arcading. Rudolf Wittkower withheld judgement as to
525-627: The shaft dividing a window in Saxon architecture. In the south transept of the Abbey in St Albans , England, are some of these shafts, supposed to have been taken from the old Saxon church. Norman bases and capitals have been added, together with plain cylindrical Norman shafts. Balusters are normally separated by at least the same measurement as the size of the square bottom section. Placing balusters too far apart diminishes their aesthetic appeal, and
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#1732766061766550-667: The sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Modern baluster design is also in use for example in designs influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement in a 1905 row of houses in Etchingham Park Road Finchley London England. Outside Europe, the baluster column appeared as a new motif in Mughal architecture , introduced in Shah Jahan 's interventions in two of the three great fortress-palaces,
575-700: The sober baluster forms of Neoclassicism , which look to other precedents, like Greek amphoras . The distinctive twist-turned designs of balusters in oak and walnut English and Dutch seventeenth-century furniture, which took as their prototype the Solomonic column that was given prominence by Bernini , fell out of style after the 1710s. Once it had been taken from the lathe, a turned wood baluster could be split and applied to an architectural surface, or to one in which architectonic themes were more freely treated, as on cabinets made in Italy, Spain and Northern Europe from
600-437: The structural integrity of the balustrade they form. Balustrades normally terminate in heavy newel posts, columns, and building walls for structural support. Balusters may be formed in several ways. Wood and stone can be shaped on the lathe, wood can be cut from square or rectangular section boards, while concrete, plaster, iron, and plastics are usually formed by molding and casting. Turned patterns or old examples are used for
625-753: Was added behind a high balustraded parapet with four tall chimneys. A central entrance porch with a coffered barrel-vaulted ceiling is accessed by a flight of stone steps and has Doric columns supporting a frieze, moulded cornice and balustraded parapet. The first and second floors have tall two-light casement windows with architraves, balustrades and pediments to the second floor. Notes Bibliography Italics denote building under construction 53°28′43″N 2°14′29″W / 53.47861°N 2.24139°W / 53.47861; -2.24139 Princess Street, Manchester 53°28′37″N 2°14′20″W / 53.477°N 2.239°W / 53.477; -2.239 Princess Street
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