Façade Alsacienne, Corps de Garde à Colmar

c. 1870s

Façade Alsacienne, Corps de Garde à Colmar, c. 1870s. Adolphe Braun (French, 1812–1877). Mammoth untrimmed carbon print; image: 43.8 x 37.5 cm (17 1/4 x 14 3/4 in.); paper: 46.7 x 40.1 cm (18 3/8 x 15 13/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg 2021.63 This German Renaissance structure was built in 1575 to be the town hall of Colmar but ended up becoming a guard house. Adolph Braun lived in another town in the same province, Alsace, and produced an extensive series of views of monuments and landscapes of the region. He marketed the images not just locally but throughout Europe and North America. The loggia above the door, now enclosed, was once used for magistrates to publicly pronounce guilty verdicts.