early 20th century of this type all over the world, designed by architects like Charles Girault, Thomas Hastings, Ion D. Berindey or Petre Antonescu. Today, from Bucharest to Buenos Aires and from San Francisco to Brussels, the Beaux-Arts style survives in opera houses, civic structures, university campuses commemorative monuments, luxury hotels and townhouses. The style was heavily influenced by the Paris Opéra House (1860-1875), designed by Charles Garnier, the masterpiece of the 19th century renovation of Paris, dominating its entire neighbourhood and continuing to astonish visitors with its majestic staircase and reception halls. The Opéra was an aesthetic and societal turning point in French architecture. Here, Garnier showed what he called a style actuel, which was influenced by the spirit of the time, aka Zeitgeist, and reflected the designer's personal taste. Beaux-Arts façades were usually imbricated, or layered with overlapping classical elements or sculpture. Often façades consisted of a high rusticated basement level, after it a few floors high level, usually decorated with pilasters or columns, and at the top an attic level and/or the roof. Beaux-Arts architects were often commissioned to design monumental civic buildings symbolic of the self-confidence of the town or city. The style aimed for a Baroque opulence through lavishly decorated monumental structures that evoked Louis XIV's Versailles. However, it wasn't just a revival of the Baroque, being more of a synthesis of Classicist styles, like Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassicism etc. Industry and new technologies Because of the Industrial Revolution and the new technologies it brought, new types of buildings have appeared. By 1850 iron was quite present in dailylife at every scale, from mass-produced decorative architectural details and objects of apartment buildings and commercial buildings to train sheds. A well-known 19th century glass and iron building is the Crystal Palace from Hyde Park (London), built in 1851 to house the Great Exhibition, having an appearance similar with a greenhouse. Its scale was daunting. The marketplace pioneered novel uses of iron and glass to create an architecture of display and consumption that made the temporary display of the world fairs a permanent feature of modern urban life. Just after a year after the Crystal Palace was dismantaled, Aristide Boucicaut opened what historians of mass consumption have labelled the first department store, Le Bon Marché in Paris. As the store expanded, its exterior took on the form of a public monument, being highly decorated with French Renaissance