Une architecture murmurante : an expression of freemasonry in Claude-Nicolas Ledoux's Propylaea for Paris?

Anthony Vidler's recent monograph on the eighteenth-century French architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806) characterizes certain aspects of Ledoux's work as Masonic. Vidler defines Freemasonry primarily as an instrument of sociability. His recognition of Masonic imagery and intent, especially in Ledoux's Ideal City, combines with certain details of Ledoux's life to convince Vidler of Ledoux's adherence to a Masonic or quasi-Masonic lodge.The matter remains open to debate. Vidler's view of Freemasonry does not entirely accord with its factious and ambitious condition in eighteenth-century France. Nor does he sufficiently address the public manifestation of Masonic symbolism which, despite the Order's code of secrecy, was divulged to the profane, emerging architecturally as part of Neoclassicism's stylistic revival of the antique. The weakness of Vidler's analysis becomes apparent when he overlooks Masonic symbolism in a project that does not conform to his positive image of the Order: Ledoux's network of customs houses for Paris, the project he called the Propylaea