Give the stair the joinery of its period: heavy turned balusters on a closed string under a broad handrail in the late seventeenth century; slender turned and twisted balusters, three to a tread, on a cut string in the early eighteenth; plain sticks two to a tread, or wrought iron, under a mahogany handrail later; and in the great houses, steps of stone each built into the wall and resting on the one below, with an iron balustrade.
The handrail runs parallel to the pitch of the flight at a height of about 0.85 m above the nosings (editorial), on balusters standing on the treads, and is carried by newel posts at the foot and at the turns. The geometrical stair of stone, its steps cantilevered from the wall with no newel and an open well, was first built in England at the Queen’s House and became the grand stair of the later eighteenth century.
The Imperial stair, with one flight dividing into two, needs a plan of its own; the stairs here are laid out as dog-legs of two flights, and only their joinery changes with the period.
Front a basilican church with two storeys of the order: the lower as wide as nave and chapels, the upper as wide as the nave alone, joined by scrolls and crowned by a pediment.
Il Gesù (reconstructed): lower ≈ 34 m wide, upper ≈ 20 m; scrolls fill the difference
Mark the main door by setting a segmental pediment inside a larger triangular one, or by breaking the pediment open to hold a cartouche or statue.
Divide the inside of a dome into coffers that shrink in step with the meridians as they rise, so that their perspective deepens the dome and draws the eye to the light of the lantern.
Proportion every step so that twice its height plus its depth equals the length of a natural pace on the level: two feet, or 24 pouces.
2 r + g = 24 pouces ≈ 65 cm (modern practice: 60–66 cm)
Make the stair of a palace a processional space: one broad flight rising to a landing, then turning back in two flights either side to arrive at the principal floor beneath a single great vault.
Give the flight of steps before a temple an odd number, so that one who starts with the right foot will also set the right foot first on the top.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The stair’s balusters, handrail and newels by period”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/stair-balusters. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.