Not all the hydraulic virtuosity of France could redeem the Trocadero Palace, designed by Gabriel Davioud and Jules Bourdais. Davioud, the chief architect of the Trocadero building and fountains, had worked with Baron Haussmann during the glory years of the Second Empire and was serving, at the time of the exposition, as the inspector general of architecture for the city of Paris. He helped create the landscaping of the Bois de Boulogne and the Parc Monceaux. Several squares, gardens, and fountains in Paris were Davioud's handiwork. His touch with plants and water was deft and sure. But his talent did not redeem the Trocadero Palace. Even to contemporary observers sympathetic to eclecticism in architecture, Davioud's pastiche of Romanesque columns, Spanish-Moorish arches, the Giralda Tower and polychrome decor was an unqualified failure. The wide sweep of the two flanking colonnades was impressive enough; but the Trocadero palace itself looked squat and proportionless. Parisians put up with the building for 56 years before demolishing it to make way for the Chaillot Palace at the 1937 exposition universelle