UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Comparison of American Architectural Styles 1790-1960

Except where noted, all examples are from Buffalo, NY, architecture

Styles - Chronological Order: Federal ...Classical Revival/Jeffersonian Classicism/Roman Classicism.... Greek Revival ..... Victorian ..... Gothic Revival ..... Renaissance Revival ..... Romanesque Revival ..... Octagon ..... Italianate ..... Second Empire ..... Stick ..... Eastlake ..... Richardsonian Romanesque ..... Colonial Revival ..... Beaux Arts Classicism ..... Shingle ..... Queen Anne ..... Art Nouveau ..... Sullivanesque ..... Bungalow ..... Neoclassicism ....Period Revival...... Georgian Revival ..... Prairie ..... Arts and Crafts (Craftsman) ..... Tudor Revival ..... International ..... Art Deco ..... Art Moderne

Styles - Alphabetical Order: Art Deco ..... Art Moderne ..... Art Nouveau ..... Arts and Crafts (Craftsman) ..... Beaux Arts Classicism ..... Bungalow ..... Classical Revival/Jeffersonian Classicism/Roman Classicism ..... Colonial Revival ..... Eastlake ..... Federal ...Georgian Revival ..... Gothic Revival ..... Greek Revival ..... International ..... Italianate ..... Neoclassicism (American) ..... Octagon....Period Revival ..... Prairie ..... ..... Queen Anne ..... Renaissance Revival ..... Richardsonian Romanesque ..... Romanesque Revival ..... Second Empire ..... Shingle ..... Stick ..... Sullivanesque .....Tudor Revival ..... Victorian .....

Style

Historic Context

Important, Identifying Features

Doorways

Windows

Fireplaces

Furniture

             

Federal

1790-1830

Federal

Historical Context

In Britain, in the second half of the century, Roman precedents were popularized by Robert Adam who toured Europe, especially Rome, 1754-8. (Scientific exploration of Pompeii had begun in 1748.)

The style reached America by way of British pattern books and an ever-swelling wave of masons, carpenters, and joiners who emigrated from England.

In the years immediately after the Revolutionary War. Labeled "Federal," it was enthusiastically embraced by Americans, who then adapted it to suit their own tastes and circumstances.

Federal

Important, Identifying Features

The Adam house is most commonly a simple box, two or more rooms deep, with doors and windows arranged in strict symmetry. The box may be modified by projecting wings or attached dependencies:

Low pitched roof

Smooth facade

Large glazed area and elliptical fanlight with flanking slender side lights

Polygonal or bowed bays

Ornamental elements herald the Adamesque style:

Federal

Doorways

Provides main emphasis on facade (perhaps the only exterior ornamentation):

Doors: 6-panel doors:

Classical doorways:

Elliptical columned portico

Broken pediment:

Swan-necked pediments

Framed by fluted pilasters

Elliptical fanlight:

Side lights with tracery:

Oval paterae

Federal

Windows

Window heads, made from marble, stone or wood, are flat:

Window heads often have a keystone:

Entablatures may include delicate Adamesque details:

Pilasters:

Fanlight tracery:

Semicircular and oval windows used in upper stories

Gabled or pedimented dormer windows

Palladian windows

Federal

Fireplaces

Adamesque applied details on wooden surrounds and overmantels: urns, swags, paterae, figures:

Marble fireplaces feature engaged columns supporting decorated entablatures

Marble slips in a wooden surround:

Chimneypieces: Ionic and Tuscan columns

Chimneypieces: Greek key motif

Cast-iron liners

Iron andirons

Brass andirons embellished with classical urns or spherical finials

Cast-iron firebacks feature Neoclassical patterns or eagle motif

Surround: gougework:

Coal grates

Federal

Furnishings

In Britain, in the second half of the century, Roman precedents were popularized by Robert Adam who toured Europe, especially Rome, 1754-8. (Scientific exploration of Pompeii had begun in 1748.)

The style reached America by way of British pattern books and an ever-swelling wave of masons, carpenters, and joiners who emigrated from England.

In the years immediately after the Revolutionary War. Labeled "Federal," it was enthusiastically embraced by Americans, who then adapted it to suit their own tastes and circumstances. The young Republic saw itself politically and artistically as the spiritual heir of republican Rome (and later of the Greek democracies):

Ornament is close to the surface and consists of painting, shallow carving, and veneers or inlays in woods of contrasting colors:

Hitchcock chair:

"Boston" Rocker:

Built-in furniture found in dining rooms and formal parlors where the fireplace wall provided space for shelved cupboards.

Classical Revival /Jeffersonian Classicism / Roman Classicism


1790-1830


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Classical Revival / Jeffersonian Classicism / Roman Classicism

An American version of European Neoclassicism. This type of classicism was concurrent with, and competing with the more dominant Federal style.

The chief proponent of Roman Classicism was Thomas Jefferson who studied Palladio's Four Books of Architecture , especially his Villa Rotunda, when he was designing Monticello and the University of Virginia. Jefferson had been exposed to Palladio's influence in European Neoclassicism when he was ambassador to France.

Not to be confused with American Neoclassicism 1900-1920

Examples from Buffalo architecture: None.

Other examples:

Classical Revival / Jeffersonian Classicism / Roman Classicism

Classical Revival / Jeffersonian Classicism / Roman Classicism

Classical Revival / Jeffersonian Classicism / Roman Classicism

Classical Revival /Jeffersonian Classicism / Roman Classicism

Classical Revival / Jeffersonian Classicism / Roman Classicism

Greek Revival

1820-1860



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Greek Revival

Historical Context

The final years of the 18th century brought an increasing interest in classical buildings to both the United States and Europe. This was first based on Roman models (Federal style), but archaeological investigation in the early 19th century emphasized Greece as the Mother of Rome which, in turn, shifted interest to Grecian models.

The style is an adaptation of the classic Greek temple front employing details of Doric, Ionic or Corinthian order

To the popular mind the Greek temple was associated with the origins of American democracy in ancient Greece.

Greece's involvement in a war for independence (1821-30) aroused much sympathy in the newly independent United States.

Further, the War of 1812 fought against England diminished American affection for British influence, including the still dominant Adam ("Federal" in U.S.) style in domestic architecture.

Greek Revival

Important, Identifying Features

Classical Greek columns and pilasters:

Pedimented gables (some are broken pediments):

Houses: most have porches (porticos) supported by prominent square or rounded columns, typically of Doric style:

Front door surrounded by narrow side lights and a rectangular line of transom lights above:

Heavy cornices with unadorned friezes and horizontal transoms above entrances (this represents the classical entablature)

Ornamentation: anthemion

Greek Revival

Doorways

Doors: Lintels are plain, simple central panel and corner blocks the only embellishment

Doors: 2-panel doors

Doors: 4-panel doors

French doors

Pilasters support simple entablature (without pediment)

Classical columns:

Rectangular transom lights and side lights

Anthemion/Acroterion

Ornamentation: key fret

Ornamentation: egg-and-dart

Greek Revival

Windows

Door and window architraves were fluted, reeded, or a combination of both, with full contour of ingenious silhouette, symmetrical upon a central axis. It was successfully terminated at the corners by inserting square blocks, which were turned or carved in bold relief. Sometimes the head-trim was of different section than that of the jamb-trim, by which means interesting variety was introduced. Frequently a long middle block in lieu of a key was substituted, this being carved in relief. Strangely enough this trim was far from Greek in derivation, but it was one of the products of the style and harmonized perfectly in its setting.

Sash with six-pane glazing:

Rectangular, tripartite (group of 3 vertical windows):

Frieze-band windows, often covered with an iron or wooden gate fashioned into a decorative Greek pattern:

Greek Revival

Fireplaces

The Chimneypieces were often of black marble with plain Doric pilasters or engaged columns without the over-mantel of Colonial days:

Greek Revival

Furnishings

Empire Style, 1810 - 1830

French Restauration Style, 1830 - 1850

Rococo Revival Style, 1850 - 1870

Victorian

1830-1900






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"Victorian" Styles

Historical Context

"Victorian" refers to the reign of England's Queen Victoria, 1837-1901. More generally, it refers to the the second half of the nineteenth century. In the U.S., some historians use the term to describe the period after the Civil war until World war I in 1914.

During the second half of the 19th century, architects in the United States began to lose interest in Greco-Roman Classicism, and to adopt new domestic styles based loosely on medieval and other non-classical forms of building.

One of the most important technological developments was the advent of balloon framing, whereby the framework of a house could be made out of uniform lumber; this was becoming increasingly available from commercial mills.

Advanced manufacturing techniques were also employed to mass produce finished windows, doors,brackets and decorative turnings, often more elaborate and sometimes less expensive than their handmade counterparts.

Along with plentiful building materials, there was also access to an increasing variety of publications on house building: trade catalogues, pattern books and architectural periodicals.

Industrialization meant that for the first time in the United States, very large houses could be built on a wide scale. Tenements and, later, apartment houses went up in increasing numbers, as the population shifted from country to town and newly arrived foreign immigrants sought accommodation.

For many, "bric-a-brac" or "gingerbread" summarize the the style.

At least eight distinct architectural styles developed, along with numerous secondary styles and movements, all of which are now incorporated under the broad heading of 'Victorian." These styles overlapped in date and none had a specific beginning or end.

The first post-classical styles, beginning in the 1830s, were the
Gothic Revival and the Italianate.

The Stick style followed in the 1860s and 1870s, and the late 19th century produced Queen Anne, Richardsonian Romanesque, Shingle and Colonial Revival styles.

 

 

 

 

 

Gothic Revival

1830-1860





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Gothic Revival

Historical Context

During the second half of the 19th century, architects in the United States began to lose interest in Greco-Roman Classicism, and to adopt new domestic styles based loosely on medieval and other non-classical forms of building.

The first post-classical styles, beginning in the 1830s,were the Gothic Revival and the Italianate.

Gothic Revival architecture came to America from England about 1830. Its most famous practitioner, English born Richard Upjohn, a cabinet maker and draftsman, arrived in this country as a young man in 1829. Upjohn's best known work is Trinity Church in New York City, consecrated in 1846. He designed St. Paul's Cathedral in Buffalo, completed in 1851. His churches, and those illustrated in publications like his Rural Architecture (1852), served as patterns for countless buildings throughout the country.

Alexander Jackson Davis was the first American architect to spread the Gothic gospel. He published floor plans and three-dimensional views in his 1837 book, Rural Residences. His design for Lyndhurst, an imposing country estate in Tarrytown, New York, became a showplace for the Gothic Revival style.

Davis's friend and fellow architect Andrew Jackson Downing also promoted the Gothic Revival in his books on "cottage villas" published in the 1840s. The Hudson River Valley, where Downing resided, was the perfect setting for the kind of picturesque, rambling "irregular" designs he endorsed. It was chiefly Downing's book that led to the flowering throughout rural America of some very picturesque wooden Gothic architecture.

Downing's one-year partner (Downing died in a fire) was Calvert Vaux who himself published a fairly influential pattern book entitled Villas and Cottages. Six years later, Vaux moved to New York City and soon partnered with the superintendent of a new park that was being created. The park was Central Park and the superintendent was Frederick Law Olmsted.

Gothic Revival

Important, Identifying Features

Carpenter Gothic (cottages): Steeply pitched gable roofs, usually with steep cross gables:

Carpenter Gothic: Polygonal chimney pots

Carpenter Gothic: Gables with decorated vergeboards:

Carpenter Gothic: Hood molds over windows

Carpenter Gothic: Gingerbread trim along eaves and gable ends:

Carpenter Gothic: Gothic motifs, e.g., foliated ornaments, pinnacles, battlements, crockets, label moldings, towers, trefoils quatrefoils:

Carpenter Gothic: one-story porch (either entry or full-width)

Carpenter Gothic: Board-and-batten exterior wall cladding:

Commercial buildings: Pointed Gothic arches:

Commercial buildings: finials

Commercial buildings:
Foils (trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil, sexfoil, multifoil):

Churches: buttresses:

Churches: pinnacles with finial:

Churches: finial:

Churches: pinnacles with crockets:

Churches: towers with spires:

Churches: towers with battlements:

Churches: Pointed (Gothic) arches:

Churches: Cruciform shape with transepts:

Churches: English Gothic churches may have hammer-beam ceilings:

Gothic Revival

Doorways

Carpenter Gothic: pointed arches


Churches: Compound arch over double doors

Gothic Revival

Windows

Carpenter Gothic: Gothic shape windows

Churches: Rose windows:

Churches: Large pointed windows with tracery and stained glass:

Churches: Lancet windows:

Churches: Clerestory windows:

Gothic Revival

Fireplaces

Gothic Revival

Furnishings

Ansley Wilcox Mansion / Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site Morning Room

Foils (trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil, sexfoil, multifoil):

Pendants:

Tables:

Chairs:

Clock

Renaissance Revival

1840-1890







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Renaissance Revival

Historical Context

One of the architects who popularized the style was Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895), the first American to study at the prestigious L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Hunt was one of the architects who designed buildings for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago where the style received great publicity.

French and Italian Renaissance styles are the models.

Renaissance Revival

Important, Identifying Features

Symmetrical

Finely cut ashlar accented with rusticated quoins

Rusticated quoins

Smaller windows on each succeeding story

Doors supporting entablatures or pediments

Belt or string courses

Different architectural treatment on different stories

Window trim or surround different on each story

Projecting cornices supported by modillions

Low ti moderate hipped roof

Roof highlighted with balustrade

Renaissance Revival

Doorways

Frequently, arches above the exterior doors

Often a hooded entryway

An entablature, supported by pilasters, over the entrance

Renaissance Revival

Windows

Smaller windows on each succeeding story

Window trim or surround different on each story

Renaissance Revival

Fireplaces

Renaissance Revival

Furnishings

Romanesque Revival

1840-1900





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Romanesque Revival

Historical Context

The term "Romanesque" was first applied by critics in the early nineteenth century to describe the architecture of the later eleventh and the twelfth centuries, because certain architectural elements, principally the round arch, resembled those of ancient Roman architecture. Thus, the word served to distinguish Romanesque from Gothic buildings.

American architects experimented with the Romanesque in the 1840s and 1850s for churches and public buildings, using round arches, corbels and historically correct features such as chevrons and lozenges borrowed from the pre-Gothic architecture of Europe.

As interpreted by Richardson in the 1870s and 1880s, the Romanesque became a different, and uniquely American, style.

Romanesque Revival

Important, Identifying Features

Monochromatic brick or stone:

Corbel tables along the eves:

Belt or string courses mark horizontal divisions:

Compound arches carved with geometric medieval moldings:

Square or polygonal towers of differing heights:

Various roof shapes:

Squat dwarf-columns:

Romanesque Revival

Doorways

Semicircular arch for door openings

Voussoir

Colored glass transom

Romanesque Revival

Windows

Semicircular arch for window and door openings:

Voussoir:

Romanesque Revival

Fireplaces

Romanesque Revival

Furnishings

Octagon

1850-1870








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Octagon

Historical Context

Octagonal or eight-sided shaped structures have been built for centuries. The oldest known is the Tower of the Winds built by the Greeks about 300 BC. Centuries ago, octagon shaped buildings were popular in Italy.

In 1848, Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887), a native of the Genesee Country village of Cohocton, published A Home for All, or a New, Cheap, Convenient, and Superior Mode of Building in which he announced that the octagon house, with its eight sides, enclosed more space than a square one with equal wall space. The octagonal form had been used in public buildings in the past, but now as a concept for domestic architecture, it had a dedicated and convincing champion.

Fowler's books, stressing the functional and stylistic advantages of the octagon house, found many readers and several hundred followers who sprinkled the landscape from New England to Wisconsin with eight-sided houses, barns, churches, schoolhouses, carriage houses, garden houses, smokehouses and privies.

Octagon

Important, Identifying Features

2- to 3-story house

Raised basement

Encircling verandahs or porches

Cupola, belvedere or roof deck

Minimal ornamental detailing

Octagon

Doorways

Octagon

Windows

Octagon

Fireplaces

Octagon

Furnishings

Italianate

1850-1885











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Italianate

Historical Context

Italianate buildings in America were not built by or for Italian families. Actually, there were few Italian people in the U.S. at this time, but the idea of rural Italy was romanticized by Americans and by America's early European-educated architects.

The Italianate style, along with the Gothic Revival, began in England as part of the Picturesque movement, a reaction to the formal classical ideals in art and architecture that had been fashionable for about two hundred years

The movement (popularized by Andrew Jackson Downing's pattern books) emphasized rambling, informal Italian farmhouses, with their characteristic square towers , as models for Italian-style villa architecture

Italianate

Important, Identifying Features

Villa: asymmetrical

Villa: tall tower

Villa: "L" or "T' shaped floor plan

Villa: gentle, pitched roof with projecting eaves

Villa: grouping of either straight or round-headed windows into threes

Villa: porches or arcaded loggias between the tower and house or at the corners

Villa: smooth stucco finish


Italianate: rectangular (almost square) 2 or 3-story house

Italianate: very wide eaves, usually supported by large brackets

Italianate: tall, thin first floor windows

Italianate: low-pitch hip roof topped with cupola

Italianate: rusticated quoins

Italianate: central one-bay porch or long porches

Italianate

Doorways

Double doors

Renaissance-style panels in doors

Arched openings

Glazed doors

Door canopy


Ornamentation: rope molding

Triangular arches on doors

glazed

double doors

Fanlight

transoms

Clear glass in 1850s, followed by colored glass and later leaded glass

Classical portico

Door molding or raised panels

Italianate

Windows

Italianate

Fireplaces

Italianate

Furnishings

Second Empire

1860-1890







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Second Empire

Historical Context

The Second Empire style was borrowed from France. It is named for the reign of Napoleon III (1852-70), who undertook a major building campaign that transformed Paris into a city of grand boulevards and monumental buildings that were copied throughout Europe and the New World. One of his most famous projects was the enlargement of the Louvre (1852-57), which brought back to popularity a roof form -- mansard -- developed by 17th-century French Renaissance architect Francois Mansart.

The prototype for Second Empire style is
Opera Garnier, Paris, designed by Charles Garnier.

Second Empire

Important, Identifying Features

Mansard roof covered with multicolored tiles or tinplates

Symmetrical 2 or 3-story square block

Houses: Projecting central pavilion often extending above the rest of the house

Classical moldings

Quoins, cornices, and belt courses have great depth and are dramatized by different textures and colored materials

Windows are arched and pedimented, sometimes in pairs with molded surrounds

Entrance doors often are arched double doors with upper glass panels

First floor windows are usually very tall

Second Empire

Doorways

Triangular arches on doors

Second Empire

Windows

Second Empire

Fireplaces

Second Empire

Furnishings

Stick

1860-1890






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Stick

Historical Context

Evolving out of the Carpenter Gothic, the Stick Style flourished in the mid- and late-19th century. It reached its height of popularity with Richard Morris Hunt's houses in Newport, Rhode Island, in the 1870s.

Hunt (portrait) was one of many American architects influenced by a mid-19th-century European revival of late-medieval rustic country architecture, most notably the gingerbread-ornamented chalets of the Alps and the half-timbered cottages of Normandy and Tudor England. He was exposed to Europe's architecture while studying at the most prestigious school of architecture in the Western world, L'Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris, the first American to do so.

The asymmetrical composition of the Eastern Stick style is highlighted by functional-appearing decorative "stick work." The style is defined primarily by decorative detailing -- the characteristic multi-textured wall surfaces and roof trusses whose stickwork faintly mimics the exposed structural members of Medieval half-timbered houses. This is in contrast to earlier Gothic Revival that used the wall surface as a plane with decorative detail applied at the doors, windows, or cornices.

Although its proponents lauded the structural integrity of the style, the visible stickwork, unlike true half-timbering, was merely applied decoration with no structural relation to the underlying balloon frame construction

Stick

Important, Identifying Features

Asymmetrical

Functional-appearing decorative "stick work"

Steeply pitched gable roofs, cross gables

Towers

Pointed dormers

large verandahs and porches

Highly decorative vertical, horizontal and diagonal boards applied over horizontal siding

Oversized and unornamented structural corner posts, roof rafters, purlins, brackets, porch posts and railings

Sash or casement-style windows have either single or multiple lights

Stick

Doorways

Stick

Windows

Stick

Fireplaces

Stick

Furnishings

Eastlake

1970-1890




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Eastlake

Historical Context

The Eastlake Style was simply a decorative style of ornamentation found on houses of various other Victorian styles, primarily the Queen Anne and Stick styles.

It is named after Charles L. Eastlake (1833-1906), an English architect who wrote "Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and Other Details," published in 1868. The book was reprinted in America in 1872 and became so popular that it required six editions within eleven years.

He made no furniture himself, his designs being produced by professional cabinet makers.

Henry Hobson Richardson, an American architect, was one of the foremost proponents of the Eastlake style in the United States. The furniture he designed for the Woburn Public Library and the North Eastern Library in Massachusetts are very similar to pieces which appear in the illustrations to "Hints on Household Taste."

Eastlake

Important, Identifying Features

Porch posts, railings, balusters, and pendants - turned on a mechanical lather -- characterized by a massive and robust quality

Large curved brackets, scrolls often placed at every corner, turn or projection

Perforated gables and pediments, curved panels, and spindles and lattice work found along porch eaves

Eastlake

Doorways

Eastlake

Windows

Eastlake

Fireplaces

Eastlake

Furnishings

Richardsonian Romanesque

1970-1900







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Richardsonian Romanesque

Historical Context

As interpreted by H. H. Richardson in the 1870s and 1880s, the Romanesque became a different, and uniquely American, style. Still present were the round arches framing window and door openings, but gone were vertical silhouettes and smooth stone facings. Richardson's buildings were more horizontal and rough in texture.

Heaviness was an ever-present characteristic of the style -- emphasized not only by the stone construction but also by deep window reveals, cavernous door openings and, occasionally, bands of windows. These openings were often further defined by a contrasting color or texture of stone or by short, robust columns.

Richardsonian Romanesque was favored for churches, university buildings and public buildings such as railroad stations and courthouses. Consequently, towers were often part of the design. In the best examples, a single tower, massive and bold in outline, crowns the ensemble.

Just as one architect was responsible for this style, one building established its popularity. Richardson's 1872 design of Trinity Church in Boston won one of the most prestigious architectural competitions of the day.

Although Richardson produced fewer houses in the Romanesque style (he is also noted for his Queen Anne and Shingle Style designs), there were enough to inspire a plethora of followers.

A large house, such as the Glessner House in Chicago, the Ames Gate Lodge in Massachusetts, and the Gratwick House (demolished) in Buffalo,was required to support the massive stoniness of the Romanesque style, but elements of Richardson's work -- such as broad round arches, squat columns, eyebrow dormers and carved, intertwining floral details -- found their way into the vocabulary of many local builders. Numerous masonry row houses still exist to pay tribute to Richardson's creativity and immense popularity.

Richardsonian Romanesque

Important, Identifying Features

Massive stone walls

Dramatic semicircular arches. His arches are frequently not truly Romanesque but Syrian, an early Christian form which springs from the ground level.

Unusual sculptured shapes in stone which give his structures great individuality.

Heaviness was the ever-present characteristic of the style, emphasized by

  • Stone construction
  • deep windows,
  • Cavernous recessed door openings and
  • Bands of windows.

Contrasting color or texture of stone

Short, robust columns.

Towers occur in about 75 percent of Richardson's buildings, a second tower occurs in about 15 percent.

Richardsonian Romanesque

Doorways

Syrian-style arch with narrow double doors

Richardsonian Romanesque

Windows

Richardsonian Romanesque

Fireplaces

Richardsonian Romanesque

Furnishings

Colonial Revival

1870-1920




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Colonial Revival

Historical Context

The reuse of Colonial design in the US toward the end of the 19th and into the 20th century, typically in bank buildings, churches and suburban homes

Following on the heels of America's Centennial celebrations, the Colonial Revival emerged in the early 1880s. The style, which borrowed heavily from early American architecture - particularly Georgian style buildings - was largely an outgrowth of a new pride in America's past and a rapidly growing Interest in historic preservation. Among the leaders of the movement were the partners at McKim, Mead and White, who had made a tour of New England's historic towns in 1878.

Colonial Revival

Important, Identifying Features

Accentuated front door, with pediment supported by pilasters

Accentuated front door with entry porch supported by slender columns:

Doors have fanlights or sidelights:

Symmetrically balanced windows and center door:


Windows: double-hung sashes, usually with multi-pane glazing in one or both sashes:

One-story side wing(s):

Some examples are Dutch Colonial

Cornices with modillions and dentils:

Colonial Revival

Doorways


Classical doorways: triangular pediments

Classical doorways: round pediments

Classical doorways: columns


6-panel doors


8-panel doors

Porticos based on classical temple porches with columns and pediments


Surrounds: keystone

Surrounds:
fanlight

Ornamentation: eared architraves

Ornamentation: louvered door shutters

Colonial Revival

Windows

Windows: double-hung sashes, usually with multi-pane glazing in one or both sashes

Windows frequently in adjacent pairs

Paneled shutters

Keystoned arch

External shutters (on wood houses) with iron shutter dogs

Internal shutters (on brick houses)

Palladian windows

Dormers: gabled or set into the roof

Bullseye windows

Colonial Revival

Fireplaces

Classical motifs in decoration

Paneled chimney breast

Eared overmantel and surround

Pediments and broken pediments on overmantels

Classical engaged columns in surround

Decorated cast-iron firebacks

Brass, or brass and iron, andirons

Delft tiles used for slips

Colonial Revival

Furnishings

Corner or wall built-in cupboards with doors, decorated with with scalloped shelves and shell-head niches

Glazed cupboards

Built-in beds

  • Wing chair (Ansley Wilcox Mansion / Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site)

Beaux Arts Classicism

1876-1930





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Beaux Arts

Historic Context

A very rich, lavish and heavily ornamented classical style taught at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, in Paris in the 19th century

The term "Beaux Arts" is the approximate French equivalent of "Fine Arts."

The style was popularized during the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

Very influential in the US in that many of the leading late 19th century architects had been trained at Ecole des Beaux Arts, e.g., Richard Morris Hunt (the first American to study there) , H. H. Richardson (the second American to study there, but who chose to develop his own style, "Richardsonian Romanesque") and Charles McKim, John Carrere and Thomas Hastings.

More than any other style (except perhaps the Chateauesque), the Beaux Arts expressed the taste and values of America's industrial barons at the turn of the century. In those pre-income tax days, great fortunes were proudly displayed in increasingly ornate and expensive houses.

Broadly speaking, the term "Beaux Arts" refers to the American Renaissance period from about 1890 to 1920 and encompasses the French
Renaissance, Italian Renaissance, and Neoclassical Revivals.

Beaux Arts

Important, Identifying Features

Symmetrical facade

Roofs: flat, low-pitched; mansard if modeled after French Renaissance Revival

Wall surfaces with decorative garlands, floral patterns, or cartouches dripping with sculptural ornament

Facades with quoins, pilasters, or columns (usually paired with Ionic or Corinthian capitals)

Walls of masonry (usually smooth, light-colored stone)

First story may be rusticated

Large and grandiose compositions

Exuberance of detail and variety of stone finishes

Projecting facades or pavilions

Paired colossal columns

Enriched moldings

Free-sanding statuary

Windows: framed by freestanding columns, balustraded sill, and pedimented entablature on top

Pronounced cornices and enriched entablatures are topped with a tall parapet, balustrade, or attic story

Beaux Arts

Doorways

Renaissance tracery

Renaissance columns (sometimes banded)

Beaux Arts

Windows

Beaux Arts

Fireplaces

Beaux Arts

Furnishings

Shingle

1880-1900







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Shingle

Historical Context

The term "shingle style" was popularized by Vincent Scully in the 1950s. It is sometimes referred to as the "seaside style." The shingle style is basically the Queen Anne style wrapped in shingles.

Like the Queen Anne style, the Shingle style was influenced initially by the work of the architect Richard Norman Shaw, but replacing his tile-hanging (PHOTO) by shingle-hanging.

Henry Hobson Richardson (1836-86) is credited with developing the style and used it for most of his country and suburban houses, as did many prominent architects. The pioneer building is the Sherman House at Newport, Rhode Island, by Henry Hobson Richardson (1874). McKim, Mead & White also participated. The masterpiece is Richardson's Stoughton House at Cambridge, Massachusetts (1882-3).

Shingle

Important, Identifying Features

2 or 3 stories tall:

Uniform covering of wood shingles (unpainted) from roof to foundation walls:

Sweep of the roof may continue to first floor level providing cover for porches -- or is steeply pitched and multi-planed:

Eaves of roof are close to the walls so as not to distract from the shingle covering:

Casement and sash windows are generally small, may have many lights, and often are grouped into twos or threes:

Towers, found in about 1/3 of Shingle houses, are more likely to appear as partial bulges or as half-towers; tower roofs are frequently blended into the main volume of the house by a continuous roof line:

Massive Romanesque or Syrian arches may be used on porches or entrances:

Shingle

Doorways

Little decorative detailing at doors

Shingle

Windows

Equal-size sashes -- multi-pane above, one pane below -- most common

Strips of three or more windows

Palladian windows

One- or two-story bay windows

Shingles curving into recessed window, transom windows also occur

Dormer: gable, hipped, curved, eyebrow, polygonal, shed

Window surrounds are simple

Shingle

Fireplaces

Shingle

Furnishings

Queen Anne

1880-1910






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Queen Anne

Historical Context

The Queen Anne style was the quintessential American Victorian house with "bric-a-brac" and "gingerbread." It was the dominant style of domestic building during the period from about 1880 until 1900; it persisted with decreasing popularity through the first decade of the 20th century.

The style is varied and decoratively rich. Queen Anne houses often often employed elaborate woodwork of the Eastlake type. At the time of construction it was not uncommon for the houses to be painted with as many as six or seven different colors to bring out all the different textures and trim. The fashion was fairly dark colors, along the lines of what we call today "earth tones" -- sienna red, hunter green, burnt yellow, muddy brown, etc.

The style was named and popularized by a group of 19th-century English architects led by Richard Norman Shaw.

The name "Queen Anne" is rather inappropriate, for the historical precedents used by Shaw and his followers had little to do with Queen Anne or the formal Renaissance architecture that was dominant during her reign (1702-14). Instead, they borrowed most heavily from late Medieval models of the preceding Elizabethan and Jacobean eras.

The half-timbered and patterned masonry American subtypes are most closely related to this work of Shaw and his colleagues in England.

The spindlework and free classic subtypes are indigenous interpretations.

The half-timbered
Watts-Sherman house, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, built at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1874 is generally considered to be the first American example of the style. By 1880 the style was being spread throughout the country by pattern books and the first architectural magazine, The American Architect and Building News.

The expanding railroad network also helped popularize the style by making precut architectural details conveniently available through much of the nation.

Some of the best known Queen Anne houses are the "painted ladies" of San Francisco.

The early, asymmetrical Colonial Revival houses, along with other competing styles, fully supplanted the Queen Anne style after about 1910.

Queen Anne

Important, Identifying Features

Varied and decoratively rich

Asymmetrical

variety of forms, textures, material, and colors

Towers, turrets, tall chimneys, projecting pavilions, porches, bays, and encircling verandahs

Textured wall surfaces

Colored glass window panels

Eastlake style woodwork

Queen Anne

Doorways

Small panes bordering rectangular light

2-panel doors

6-panel doors

glazed

double doors

Fanlight

Transoms

Clear glass in 1850s, followed by colored glass and later leaded glass

Classical portico

Door molding or raised panels

Queen Anne

Windows

Queen Anne

Fireplaces

Queen Anne

Furnishings

Art Nouveau

End of Nineteenth Century





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Art Nouveau

Historical Context

An international style of decoration and architecture of the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, characterized particularly by the depiction of leaves and flowers in flowing, sinuous lines.

The style drew on Baroque, Gothic and Moorish traditions, but was mainly unbounded by rules.

Art Nouveau exploited the machine and reveled in the possibilities of decorative tiles and wrought iron. This was a deliberate attempt to put an end to imitations of past styles. In its place was a free type of architecture which integrated arts and crafts with architectural forms.

The roots of Art Nouveau go back to the English Arts and Crafts Movement and William Morris. Replaced by Art Deco.

Leading practitioners:

  • Britain- the architecture of Rennie Mackintosh, the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley
  • France - Guimard's famous glass and iron Metro designs; the glassware of Lalique (1860-1945).
  • Spain - Gaudi in Barcelona.
  • Vienna - Gustav Klimt
  • US- Louis Comfort Tiffany;Louis Sullivan

Art Nouveau

Important, Identifying Features

Organic and dynamic forms

Curving design

Writhing plant forms

Art Nouveau

Doorways

Surround motifs: peacock, feather, heart-shape, foliation

Surround: Organic curves

Doors: colored glass

Art Nouveau

Windows

Art Nouveau

Fireplaces

Art Nouveau

Furnishings

Sullivanesque

1890-1920





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Sullivanesque

Historical Context

The architects of Chicago were encouraged to build higher structures because of escalating land prices and the introduction of elevators. New construction materials and techniques such as steel framing and reinforced concrete allowed for more open walls, which accentuated the new materials.

Metal could support such structures, and the tall building was finally developed by William Le Baron Jenney in the Home Insurance Company office building (photo) in Chicago (1883-1885). Here, for the first time, conscious use was made of novel structural possibilities. Isolated footings supported a skeleton of wrought and cast iron encased in masonry, with fireproof floors, numerous fast elevators, and gas light. The traditional masonry-bearing walls now became weather curtains or "skins," largely of glass, supported by the metal skeleton. The American skyscraper was born, although it was only with rare exceptions, as in the work of Louis Sullivan, that this original type of building was treated successfully.

Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), a notable Chicago architect, developed a more detailed and influential high-rise vocabulary with classical overtones, called Sullivanesque, coinciding with his "form follows function" aesthetic.

An intricate weaving of linear and geometric forms with stylized foliage in a symmetrical pattern is the unique element of the Sullivanesque style The decorative ornamentation devised by Sullivan and used on some of his office buildings is based on floral motifs but organized in a manner closely resembling the Irish interlace of the early Middle Ages.

Stock replicas of Sullivan's designs manufactured by the Midland Terra Cotta Company and others gave distinction and focus to utilitarian buildings in Chicago's commercial strips and other confined areas, such as the downtown districts of smaller towns.

Sullivanesque

Important, Identifying Features

Symmetrical intricate weaving of linear and geometric forms with stylized foliage

Bold, geometric facades pierced with either arched or lintel-type openings

Extensive low-relief terra cotta ornamentation composed of lushly intertwining vines and leaves combined with sharp-edged geometric figures

Deep projecting eaves

Flat roofs

Multistory office buildings have 3 distinct zones: ground story, intermediate floors, and attic or roof; intermediate floors are arranged in vertical bands

Sullivanesque

Doorways

Sullivanesque

Windows

Sullivanesque

Fireplaces

Sullivanesque

Furnishings

Bungalow (type of Arts & Crafts)

1890-1940





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Bungalow

Historical Context

Bungalows may be viewed in a larger context as one type of Arts and Crafts (Craftsman) architecture.

Arts and Crafts architecture would never have succeeded as a design concept if it had not also met the changing needs of society. American families in the twentieth century were different from nineteenth century families and they needed a different kind of home. Daily living had evolved to a routine where men left the home to work each day, and women stayed home to care for the children. Servants, once plentiful and cheap, became too expensive for the middle class and women assumed the role of sole homemaker.

Housing design had to adapt to this simplified lifestyle. There was no longer any requirement for large houses with formal entertaining areas, family areas, and servant areas. Music rooms, reception rooms, conservatories, parlors, and butler pantries were dropped in favor of "living rooms" and smaller kitchens. Because of increased street noise, Victorian front porches were no longer desirable and they were replaced with sun rooms, sleeping porches, and back screened porches.

At the time the lifestyles of Americans were changing, magazines like House Beautiful and Ladies' Home Journal were promoting Arts and Crafts home architectural styles to their female readers. The Prairie style and the bungalow not only appealed aesthetically to these women as the latest trend in home design, but they fit the requirement for simpler, smaller homes that could easily maintained without servants.

Gustav Stickley promoted a version of the bungalow in his magazine The Craftsman. In 1916 alone, he claimed that over $20 million in Craftsman-inspired homes were built.

The expanding prewar economy led to an expanding middle class in the period between 1900 and 1917. Many persons who lived in apartments were able to buy homes for the first time. They selected sites in new housing plats in cities and suburbs (which were now accessible, thanks to interurban transit). To meet the market demand of this new population of homeowners, companies began to advertise in home decorator magazines to sell house blueprints or even "redi-cut" home kits. Catalogs of blueprints and kits could be mailed cheaply to potential buyers and kits could be shipped easily via railroad cars.

The catalog house was so popular that major mail-order companies that traditionally sold items like shoes, clothing, and underwear began selling homes around 1900. Sears and Roebuck of Chicago began selling building supplies in 1895 and complete house kits in 1908. Montgomery Ward, another large catalog retailer, began selling house plans in 1910 and kits in 1918.

Bungalow

Important, Identifying Features

1 or 1 1/2 story house

Gently pitched broad gables

Lower gable covers an open or screened porch

Larger gable covers main portion of the house

In larger bungalows, the gable is steeper, with intersecting cross gables or dormers

Rafters, ridge beams, and purlins extend beyond the wall and roof

Knee braces

Chimneys are of rubble, cobblestone, or rough-faced brick

Porch piers often battered

Wood shingles are favorite exterior finish, although many use stucco or brick

Exposed structural members and trim work usually are painted

Shingles left in natural state are treated with earth-tone stains

Windows are either sash or casement with many lights or single panes of glass

Shingled porch railings often terminate with a flared base

Bungalow

Doorways

Natural finished oak doors

Bungalow

Windows

Pair of small windows flanking the fireplace; windows sometimes have art-glass panels, colored and leaded

Windows sometimes have with

Sash windows with 6 over 1 lights

windows sometimes have art-glass panels, colored and leaded

Bungalow

Fireplaces

Stone fireplaces

Tiled fireplaces

Bungalow

Furnishings

Glass-fronted bookcases flank the fireplace

Oak plate rails in dining room

Dining room friezes with coverings simulating tapestries or simulated embossed and tooled leather

Morris-style chairs

Built-in sideboard china cabinets

Neoclassicism / Classical Revival (American)

1900-1920











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Neoclassicism (Classical Revival)

Historical Context

An American architectural movement based on the use of pure Roman and Greek forms, mainly in England and the U.S. in the early 19th cent.

The later, more refined stage of the Beaux-Arts tradition (1890-1920) influenced the last phase (1900-1920) of the classical revival in the United States.

Federal government buildings of the first half of the 20th century, e.g., the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., owed much to the Beaux-Arts interpretation of classical design. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, commissions for public buildings and grand houses of industrial moguls went to architects trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition. These architects generally produced academic designs based on classical or Renaissance precedents.

One can distinguish between

Neoclassicism (Classical Revival)

Important, Identifying Features

Symmetrical

Monumental proportions based on Greek and lesser to Roman architectural orders

Smooth or polished stone surface

Colossal pedimented porticos flanked by series of colossal pilasters

Windows are large single-light sashes

Attic stories and parapets are popular

Statuary along roof line never employed

Arch and enriched moldings are rare

Neoclassicism (Classical Revival)

Doorways

Neoclassicism (Classical Revival)

Windows

Neoclassicism (Classical Revival)

Fireplaces

Neoclassicism (Classical Revival)

Furnishings

Period Revival

1900-1940







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A general term, rather than a specific architectural style. Period houses were revivals of earlier historical styles, and, although they were more accurate historically than 19th century revivals, they also reflected some modern tastes.

The term includes, among others, the following styles:

  • Tudor Revival
  • Georgian Revival
  • Colonial Revival
  • French Provincial farmhouse Revival
  • Spanish Colonial Revival (first popular in Scarsdale)
  • Mission Revival
  • Pueblo Revival
  • Dutch Colonial Revival (first popular in Beverly Hills)

Ornament tends to be underscaled and carefully executed. Fine effects are achieved through the handling of quality materials for color and texture --- shingle or slate roofs with a weathered, hand-crafted appearance; dark stained "hand-hewn" oak lintels; tapestry brick laid to create a richly textured surface.

Development

The success of the period house depended on its stylistic accuracy. Earlier architects could, in their Queen Anne and contemporary designs, pick bits and pieces from various earlier periods. Now, architects had to become architectural historians in order to successfully suggest a specific earlier period.

Most architectural offices had a library with the White Pine Series or books on English parish churches or farm houses in Normandy. The former, a magazine that began as an advertisement series for white pine lumber and developed into a useful reference work, assisted in promulgating the revival of early American architecture by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), which began its recording activities in 1933. The first HABS drawings were produced by architects, and the fact that so many of their sheets resemble actual working drawings reflected not only their training, but also their intention that the drawings be used in constructing new houses based on earlier precedents.

The majority of models for period houses were farm or rural structures: English cottages, Spanish haciendas or New England farmhouses.

Frequently built on large, newly plotted suburban lots and incorporating many contemporary ideas of interior arrangement and planning, typical period houses were far more spacious than earlier revival structures.

Like Shingle Style and Prairie School houses, period houses had an intimate relationship with the landscape. Often sprawling across the width of a lot, period houses had two yard areas, a formal front and an informal back yard. Rarely did a period house not have a rear terrace, porch or patio.

Churches: The period house was not an isolated phenomenon. Many churches built at the same time boasted details and proportions taken directly from examples built centuries before, either in America or in Europe.

Country houses: Another manifestation of the same spirit that produced period houses and churches was the country house. Larger than their city cousins, these mammoth houses were the centers of complexes that included stables, barns, guest houses,gardeners' cottages and similar structures. In the most developed examples, an overall architectural theme pervaded the group. The era that made these estates possible ended in the 1930s, and few of them survive in their original capacity

The interiors of both period and country houses had fewer rooms than their 19th-century predecessors, but the rooms were much larger and space flowed more freely Often, especially in smaller period houses, the dining room was replaced by a dining area at one end of an oversized living room - an arrangement reflecting both the open planning and the more informal lifestyle of the times.

Although derived from historical precedent, the period house was a distinctive architectural development that was basically American. And, although the full flowering of the style occurred several decades ago, mutants of the species can be found today along the curving streets of almost any suburban development.

         

Georgian Revival

1900-1940







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Georgian Revival

Historical Context

Georgian Style 1714-1820

In Europe, the dominant style of architecture during the 18th century is known as "Neoclassical."

In Great Britain, the parallel term is "Georgian," named after the reigns of the three King Georges from 1714 to 1820, but commonly not including George IV.

In Britain, in the first half of the 18th century, the ideals of Andrea Palladio (1508-80) were dominant. In the second half of the century, Roman precedents (inspired by archeological discoveries in Pompeii and Herculaneum) were popularized by Robert Adam (1728-1792). See, for example, Adam's Portland Place, in London, and Charlotte Square, in Edinburgh.

In the U. S., Neoclassicism is referred to as "Colonial" (until the Revolution), and then "Federal."

In New England, the English Georgian style came to America by way of British pattern books and an ever-swelling wave of masons, carpenters, and joiners who emigrated from England. In New England, Colonial architecture is also referred to as "Georgian."

For an example of Georgian architecture, see Governor's Palace, Williamsburg



Georgian Revival 1900-1940 (U. S.)


"Georgian Revival" is sometimes referred to as "Colonial Revival" (1870-1920). The English Georgian style was the most prevalent type of Colonial buildings, but certainly not the only one. Two obvious exceptions are styles that were used by the Dutch and French.

Early examples of Colonial Revival were rarely historically correct copies but were instead free interpretations with details inspired by colonial precedents. During the first decade of this century, Colonial Revival fashion shifted toward carefully researched copies with more correct proportions and details. This was encouraged by new methods of printing that permitted wide dissemination of photographs in books and periodicals. In 1898 The American Architect and Building News began an extensive series called "The Georgian Period: Being photographs and measured drawings of Colonial Work with text." This was joined in 1915 by the White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs, which was dominated by photographs of colonial buildings. These and similar ventures led to a wide understanding of the prototypes on which the Revival was based. Colonial Revival houses built in the years between 1915 and 193 5 reflect these influences by more closely resembling early prototypes than did those built earlier or later.

Georgian Revival

Important, Identifying Features

Symmetrical

Enriched with classical detail:

Main door is principal ornamental feature of facade

Facade often emphasized by pedimented projecting pavilion with colossal pilasters or columns and a Palladian window

Sash windows have several lights using between 6 and 20 panes of glass in one sash

Georgian Revival

Doorways

Center entrance

Classical columns and pilasters

Door: two vertical rows of panels, often six-paneled

Fanlight

Door painted in dark colors or grained to imitate wood

Gibbs rustication with keystones

Round pediment.

Broken pediment

Carved shell hood

Console or other porch brackets

Internal doorways: Adamesque details on surround

Georgian Revival

Windows

Palladian windows

Balustrading in front of tripartite windows

Pedimented windows

Round-headed windows

Pilasters, engaged columns on surround

Double-hung sash windows, often six-over-six

Inside shutters


Square or bowed dormer windows

Georgian Revival

Fireplaces

Incised patterns on jambs and lintel

Applied Classical or Gothic or Rococo ornamentation

Wood or marble

Marble slips

Console mantel supports

Column mantel supports

Overmantel with frame for painting or mirror

Adamesque ornamentation


Vertical and horizontal ribbed decoration

(Imitation) Delft tiles on slips

Georgian Revival

Furnishings

Niches, sometimes with doors, shelves

Built-in bookcases, sometimes on curved walls

Built-in cupboards, sometimes with doors

Built-in sideboards

Built-in window seats, sometimes with hinged seat for storage

Dressers for displaying china

Carved shell motif

  • Wing chair (Ansley Wilcox Mansion / Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site)

Prairie

1900-1920







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Prairie

Historical Context

Prairie houses (1905-1915) may be viewed in a larger context as one type of Arts and Crafts ("Craftsman") style architecture.

The prairie house is one of the few indigenous American styles. The name is key to the style. The stereotypical image of the Midwest prairie is that of a wide, flat, horizontal, treeless expanse that meets the horizon. To translate this scene into architecture, Wright designed a horizontal building that was low to the ground.

Wright himself claimed that the interior of the prairie house held the greatest significance. With his "open plan" (minimum number of separating walls on the first floor) he sought to "beat the box," to escape the Victorian compartmentalization which he claimed was stifling the American family. The archetypal vision of the Victorian home, with mother entertaining the ladies over tea in the parlor, the father smoking cigars in the study, and the children banished to the nursery upstairs, was Wright's nemesis. To avoid this subdivision of space, Wright did away with the conventional divisions between spaces on the lower floors of his prairie homes. Rather than setting rooms in the house apart in its space and function, he unified them into one common space (Martin House example).

The style originated in Chicago and landmark examples are concentrated in that city's early 20th-century suburbs, particularly Oak Park and River Forest.

Many of the architects in the Prairie School worked with Wright himself or with his earlier employer and teacher, Louis Sullivan. Others absorbed Wright's and Sullivan's influence simply by being in Chicago Among the most important were George W. Maher, Robert C. Spencer, Jr., Thomas E. Tallmadge, John S. Bergen, Vernon S. Watson, Charles E. White, Jr., Eben E. Roberts, Walter Burley Griffin, William Drummond, F. Barry Byrne, George E. Elmslie, and William G. Purcell.

The style in its vernacular form was spread throughout the country by pattern books published in the Midwest.

Buffalo boasts the Darwin Martin House - Wright's best Prairie House, as well as four others.

Prairie

Important, Identifying Features

Two stories, with one-story wings or porches:

Brick, or timber covered with stucco:

Central portion rises slightly higher than flanking wings:

Low-pitched roof with widely overhanging eaves, creating a definite horizontal and low-to-the-ground quality:

Hipped roof:

Large and very low chimney is found at axis of intersecting roof planes:

Massive square or rectangular porch supports:

Built-in window boxes for flowers:

Prairie

Doorways

Frank Lloyd Wright main entrances are screened for privacy

Prairie

Windows

Bands of casement windows

Geometric patterns of small-pane window glazing

Prairie

Fireplaces

Prairie

Furnishings

Wright-designed furniture

Wall sconce

Built-in oak bookcase

Ceiling light fixture

Ding room buffet

Wright-designed floor lamp

Wright-designed plant stand

Wright-designed hexagonal table

Wright-designed chair

Arts and Crafts (Craftsman)

1905-1`930






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Arts and Crafts

Historical Context

In 19th century England, the Arts and Crafts movement was an outraged response to the Industrial Revolution, which was threatening time-honored manual crafts with extinction. The movement was also one of social and political reform.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) was an artist, scientist, poet, environmentalist, philosopher, and the preeminent art critic of his time. In terms of art, he provided the impetus that gained respectability for the Pre-Raphaelites.

Ruskin was not an architect, but as writer (Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1849, and The Stones of Venice, 1851-53) he influenced the return from Neoclassicism to the earlier Gothic style.

William Morris (1834-96) was an English poet, artist, and socialist reformer, who rejected the opulence on the Victorian era and urged a return to medieval traditions of design, craftsmanship, and community. He and some friends established a firm in 1861 to manufacture wallpaper, stained glass, chintzes, and later also carpets, tapestries, and woven furnishing materials.

United States

In America, the Arts and Crafts movement, 1890-1920 -- often referred to as the Craftsman movement -- expressed dissatisfaction that industrialization had failed to provide a decent environment for working people and at the same time resulted in shoddy mass-produced goods. It encouraged simple honest design with a regard for the integrity of the material employed.

The movement took hold on both coasts and in the Middle West:

West: Charles and Henry Greene were brothers, .whose Arts and Crafts designs in the Pasadena area reflect Japanese influence

Midwest: Frank Lloyd Wright's version of Arts & Crafts was the Prairie Style

Northeast: Gustav Stickley created the first truly American furniture, known throughout the world as Craftsman. A hardworking, dedicated man, Stickley achieved success in the early 1900s as the leader of the Arts & Crafts Movement in America.

After a trip to England in 1898 Stickley was inspired by British reformers, John Ruskin and William Morris, to create a new line of handcrafted furniture based on honesty and simplicity.

Northeast:Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915 visited England and met William Morris. He was inspired to start an Arts & Crafts community -- which he called Roycroft -- in East Aurora.

Buffalo: Buffalo boasts five Prairie houses by Frank Lloyd Wright, a fine collection of bungalows, and the Roycroft campus and museum in nearby East Aurora

Arts and Crafts

Important, Identifying Features

Low pitched gable roof (occasionally hipped):

Unenclosed, widely overhanging eaves:

Exposed roof rafter tails:

Triangular knee braces:

Informal, Asymmetrical:

Natural materials like wood, tile, and stone:

Porches, either full- or partial-width, with roof supported by tapered (battered) square columns

Columns or pedestals frequently extend to ground level:

Stone exterior chimneys:

One-story or 1 1/2 story houses are called bungalows

Interior: Trusssing exposed

Arts and Crafts

Doorways

Reminiscent of Medieval forms

Doors: panel construction, fitted with iron hinges and latch


3 elongated panels set beneath 3 glazed panels



Leaded and stained glass (some Art Nouveau style) on doors

Oak doors, sometimes with lead glass

Swinging doors

Arts and Crafts

Windows

Gabled dormers with exposed rafter ends and braces

Art glass with medieval images

Multi-pane sash over sash with one large glass pane

Line of three or more windows

Arts and Crafts

Fireplaces

Cozy inglenook, with, built-in benches, with ceramic tile floor

Dining room fireplace - Roycroft Inn


Andiron - Automobile Club of Buffalo

Arts and Crafts

Furnishings

28 Photos of Furniture in the Elbert Hubbard / Roycroft Museum

Roycroft Inn furniture collection

Built-in sideboard

Chairs and tables

Wall clock

Lamp

Copper pieces

China

Stained glass

Tile

Morris wallpaper patterns

Ceiling light fixture

Tudor Revival

Early Twentieth Century












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Tudor Revival

Historical Context

The Tudor monarchs in England were Henry VII, VIII, Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, from 1485-1603. However, Tudor Revival is derived primarily from English Renaissance buildings of the 16th and early 17th centuries, including those of Elizabethan (Elizabeth I, 1558-1603) and Jacobean (James I, 1603-25) periods.

The period 1910-1930 was a time of free borrowing of historic styles as more people could afford single-family houses and there was no real consensus about a modern architectural style. Houses in this period are sometimes lumped together as "period revival."

Tudor Revival was enormously popular in the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the suburbs, where only the Colonial Revival rivaled it in popularity. Modified versions became fashionable in the 1970s and 1980s.

Sometimes Tudor Revival is referred to as "Elizabethan" or "Half-timbered" houses.
A "half-timbered" building has exposed wood framing. The spaces between the wooden timbers are filled with plaster, brick, or stone.

Tudor Revival

Important, Identifying Features

Steeply pitched roof with cross gables:

Half-timbering on about half of examples (infill usually stucco, but occasionally brick)

Tall, narrow windows, often casement, usually in multiple groups and with multi-pane glazing

Massive chimneys, commonly crowned by decorative chimney pots (round or octagonal, sometimes decorated)

Patterned brickwork

Strapwork

Vergeboards

Tudor Revival

Doorways

Doors: "Tudor" arch: 4-centered in form of shallow arch that rises to a central point.

Doors: Oak planks, some board-and-batten

Hoodmolds.

Carved spandrels

Tudor Revival

Windows

Tall, narrow windows, often casement, usually in multiple groups and with multi-pane glazing

Multi-pane transom windows

Lattice windows

Oriels

Semi-hexagonal one- and two-story bays

Hoodmolds, often label molds

Leaded glass

Tudor Revival

Fireplaces

Tudor (flattened pointed) arches

Carved wooden lintel

Embellished spandrels

Strapwork

Overmantel with decorative panel

Foliated overmantel

Iron firebacks

Tudor Revival

Furnishings

Built-in seats , usually masonry, in window recesses, porches

Settles built into walls

Trestle tables

Linenfold

Carved finials

International

1925-present



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International

Historical Context

International style is a style of architecture applied to residences and public buildings that is minimalist in concept, is devoid of regional characteristics, stresses functionalism, and rejects all nonessential decorative elements; typically this style emphasizes the horizontal aspects of a building.

It developed during the 1920s and 1930s, in western Europe principally in the Bauhaus school under Walter Gropius (1883-1969), and in America particularly as a result of a highly successful exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City entitled International Style in 1932 and a book entitled The International Style--Architecture since 1922, by Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903-1987) and Philip Johnson (1906- ).

Houses: In the decades separating World Wars I and II, Americans tended to prefer period houses that reflected past traditions, while European architects emphasized radically new designs that came to be known as International style architecture. Le Corbusier had stressed the idea of the house as a "machine for living."

During the 1930s these ideas were introduced into the United States by several distinguished practitioners, like Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, Richard Neutra and Marcel Breurer who emigrated to escape the developing chaos in Europe.

International Revival: A term occasionally used to to describe a 1970s adaptation of the International style.

International

Important, Identifying Features

Flat roof, usually without ledge at roof line

Windows (usually metal casements) set flush with outer wall

Smooth, unornamented wall surfaces

No decorative detailing at windows

Facade asymmetrical

Cantilevered projections

International

Doorways

No decorative detailing at doors

International

Windows

Long ribbons of windows, sometimes wrapping around building corners

Large, floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows

International

Fireplaces

International

Furnishings

Art Deco

1925-1940














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Art Deco

Historical Context

The name Art Deco comes from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs Industriels et Modernes, held in Paris, which celebrated living in the modern world. The style began in France but America became the center of the artistic movement.

Art Deco was the first widely popular style in the United States to break with the revivalist tradition (see, for example, Gothic Revival or Greek Revival or Italianate).

Art Deco was essentially a style of decoration and was applied to jewelry, clothing, furniture and handicrafts as well as buildings. Industrial designers created Art Deco motifs (patterns) to adorn their streamlined cars, trains and kitchen appliances. See examples of glass vases: Art Deco at the Corning Museum of Glass

The largest concentration of Art Deco buildings is in New York City and Miami.

Art Deco

Important, Identifying Features

Low relief geometrical designs, often in the form of parallel straight lines, zigzags, chevrons, and stylized floral motifs.

Setbacks emphasizing geometric form

Colored glazed bricks, mosaic tiles, or same material as the building used in ornamentation

Metal sash or casement windows

Towers and other vertical projections above the roof line give a vertical emphasis

Art Deco

Doorways

Hard-edged low relief ornamentation found around door openings

Art Deco

Windows

Hard-edged low relief ornamentation found around window openings


Straight-headed metal sash or casement windows

Reeding and fluting often around windows

Strips of windows with decorated spandrels

Art Deco

Fireplaces

Art Deco

Furnishings

Art Moderne / Moderne

1930-1945
















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Art Moderne

Historical Context

Architectural style found principally in buildings constructed in the 1930s following the earlier Art Deco.

One influence was the beginning of streamlined industrial design for ships, airplanes, and automobiles. The smooth surfaces, curved corners, and horizontal emphasis of the Art Moderne style all give the feeling that airstreams could move smoothly over them; thus they were streamlined.

Moderne was eclipsed by the International style after World War II.

Sometimes Moderne (or Art Moderne) is identified with Art Deco. Although somewhat different in their overall appearance, both styles share stripped down forms and geometric-based ornament.

The Art Moderne style has a distinctive streamlined or wind-tunnel look. The streamlined effect is emphasized by the use of curved window glass that wraps around corners.

Art Moderne

Important, Identifying Features

Distinctive streamlined or wind-tunnel look

Horizontal emphasis

Soft or rounded corners

Flat roofs

Glass block sections of wall

Asymmetrical facade


Smooth wall finish without surface decoration

Horizontal bands of windows

Curved window glass that wraps around corners

Ornamentation: mirrored panels, cement panels, metal panel with low relief around doorways and windows

Aluminum and stainless steel used for door and window trim, railings and balusters

Houses: balustrades

Art Moderne

Doorways

Metal or wooden doors

Circular windows

Large panels of glass

Patterns with circular and angular outline

Art Moderne

Windows

Round windows

Glass block windows

Windows that turn a corner

Art Moderne

Fireplaces

Art Moderne

Furnishings

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Page by Chuck LaChiusa
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