Neoclassical style - Table of Contents .............................. Styles of Architecture
Neoclassical Monumental Architecture
Also called Classical Monumental Architecture
1930-1942
Power Over Space and Time: Monumental Architecture In the 1930s, because of the Great Depression, most European and American architecture was monumental architecture, financed by the government or a wealthy institution, characterized by attempts to express the national spirit, and motivated, in part, by the need to created jobs.... Hitler and Stalin repudiated modern architecture in favor of a pseudo-classicism... Repudiation of modern architecture took longer in Italy and was never as complete.
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Great Depression Neoclassical Monumental Architecture Neoclassicism waned with state suppression and the decline of outspoken dissent during and after World War I (1914—1918) but revived in the Great Depression, and throughout Europe as well, particularly under authoritarian regimes in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union. In the United States, it was much simplified from its earlier incarnation by
Examples are the Gallatin County Courthouse (1936) in Bozeman, Montana, theLibrary of Congress Annex (1938) in Washington, D.C., and the Soldiers Memorial (1939) in St. Louis, all erected with Works Progress Administration assistance. Fascist and National Socialist architecture differed only in scale: grander in Italy, positively grandiose in Germany. In the Soviet Union it was fussily ornate, recalling the turn of the century. With the absence or reduction of private investment during the 1930s, governments financed an even greater amount of architecture than before, which is to say that during two historical moments of unusually high demand for social justice or social spending, authorities were unusually concerned with maintaining social order. It mattered not whether order was sustained by increased policing or liberal reform, whether the state was dictatorial or democratic, or - in the United States- whether it was the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, or the New Deal. Regardless of political ideology, governments buttressed legitimacy by appropriating classical architecture, which in times of crisis was the artistic court of last resort.
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Examples from Buffalo architecture: