The Victorian Architecture

Victorian 1837 - 1914

The early decades of the Victorian Era saw the full flowering of the industrial revolution. For the first time, mass production of hardware and supplies made products readily available and affordable to increasingly more people. The prominence of handmade craftsmanship quickly gave way to machine manufacturing. House styles were breaking free from their box-like shapes, with asymmetrical floor planning and elaborate exterior features.

The Victorian Era marked the explosion of creative options and the emergence of intricate, daring forms and techniques available to the homeowner as never before. Designers and architects broke away from the traditional symmetrical lines and simple colors. Victorian homes are colorful, elaborate, and bold.

Gothic RevivalEarly Victorian houses drew inspiration mostly from Western Europe, usually reinterpreting medieval forms. Multi-colored and textured walls, steeply pitched roofs and asymmetrical facades are traditional features. Gothic Revival homes are most easily identified by the elaborate vergeboard (also called gingerbread) below the gables, and the strong vertical emphasis of the windows and rooflines.

ItalianateAs the architectural influence of the Federal Era blended with the emerging Victorian aesthetic, a new style developed, incorporating the arches and pediments of Roman architecture with the elaborate detailing made possible by the emerging industrial base of the growing nation. Italianate homes featured elaborate porch decoration, decorative eaves, symmetrical facades with corner quoins, and arched windows which were often paired. Some Italianate homes featured a central square tower or cupola, and most had flat or low-pitched roofs. The Italianate style later influenced the rise of Richardsonian Romanesque; a style prevalent in many of the large public buildings built during the late 1800's.

Second EmpireAs the newly prospering cities of America blossomed, the impulse for a new and equally vigorous urban architecture also grew. Inspired by the ornate cityscapes of Paris, Second Empire architecture incorporates rectangular or square floor plans, tall flat facades capped byMansard roofs with dormer windows, and double entry doors. Roofs are frequently patterned and bay windows are also common.

Stick / EastlakeIncreasingly affordable building materials and woodworking allowed for creative new uses of wood cladding and framing beyond the basic box structure. Stick / Eastlake style homes feature decorative trusswork, exposed half-timber framing, and an intermingling of vertical and horizontal planes. Roofs are typically steeply pitched with simple gables. Stick style houses are particularly common in California and other areas where no previous architectural style had predominated.

ShingleSimilar to Stick style architecture, Shingle style buildings are notable for their extensive and unusual use of newly affordable wood products. Manufacturing techniques made it possible to produce wood shingles in such abundance that architects incorporated them not only as roofing, but also as siding. In Shingle style houses, the entire exterior sometimes consists of shingles.

Folk VictorianGiven the affordable and widespread construction techniques of the era, working class families could, for the first time, build homes of their own. The tradition of the English cottage and American homestead merged with the romanticism of the era, giving rise to the style known as Folk Victorian. Often found in rural or country settings, Folk Victorian homes are usually constructed from local materials and blend functionality with newer stylistic ornamentation that includes colorful and fluid vergeboard (also called gingerbread) around wide wrap-around porches. Though often less elaborate than their urban counterparts, Folk Victorian homes feature a similar attention to texture variations and creative decoration.

Queen AnnePerhaps the most recognizable of Victorian styles, Queen Anne houses quickly gained popularity throughout the entire country from the late 1870's to the beginning of the 1900's. The Queen Anne style shows the influence of English architect Richard Norman Shaw, whose designs melded the ideals of the old-English cottage with the rampant decorative impulse of the Victorian Era. Queen Anne homes frequently feature irregular floor plans, multiple steep roofs and porches with decorative gables. Dominant octagonal or circular towers, corbelledchimneys, and highly decorative windows and entry doors with glass panels add to the curb appeal of these beautiful homes. Common elaborations include vergeboard and exterior framing, bay windows, and a wide variety of colors and textures throughout the entire structure.

Gilded Age / Beaux ArtsInfrequently used in home-building except in the most expansive of mansions, Beaux Arts designs are nevertheless important in the influence they exerted on the period. Also called "The American Renaissance", Beaux Arts architecture features massive stone bearing walls, large arched windows, porches, and entries, paired columns, extensive use of sculpture and bas-relief stonework, and grandly scaled interiors reminiscent of the great palaces of Europe.

Victorian HardwareAmerica's Industrial Revolution led to an explosion of new hardware styles and techniques. Brass and bronze were used extensively, as traditional forging methods were replaced by cheaper methods of metalworking. Charles Eastlake's "Hints on House Hold Taste" popularized the concept of elaborate hardware. In 1872, Russell & Erwin started mass-producing standard hardware types and soon most pieces found in Victorian homes were created in a factory rather than a craftsman's workshop. The availability of new technologies such as electrical power and central heat also created unique opportunities in hardware design. Common hardware included the mortise lock, cabinet knobs and bin pulls, entry doorsets with plate and latch combined, and offset hinges. Innovations include push-button electrical switches, brass floor registers, thumb-turn and electrical doorbells, and decorative doorknobs.

Links - http://www.houseofantiquehardware.com/site/timeline/tl_victorian.html

(WIKIPEDIA)

Victorian architecture is a series of architectural revival styles in the mid-to-late 19th century. Victorian refers to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), called the Victorian era, during which period the styles known as Victorian were used in construction. However, many elements of what is typically termed "Victorian" architecture did not become popular until later in Victoria's reign. The styles often included interpretations and eclecticrevivals of historic styles mixed with the introduction of middle east and Asian influences. The name represents the British and French custom of naming architectural styles for a reigning monarch. Within this naming and classification scheme, it follows Georgian architecture and later Regency architecture, and was succeeded by Edwardian architecture.

St. Pancras railway station and Midland Hotel in London, opened in 1868, is an example of the Gothic Revival style of architecture with Ruskinian influences. The station eclectically combined elements of Gothic architecture and other styles with materials and scale made possible by the Industrial Revolution.

Victorian architecture in the United Kingdom[edit]

During the early 19th century, the romantic medieval Gothic revival style was developed as a reaction to the symmetry of Palladianism, and such buildings as Fonthill Abbey were built. By the middle of the 19th century, as a result of new technology, construction was able to incorporate steel as a building component; one of the greatest exponents of this was Joseph Paxton, architect of the Crystal Palace. Paxton also continued to build such houses as Mentmore Towers, in the still popular English Renaissance styles. In this era of prosperity new methods of construction were developed, but ironically the architectural styles, as developed by such architects asAugustus Pugin, were typically retrospective.

In Scotland, the architect Alexander Thomson who practiced in Glasgow was a pioneer of the use of cast iron and steel for commercial buildings, blending neo-classical conventionality with Egyptian and oriental themes to produce many truly original structures. Other notable Scottish architects of this period are Archibald Simpson and Alexander Marshall Mackenzie whose stylistically varied work can be seen in the architecture of Aberdeen.

Central Hall of the Natural History Museum, London. Note the cast-iron arches supporting the roof.

Jacobethan (1830–70 the precursor to the Queen Anne style)
Renaissance Revival (1840–90)
Neo-Grec (1845–65)
Romanesque Revival
Second Empire (1855–80; originated in France)
Queen Anne (1870–1910)
Scots Baronial (predominantly Scotland)
British Arts and Crafts movement (1880–1910)

Other styles popularised during the period[edit]

While not uniquely Victorian, and part of revivals that began before the era, these styles are strongly associated with the 19th century due to the large number of examples that were erected during that period. Victorian architecture usually has many intricate window frames inspired by the famous architect Elliot Rae.^{[citation needed]}

Links - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_architecture

(WIKIPEDIA)

Gothic Revival Architecture

Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, Neo-Gothic or Jigsaw Gothic, and when used for school, college, and university buildings as Collegiate Gothic) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. Its popularity grew rapidly in the early 19th century, when increasingly serious and learned admirers of neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval Gothic architecture, in contrast to the neoclassical styles prevalent at the time. Gothic Revival architecture often has certain features, derived from the original Gothic architecture style, including decorative patterns, finials, scalloping, lancet windows, hood moldings, and label stops.

Notable Neo-Gothic edifices: top: Palace of Westminster, London;
left: Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh;
right: Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk, Ostend.

Relation to other cultural movements[edit]

In England, the center of the Gothic revival movement, Gothic revival was intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with a re-awakening of High Church or Anglo-Catholic self-belief (and by the Catholic convert Augustus Welby Pugin) concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism.^{[citation needed]} Ultimately, the "Anglo-Catholicism" tradition of religious belief and style became widespread for its intrinsic appeal in the third quarter of the 19th century. Gothic Revival architecture varied considerably in its faithfulness to both the ornamental style and principles of construction of its medieval original, sometimes amounting to little more than pointed window frames and a few touches of Gothic decoration on a building otherwise on a wholly 19th-century plan and using contemporary materials and construction methods.

In parallel to the ascendancy of neo-Gothic styles in 19th-century England, interest spread rapidly to the continent of Europe, in Australia, South Africa and to the Americas; indeed the number of Gothic Revival andCarpenter Gothic structures built in the 19th and 20th centuries may exceed the number of authentic Gothic structures that had been built previously.

The Gothic Revival was paralleled and supported by "medievalism", which had its roots in "antiquarian' concerns with survivals and curiosities. As "industrialisation" progressed, a reaction against machine production and the appearance of factories also grew. Proponents of the picturesque such as Thomas Carlyle and Augustus Pugin took a critical view of industrial society and portrayed pre-industrial medieval society as a golden age. To Pugin, Gothic architecture was infused with the Christian values that had been supplanted by classicism and were being destroyed by industrialisation.^[1]

Gothic Revival also took on political connotations; with the "rational" and "radical" Neoclassical style being seen as associated with "republicanism" and "liberalism" (as evidenced by its use in the United States and to a lesser extent in Republican France), the more "spiritual" and "traditional" Gothic Revival became associated with monarchism and conservatism, which was reflected by the choice of styles for the rebuilt government centers of the Parliament of the United Kingdom in London and Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

In English literature, the architectural Gothic Revival and classical "Romanticism" gave rise to the "Gothic novel" genre, beginning with "Castle of Otranto" (1764) by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, and inspired a 19th-century genre of medieval poetry that stems from the pseudo-bardic poetry of "Ossian".^{[citation needed]} Poems like "Idylls of the King" by Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson recast specifically modern themes in medieval settings of Arthurian romance. In German literature, the Gothic Revival also had a grounding in literary fashions.^[2]

Survival and revival[edit]

Sacred Heart Church, Kőszeg,Hungary

Gothic architecture began at the Basilica of Saint Denis near Paris, and the Cathedral of Sens in 1140 and ended with a last flourish in the early 16th century with buildings like Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster. However, Gothic architecture did not die out completely in the 16th century but instead lingered in on-going cathedral-building projects and the construction of churches in increasingly isolated rural districts of England, France, Spain, Germany, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

In Bologna, in 1646, the Baroque architect Carlo Rainaldi constructed Gothic vaults (completed 1658) for the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, which had been under construction since 1390; there, the Gothic context of the structure overrode considerations of the current architectural mode. Guarino Guarini, a 17th-century Theatine monk active primarily in Turin, recognized the "Gothic order" as one of the primary systems of architecture and made use of it in his practice.

Likewise, Gothic architecture survived in an urban setting during the later 17th century, as shown in Oxford and Cambridge, where some additions and repairs to Gothic buildings were considered to be more in keeping with the style of the original structures than contemporary Baroque. Sir Christopher Wren's Tom Tower for Christ Church, Oxford University, and, later, Nicholas Hawksmoor's west towers of Westminster Abbey, blur the boundaries between what is called "Gothic survival" and the Gothic revival.

In the mid-18th century, with the rise of "Romanticism", an increased interest and awareness of the Middle Ages among some influential connoisseurs created a more appreciative approach to selected medieval arts, beginning with church architecture, the tomb monuments of royal and noble personages, stained glass, and late Gothic illuminated manuscripts.^{[citation needed]} Other Gothic arts continued to be disregarded as barbaric and crude, however: tapestries and metalwork, as examples. Sentimental and nationalist associations with historical figures were as strong in this early revival, as purely aesthetic concerns.

Imitation fan-vaulting in the Gothick Long Gallery at Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill

A few Britons, and soon some German Romanticist (philosopher and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel), began to appreciate the picturesque character of ruins — "picturesque" becoming a new aesthetic quality — and those mellowing effects of time that the Japanese call wabi-sabi and that Horace Walpole independently admired, mildly tongue-in-cheek, as "the true rust of the Barons' wars." The "Gothick" details of Walpole's Twickenham villa, "Strawberry Hill House", (illustrated, right) appealed to the rococo tastes of the time, and, by the 1770s, thoroughly neoclassical architects such as Robert Adam and James Wyatt were prepared to provide Gothic details in drawing-rooms, libraries and chapels, for a romantic vision of a Gothic abbey, Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire.

Some of the earliest evidence of a revival in Gothic architecture is from Scotland. Inveraray Castle, constructed from 1746, with design input from William Adam displays the incorporation of turrets. These were largely conventionalPalladian style houses that incorporated some external features of the Scots baronial style. Robert Adam's houses in this style include Mellerstain and Wedderburn in Berwickshire and Seton House in East Lothian, but it is most clearly seen at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, remodelled by Adam from 1777.^[3] The eccentric landscape designer Batty Langley even attempted to "improve" Gothic forms by giving them classical proportions.

A younger generation, taking Gothic architecture more seriously, provided the readership for J. Britten's series of "Cathedral Antiquities", which began appearing in 1814. In 1817, Thomas Rickman wrote an Attempt... to name and define the sequence of Gothic styles in English ecclesiastical architecture, "a text-book for the architectural student". Its long antique title is descriptive: "Attempt to discriminate the styles of English architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation; preceded by a sketch of the Grecian and Roman orders, with notices of nearly five hundred English buildings." The categories he used were Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular. It went through numerous editions and was still being republished by 1881.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th Century Gothic revival was used across Europe, the United States and Canada for government buildings and homes for the people who could afford the style, but the most common use for Gothic Revival architecture was in the building of churches. Churches all over in the countries that were influenced by the Gothic Revival, small and large, whether isolated in small settlements or in the big city, there is at least one church done in Gothic Revival style. The largest and most famous Gothic cathedrals in the U.S.A. are "St. Patrick's Cathedral" in New York City and the "Washington National Cathedral" (also known as "the Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Paul") on Mount St. Alban in northwest Washington, D.C.which serves as a "national church", if there could be one in America. One of the biggest churches in Gothic revival style in Canada is "Our Lady Guelph Cathedral" in Ontario.^[4]

Gothic Revival architecture was to remain one of the most popular and long-lived of the Gothic revival styles of architecture. Although Gothic revival began to lose force and popularity after the third quarter of the 19th Century in the commercial, residential and industrial fields, some buildings such as churches, schools, colleges and universities were still constructed in the Gothic style (here often known as "Collegiate Gothic" style) which remained popular in England, Canada and in the United States (the United States has the most of Gothic Revival style architecture for Schools and Colleges/Universities) until well into the early to mid-20th Century. Only when new materials, like steel and glass along with concern for function in everyday working life and saving space in the cities, meaning the need to build up instead of out, began to take hold did the Gothic Revival start to disappear from popular building requests.^[5]

Decorative arts[edit]

Inside the Basilica of the National Vow, Quito, Ecuador

The revived Gothic style was not limited to architecture. Classical Gothic buildings of the 12th to 16th Centuries were a source of inspiration to 19th-century designers in numerous fields of work. Architectural elements such as pointed arches, steep-sloping roofs and fancy carvings like lace ant lattice work were applied to a wide range of Gothic Revival objects. Some examples of Gothic Revivals influence can be found in heraldic motifs in coats of arms, painted furniture with elaborate painted scenes like the^[6] whimsical Gothic detailing in English furniture is traceable as far back at Lady Pomfret's house in Arlington Street, London (1740s), and Gothic fretwork in chairbacks and glazing patterns of bookcases is a familiar feature of Chippendale's "Director" (1754, 1762), where, for example, the three-part bookcase employs Gothic details with Rococo profusion, on a symmetrical form. Sir Walter Scott's Abbotsford exemplifies in its furnishings the "Regency Gothic" style. Gothic Revival also includes the reintroduction of medieval clothes and dances in "historical reencatments" staged among historically-interested followers, especially in the second part of the 19th century, and which have been revived over a hundred years later in the popularity of so-called "renaissance fairs/festivals" in several states (such as in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia). Parties in medieval historical dress and entertainment were popular among the wealthy in the 1800s but has spread in the late 20th Century to the well-educated middle class as well.^[7]

By the mid-19th Century, Gothic traceries and niches could be inexpensively re-created in wallpaper, and Gothic blind arcading could decorate a ceramic pitcher. The illustrated catalog for the famous Great Exhibition of 1851 is replete with Gothic detail, from lacemaking and carpet designs to heavy machinery.

In 1847, 8,000 British crown coins were minted in proof condition with the design using an ornate reverse in keeping with the revived style. Considered by collectors to be particularly beautiful, they are known as the "Gothic crown". The design was repeated in 1853, again in proof. A similar, two shilling coin, the "Gothic florin" was minted for circulation from 1851 to 1887.

Romanticism and nationalism[edit]

French neo-Gothic had its roots in the French medieval Gothic architecture, where it was created in the 12th Century. Gothic architecture was sometimes known during the medieval period as the "Opus Francigenum", (the "French Art"). French scholar Alexandre de Laborde wrote in 1816 that "Gothic architecture has beauties of its own",^[8] which marked the beginning of the Gothic revival in France. Starting in 1828, Alexandre Brogniart, the director of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory, produced fired enamel paintings on large panes of plate glass, for King Louis-Philippe's royal chapel at Dreux. It would be hard to find^[who?] a large, significant commission in Gothic taste that preceded this one, save for some Gothic features in a handful of jardins paysagers.

Gothic façade of the Parlement de Rouen inFrance, built between 1499 and 1508, which later inspired Neo-gothic revival in the 19th century

Saint Clotilde Basilicacompleted 1857, Paris

University of Glasgow's main building at Gilmorehill, Glasgowdesigned by Sir George Gilbert Scott, 1870

The French Gothic revival was set on sounder intellectual footings by a pioneer, Arcisse de Caumont, who founded the "Societé des Antiquaires de Normandy" at a time when"antiquaire" still meant a connoisseur of antiquities, and who published his great work on architecture in French Normandy in 1830 (Summerson 1948). The following year Victor Hugo's historical romance novel "Hunchback of Notre Dame" appeared, in which the great Gothic cathedral of Paris was at once a setting and a protagonist in a hugely popular work of fiction. Hugo intended his book to awaken a concern for the surviving Gothic architecture left in Europe, however, rather than to initiate a craze for neo-Gothic in contemporary life. In the same year that "Nôtre-Dame de Paris" appeared, the new French restored Bourbon monarchy established an office in the Royal French Government of "Inspector-General of Ancient Monuments", a post which was filled in 1833 by Prosper Merimée, who became the secretary of a new "Commission des Monuments Historiques" in 1837. This was the Commission that instructed Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to report on the condition of the "Abbey of Vézelay" in 1840. Following this, Viollet le Duc set to restore most of the symbolic buildings in France – Notre Dame de Paris, "Vézelay", "Carcassonne", "Roquetaillade castle", the especial famous and picturesque Mont Saint-Michel on its peaked coastal island, "Pierrefonds", "Palais des Papes" in Avignon... When France's first prominent neo-Gothic church^[9] was built, the "Basilica of Saint-Clotilde",^[10] Paris, begun in September 1846 and consecrated 30 November 1857, the architect chosen was, significantly, of German extraction, François-Christian Gau, (1790–1853); the design was significantly modified by Gau's assistant, Théodore Ballu, in the later stages, to produce the pair of "fleches" that crown the west end.

Cologne Cathedral, finally completed in 1880 (though construction started originally in 1248) with a façade 157 metres tall and a nave 43 metres tall

Meanwhile, in Germany, interest in the Cologne Cathedral, which had begun construction in 1248 and was still unfinished at the time of the revival, began to reappear. The 1820s "Romantic" movement brought back interest, and work began once more in 1842, significantly marking a German return of Gothic architecture.^[11]

Because of Romantic nationalism in the early 19th Century, the Germans, French and English all claimed the original Gothic architecture of the 12th Century era as originating in their own country. The English boldly coined the term "Early English" for "Gothic", a term that implied Gothic architecture was an English creation. In his 1832 edition of "Notre Dame de Paris", author Victor Hugo said "Let us inspire in the nation, if it is possible, love for the national architecture", implying that "Gothic" is France's national heritage. In Germany, with the completion of Cologne Cathedral in the 1880s, at the time its summit was the world's tallest building, the Cathedral was seen as the height of Gothic architecture. Other major completions of Gothic cathedrals were of Regensburger Dom (with twin spires completed from 1869–1872), Ulm Münster (with a 161 meter tower from 1890) and St. Vitus Cathedral (1844–1929).

In Belgium, a 15th Century church in Ostend burned down in 1896. King Leopold II supported its replacement by a cathedral-like church after the style of the also "Neo-Gothic" "Votive Church" in Vienna and the "Cologne Cathedral", also known as "Saint Peter's and Saint Mary's High Cathedral" in Cologne (which was deliberately spared as much damage as possible when Allied air fleets were bombing and destroying every building around it for blocks during World War II) : the "Saint Peter's and Saint Paul's Church".^[12] In Mechelen, the largely unfinished building drawn in 1526 as the seat of the "Great Council of The Netherlands", finally got built in the early 20th Century strictly following Rombout II Keldermans's Brabantine Gothic design, and became the 'new' north wing of the City Hall.^[13]^[14]

In Florence, the Duomo's temporary façade erected for the Medici-House of Lorraine nuptials in 1588–1589, was dismantled, and the west end of the cathedral stood bare again until 1864, when a competition was held to design a new facade suitable to Arnolfo di Cambio's original structure and the fine campanile next to it. This competition was won by Emilio De Fabris, and so work on his polychrome design and panels of mosaic was begun in 1876 and completed by 1887, creating the Neo-Gothic western facade. In Indonesia, (the former colony of the Dutch East Indies), the Jakarta Cathedral was begun in 1891 and completed in 1901 by Dutch architect Antonius Dijkmans; while further north in the islands of the Philippines, the San Sebastian Church, designed by architects Genaro Palacios and Gustave Eiffel and was consecrated in 1891 in the still Spanish colony.

In Scotland, while a similar Gothic style to that used further south in England was adopted by figures including Frederick Thomas Pilkington (1832–98)^[15] in secular architecture it was marked by the re-adoption of the Scots baronial style.^[16] Important for the adoption of the style in the early 19th century was Abbotsford House, the residence the novelist and poet, Sir Walter Scott. Re-built for him from 1816, it became a model for the modern revival of the baronial style. Common features borrowed from 16th- and 17th-century houses included battlemented gateways, crow-stepped gables, pointed turrets and machicolations. The style was popular across Scotland and was applied to many relatively modest dwellings by architects such as William Burn (1789–1870), David Bryce (1803–76),^[17] Edward Blore (1787–1879), Edward Calvert (c. 1847–1914) and Robert Stodart Lorimer (1864–1929) and in urban contexts, including the building of Cockburn Street in Edinburgh (from the 1850s) as well as the National Wallace Monument at Stirling (1859–69).^[18] The rebuilding of Balmoral Castle as a baronial palace and its adoption as a royal retreat from 1855-8 confirmed the popularity of the style.^[19]

In the United States, the first "Gothic stile"^[20] church (as opposed to churches with Gothic elements) was Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven, Connecticut.[1] It was designed by the prominent American Architect Ithiel Townbetween 1812 and 1814, even while he was building his Federalist-style Center Church, New Haven right next to this radical new "Gothic-style" church. Its cornerstone was laid in 1814,^[21] and it was consecrated in 1816.^[22] It thus predates St Luke's Church, Chelsea, often said to be the first Gothic-revival church in London, by a decade. Though built of Trap Rock stone with arched windows and doors, parts of its Gothic tower and its battlements were wood. Gothic buildings were subsequently erected by Episcopal congregations in Connecticut at St. John's in Salisbury (1823), St. John's in Kent (1823–26), St. Andrew's in Marble Dale (1821–23).^[23] These were followed by Town’s design for Christ Church Cathedral (Hartford, Connecticut) (1827), which incorporated Gothic elements such as buttresses into fabric of the church. St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Troy, New York, was constructed in 1827–1828 as an exact copy of the Town's design for Trinity Church, New Haven, but using local stone; due to changes in the original, St. Paul's is closer to Town's original design than Trinity itself.^[24] In the 1830s, architects began to copy specific English Gothic and Gothic Revival Churches, and these “mature Gothic revival” buildings “made the domestic Gothic style architecture which preceded it seem primitive and old-fashioned.”^[25] Since then, Gothic revival architecture has spread to thousands of churches and Gothic-revival buildings across America.

There are many examples of Gothic Revival architecture in Canada. The first major Gothic Revival structure in Canada was Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, which was designed in 1824. During the War of 1812 many homesteads along the St. Lawrence River were destroyed. Most of the homes were built in the Georgian style; after their destruction they were rebuilt in the Gothic Revival or "Jigsaw Gothic" style. The capital city of Ottawa is full of Gothic Revival architecture. The Parliament Hill buildings which was built in the last decades of the 19th century was built in the Gothic revival style, as were many other buildings in the city and outlining areas show how popular the Gothic Revival movement had become.^[26] Other examples of Canadian Gothic revival architecture are the Victoria Memorial Museum, (1905–08), the Royal Mint, (1905–8), and Connaught Building, (1913–16), all in Ottawa by David Ewart.^[27]

Gothic as a moral force[edit]

Pugin and "truth" in architecture[edit]

The House of Lords in the Palace of Westminster, designed by A. W. N. Pugin

In the late 1820s, A.W.N. Pugin, still a teenager, was working for two highly visible employers, providing Gothic detailing for luxury goods. For the Royal furniture makers Morel and Seddon he provided designs for redecorations for the elderly George IV at Windsor Castle in a Gothic taste suited to the setting. For the royal silversmiths Rundell Bridge and Co., Pugin provided designs for silver from 1828, using the 14th-century Anglo-French Gothic vocabulary that he would continue to favour later in designs for the new Palace of Westminster (see right).^[28] Between 1821 and 1838 Pugin and his father published a series of volumes of architectural drawings, the first two entitled, Specimens of Gothic Architecture, and the following three, Examples of Gothic Architecture, that were to remain both in print and the standard references for Gothic revivalists for at least the next century.

In Contrasts (1836), Pugin expressed his admiration not only for medieval art but for the whole medieval ethos, claiming that Gothic architecture is the product of a purer society. In The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841), he suggested that modern craftsmen seeking to emulate the style of medieval workmanship should also reproduce its methods. Pugin believed Gothic was true Christian architecture, and even said "the pointed arch was produced by the Catholic faith".

Pugin's most famous project is The Houses of Parliament in London. His part in the design consisted of two campaigns, 1836–1837 and again in 1844 and 1852, with the classicist Charles Barry as his nominal superior (whether the pair worked as a collegial partnership or if Barry acted as Pugin's superior is not entirely clear). Pugin provided the external decoration and the interiors, while Barry designed the symmetrical layout of the building, causing Pugin to remark, "All Grecian, Sir; Tudor details on a classic body".

Ruskin and Venetian Gothic[edit]

John Ruskin supplemented Pugin's ideas in his two hugely influential theoretical works, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1853). Finding his architectural ideal in Venice, Ruskin proposed that Gothic buildings excelled above all other architecture because of the "sacrifice" of the stone-carvers in intricately decorating every stone. By declaring the Doge's Palace to be "the central building of the world", Ruskin argued the case for Gothic government buildings as Pugin had done for churches, though only in theory. When his ideas were put into practice, Ruskin despised the spate of public buildings built with references to the Ducal Palace, including the University Museum in Oxford.

Ecclesiology and funerary style[edit]

Construction of Washington National Cathedral began in 1907 and was completed in 1990

In England, the Church of England was undergoing a revival of Anglo-Catholic and ritualist ideology in the form of the Oxford Movement and it became desirable to build large numbers of new churches to cater for the growing population, and cemeteries for their hygienic burials. This found ready exponents in the universities, where the ecclesiological movement was forming. Its proponents believed that Gothic was the only style appropriate for a parish church, and favoured a particular era of Gothic architecture—the "decorated". The Cambridge Camden Society, through its journal The Ecclesiologist, was so savagely critical of new church buildings that were below its exacting standards and its pronouncements were followed so avidly that it became the epicenter of the flood of Victorian restoration that affected most of the Anglican cathedrals and parish churches in England and Wales.^[29]

St Luke's Church, Chelsea was a new-built Commissioner's Church of 1820–24, partly built using a grant of £8,333 towards its construction with money voted by Parliament as a result of the Church Building Act of 1818.^[30]It is often said to be the first Gothic Revival church in London, and, as Charles Locke Eastlake put it: "probably the only church of its time in which the main roof was groined throughout in stone".^[31] Nonetheless, the parish was firmly Low Church, and the original arrangement, modified in the 1860s, was as a "preaching church" dominated by the pulpit, with a small altar and wooden galleries over the nave aisle.^[32]

The development of the private major metropolitan cemeteries was occurring at the same time as the movement; Sir William Tite pioneered the first cemetery in the Gothic style at West Norwood in 1837, with chapels, gates, and decorative features in the Gothic manner, attracting the interest of contemporary architects such as George Edmund Street, Barry, and William Burges. The style was immediately hailed a success and universally replaced the previous preference for classical design.^[33]

However, not every architect or client was swept away by this tide. Although Gothic Revival succeeded in becoming an increasingly familiar style of architecture, the attempt to associate it with the notion of high church superiority, as advocated by Pugin and the ecclesiological movement, was anathema to those with ecumenical or nonconformist principles. They looked to adopt it solely for its aesthetic romantic qualities, to combine it with other styles, or look to northern European Brick Gothic for a more plain appearance; or in some instances all three of these, as at the non-denominational Abney Park Cemetery designed by William Hosking FSA in 1840.

Viollet-le-Duc and Iron Gothic[edit]

If France had lagged slightly in entering the neo-Gothic scene, she produced a giant of the revival in Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. As well as a powerful and influential theorist, Viollet-le-Duc was a leading architect whose genius lay in restoration. He believed in restoring buildings to a state of completion that they would not have known even when they were first built, theories he applied to his restorations of the walled city of Carcassonne, and to Notre-Dame and Sainte Chapelle in Paris. In this respect he differed from his English counterpart Ruskin, as he often replaced the work of medieval stonemasons. His rational approach to Gothic stood in stark contrast to the revival's romanticist origins.

Throughout his career he remained in a quandary as to whether iron and masonry should be combined in a building. Iron had in fact been used in Gothic buildings since the earliest days of the revival. It was only with Ruskin and the archaeological Gothic's demand for structural truth that iron, whether it was visible or not, was deemed improper for a Gothic building.

This argument began to collapse in the mid-19th century as great prefabricated structures such as the glass and iron Crystal Palace and the glazed courtyard of the Oxford University Museum were erected, which appeared to embody Gothic principles through iron. Between 1863 and 1872 Viollet-le-Duc published his Entretiens sur l'architecture, a set of daring designs for buildings that combined iron and masonry. Though these projects were never realized, they influenced several generations of designers and architects, notably Antoni Gaudí in Spain and, in England, Benjamin Bucknall, Viollet's foremost English follower and translator, whose masterpiece was Woodchester Mansion.

The flexibility and strength of cast-iron freed neo-Gothic designers to create new structural gothic forms impossible in stone, as in Calvert Vaux's cast-iron bridge in Central Park, New York (1860s; illustration, below). Vaux enlists openwork forms derived from Gothic blind-arcading and window tracery to express the spring and support of the arching bridge, in flexing forms that presage Art Nouveau.

The upper chapel of the Sainte Chapelle, restored by Félix Duban in the 19th century

Cast-iron gothic tracery supports a bridge byCalvert Vaux, Central Park, New York City

Collegiate Gothic[edit]

The Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh

In the USA, Charles Donagh Maginnis's early buildings at Boston College, Ralph Adams Cram's design for the Princeton University Graduate College, and James Gamble Rogers' reconstruction of the campus of Yale University helped establish the prevalence of Collegiate Gothic architecture on American university campuses. Charles Klauder's Gothic revival skyscraper on the University of Pittsburgh's campus, the Cathedral of Learning used very Gothic stylings both inside and out, while using modern technologies to make the building taller.

Vernacular adaptations[edit]

Carpenter Gothic Unitarian Universalists of San Mateo, California (built 1905) showing Gothic arches, steep gables, and a tower. The tower includes examples of abat-sons

Vernacular Gothic Revival elements in an 1873 church of the Slavine Architectural School in Gavril Genovo, Montana Province, northwestern Bulgaria

Carpenter Gothic houses and small churches became common in North America and other places in the late 19th century.^[34] These structures adapted Gothic elements such as pointed arches, steep gables, and towers to traditional American light-frame construction. The invention of the scroll saw and mass-produced wood moldings allowed a few of these structures to mimic the florid fenestration of the High Gothic. But, in most cases, Carpenter Gothic buildings were relatively unadorned, retaining only the basic elements of pointed-arch windows and steep gables. Probably the best-known example of Carpenter Gothic is a house in Eldon, Iowa, that Grant Wood used for the background of his famous painting American Gothic.^[35]

Benjamin Mountfort of Canterbury, New Zealand imported the Gothic Revival style to New Zealand, and designed Gothic Revival churches in both wood and stone. Frederick Thatcher in New Zealand designed wooden churches in the Gothic Revival style, e.g. Old St. Paul's, Wellington. St Mary of the Angels, Wellington by Frederick de Jersey Clere is in the French Gothic style, and was the first Gothic design church built in ferro-concrete.

Other Gothic Revival churches were built in Australia, in particular in Melbourne and Sydney, see Category:Gothic Revival architecture in Australia.

In 19th-century northwestern Bulgaria, the informal Slavine Architectural School introduced Gothic Revival elements into its vernacular ecclesiastical and residential Bulgarian National Revival architecture. These included geometric decorations based on the triangle on apses, domes and external narthexes, as well as sharp-pointed window and door arches. The largest project of the Slavine School is the Lopushna Monastery cathedral (1850–1853), though later churches like those in Zhivovtsi (1858), Mitrovtsi (1871), Targovishte (1870–1872), Gavril Genovo (1873), Gorna Kovachitsa (1885) and Bistrilitsa (1887–1890) display more prominent vernacular Gothic Revival features.^[36]

The 20th century[edit]

The Gothic style dictated the use of structural members in compression, leading to tall, buttressed buildings with interior columns of load-bearing masonry and tall, narrow windows. But, by the start of the 20th century, technological developments such as the steel frame, the incandescent light bulb and the elevator led many^[who?] to see this style of architecture as obsolete. Steel framing supplanted the non-ornamental functions of rib vaults and flying buttresses, providing wider open interiors with fewer columns interrupting the view.

Some architects persisted in using Neo-Gothic tracery as applied ornamentation to an iron skeleton underneath, for example in Cass Gilbert's 1913 Woolworth Building skyscraper in New York and Raymond Hood's 1922 Tribune Tower in Chicago. But, over the first half of the century, Neo-Gothic became supplanted by Modernism. Some^[who?] in the Modern Movement saw the Gothic tradition of architectural form entirely in terms of the "honest expression" of the technology of the day, and saw themselves as the rightful heir to this tradition, with their rectangular frames and exposed iron girders.

In spite of this, the Gothic revival continued to exert its influence, simply because many of its more massive projects were still being built well into the second half of the 20th century, such as Giles Gilbert Scott's Liverpool Cathedraland the Washington National Cathedral (1907–1990). Ralph Adams Cram became a leading force in American Gothic, with his most ambitious project the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York (claimed to be the largest Cathedral in the world), as well as Collegiate Gothic buildings at Princeton University. Cram said "the style hewn out and perfected by our ancestors [has] become ours by uncontested inheritance."

Though the number of new Gothic revival buildings declined sharply after the 1930s, they continue to be built. The cathedral of Bury St. Edmunds was constructed between the late 1950s and 2005.^[37] A new church in the Gothic style is planned for St. John Vianney Parish in Fishers, Indiana.^[38]^[39] A new building currently under construction in Peterhouse will adopt the neo-gothic style of the rest of the courtyard it is being built in.^[40]

The Santa Justa Lift (1901), Lisbon,Portugal
Liverpool Cathedral, whose construction ran from 1903 to 1978
Passion Façade of La Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain (cranes digitally removed)

Gothic Architecture Links -

Albert Levy (Pioneer Architectural Photographer)

Albert Levy (1844–1907)^[1] was a French photographer active in Europe and the United States. Most active in the 1880s and 1890s, he was a pioneer of architectural photography.

He developed a catalogue with 2500 titles that can be found in the Gallica web project^[2] of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) as well as in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. His catalogue covers France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States. He was one of the first photographers to have a study at both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, in Paris and New York. His main contribution to history documentation is the 1870s "Albert Levy's architectural photographic Series" that consists of albums with 30–40 albumen photos of the Architecture of the United States, with a size of 20x24 cm approximately. There are at least 36 series.

Biography[edit]

Levy was born in France in 1884.^[1] However, the 1880 United States Census notes that he was 33 years old, which would put his birth date at 1887.^[3] The New York Passengers list 1820–1957 indicates that he came to the United States in 1876 and that his occupation was photographer.^[4] The 1880 Census gives his profession as bookseller.^[3]

Occupation[edit]

There are indications that Albert Levy was a photographer who also worked variously as bookseller,^[3] editor^[5] and manufacturer.^[6] His main occupation was photographer.^[4] active between 1870s-1890s^[7] He was also working in France in 1876 and in the United States in 1880s-1890s.^[8] He was one of the few photographers to have two studios at the same time in America and Europe. Actually, he had several studios:

77 University Place, New York
4 Bond Street, New York in 1880^[3]
34½ Pine Street, New York in 1887^[5]
19 rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, Paris^[5]
22 janvier 1901, A. Lévy, 4 av. Pinel, Asnières^[5]

Apart from photographer and bookseller, he was also pioneer in the manufacture of the gelatin dry plates in 1878.^[9] Because of the work he developed, he was an early competitor of George Eastman.^[6]^[10] He published several ads on "The Philadelphia Photographer" before Eastman's patent (1879):^[11]

Levy’s Emulsion Photographique Francaise Advertisement.^[12]

[...] Unequalled for rapidity (fully equal to the both plate) intensity to any degree on simple developement without silver or other intensifier and absolutely permanent and without change. Albert Levy sole propietor. Preservative for dry plates (more rapid than wet) [...]

Levy’s Dry Plates ^[13]
Levy’s Cyanotipes.^[14]
Levy’s Emulsion Dry Plate Camera.^[15]

Finally, he was an editor whose catalogue is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France(BnF) and in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library.

Photography[edit]

Montgomery Building, Boston by Cummings and Sears

The main occupation of Albert Levy was Architectural photography. He developed most of his work in the 1870s. He started working in Europe and then he move to the United States when he was 33 years old, but he still worked in Europe. His catalogue of 1887 (with 2500 titles) demonstrates that he did architectural photography in France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States. The took albumen photographies that collected with the following standards:

Albumen 20x24 cm
Cardboard 29x41 cm
Albums with 30-40 photos each

He focused his work on the new buildings of important architects like:

Herter Brothers - Twin Houses, New York
Richard Morris Hunt - William Kissam Vanderbilt Residence, New York
George Browne Post - Cornelius Vanderbilt Residence, New York
Henry Hobson Richardson - Oakes Ames Memorial Library, North Easton, Massachusetts
Calvert Vaux - Samuel J. Tilden Residence, New York
Charles B. Atwood - Dr. Stewart Webb and H. McKinley Twombly residences, New York (originally for William Henry Vanderbilt)
C. Pfeifer - The Berkshires, New York
E. H. Kendall - Odgen Goelet residence, New York
R.H.Robertson
Peabody and Stearns
Viollet le Duc
William Le Baron Jenney
Guerinot

Important owners of the buildings he took photos are William Henry Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt, William Kissam Vanderbilt, Samuel J. Tilden, Oliver Ames, John Harjés.

His most important contribution to history consists on the "Albert Levy's Architectural photographic series" that are a collection ^[16] of at least^[17] 36 albums with 30-40 albumen prints of the architecture of the United States in the 1870s. In these series there are photos of Washington, Baltimore, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Albany, Chicago, Cleveland, Brooklyn N.Y., Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit and Milwaukee among others. He used to create the series depending on the type of buildings been photographed. Some of the series are:^[18]^[19]^[20]

Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: First Series, Private City Dwellings.
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Second Series, Country Dwellings.
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Third series, French Gothic and Renaissance, Civil and Domestic Architecture, New York
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Fifth Series, Messrs. Vanderbilt's Mansions
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Ninth Series, Street Fronts.
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Tenth Series, Sea Shore Cottages and Country Houses
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Twelfth Series, Modern Street Architecture of Berlin, Street Fronts and Apartment Houses.
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Sixteenth Series, American Private City Dwellings
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Thirty-First Series, Street Fronts, Stores, Office Buildings, Etc.
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Thirty-Third series, American City and Country Residences, etc., New York.
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Thirty-Fifth Series, Sea Shore Cottages And Country Houses, Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Maine
Albert Levy's Photographic Series of Modern American Architecture: Thirty-Sixth Series, Sea-Shore Cottages, Etc., Newport, R.I., And Long Branch, N.J

This unique archive of the Architecture of the United States in the 19th century was lately edited by Andre, Daly fils et Cie. (French editors specialized in Architecture) to collect the best of the Albert Levy's architectural series in the album "L'Architecture Americaine" and show it in Europe. This collection consists of 3 series of albums:

1st Series: Public Buildings
2nd Series: Private Urban Residences
3rd Series: Suburban Homes

Each serie has 36 photos. All of them are described in the book "American Victorian Architecture".^[21]

He participated in the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia^[22]

Albert Levy's Photographs -

http://photocollection.alonsorobisco.es/architecture_samples.html

Features of Victorian Style Architecture

The definition of a Victorian house is any house that was built during the reign of Queen Victoria of England. Queen Victoria reigned from June 20th, 1837 to January 22, 1901. During the Victorian era, many styles of houses were popular. Here is a list of popular Victorian house styles.

British Arts and Crafts movement Gothic Revival Italianate Jacobethan Neoclassicism Neo-Grec Painted ladies Queen Anne Renaissance Revival Romanesque Revival Second Empire Stick-Eastlake Industrial architecture

Although there were many different types of Victorian houses, they all shared many of the same detailed architectural features.

Here is a list of Victorian Style Architectural features:

Bay Window

A window that sticks out of a house, that can have windows

on the side of it. Source:Victorian Architecture Vocabulary

Dentils

A molding going around a house with rectangle holes in it.