Greek Revival architecture
Greek Revival architecture was a
With newfound access to Greece and Turkey, or initially to the books produced by the few who had visited the sites, archaeologist–architects of the period studied the Doric and Ionic orders. Despite its universality rooted in ancient Greece, the Greek Revival idiom was considered an expression of local nationalism and civic virtue in each country that adopted it, and freedom from the lax detail and frivolity that then characterized the architecture of France and Italy, two countries where the style never really took architecturally. Greek Revival architecture was embraced in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, where the idiom was regarded as being free from ecclesiastical and aristocratic associations and was appealed to each country's emerging embrace of classical liberalism.
The taste for all things Greek in furniture and interior design, sometimes called
Modern-day architects are recreating this design by building houses similar to the Greek Revival. These houses are characterized by their symmetrical and balanced proportions, typically featuring a bold, pedimented portico with arched openings. The symmetrical façade is divided into two equal halves.
General characteristics
Much Greek Revival architecture used the Greek
The understanding of actual Greek architecture was based on ruined buildings, and awareness of the full range of ornamentation, and colour, on ancient Greek temples emerged over the period. Architects were aware of the large
Greek temples normally had no windows except perhaps in the roof, posing a problem for modern buildings for most purposes, which was generally brushed aside. Many buildings that needed to fulfill modern functions concentrated on having an impressive temple-style front, giving the other faces of the building a more practical design up to the cornice.
Europe
Germany and France
In Germany, Greek Revival architecture is predominantly found in two centres, Berlin and Munich. In both locales, Doric was the court style rather than a popular movement and was heavily patronised by Frederick William II of Prussia and Ludwig I of Bavaria as the expression of their desires for their respective seats to become the capital of Germany. The earliest Greek building was the Brandenburg Gate (1788–91) by Carl Gotthard Langhans, who modelled it loosely on the Propylaea in Athens. Ten years after the death of Frederick the Great, the Berlin Akademie initiated a competition for a monument to the king that would promote "morality and patriotism."
By comparison, Greek Revival architecture in France was never popular with either the state or the public. What little there is started with Charles de Wailly's crypt in the church of St Leu-St Gilles (1773–80), and Claude Nicolas Ledoux's Barriere des Bonshommes (1785–89). First-hand evidence of Greek architecture was of very little importance to the French, due to the influence of Marc-Antoine Laugier's doctrines that sought to discern the principles of the Greeks instead of their mere practices. It would take until Labrouste's Neo-Grec of the Second Empire for Greek Revival architecture to flower briefly in France.
Great Britain
Following the travels to Greece, Nicholas Revett, a Suffolk architect, and the better remembered James Stuart in the early 1750s, intellectual curiosity quickly led to a desire among the elite to emulate the style. Stuart was commissioned after his return from Greece by George Lyttelton to produce the first Greek building in England, the garden temple at Hagley Hall (1758–59).[2] A number of British architects in the second half of the century took up the expressive challenge of the Doric from their aristocratic patrons, including Benjamin Henry Latrobe (notably at Hammerwood Park and Ashdown House) and Sir John Soane, but it remained the private enthusiasm of connoisseurs up to the first decade of the 19th century.
An early example of Greek Doric architecture married with a more Palladian interior, is the facade of the Revett-designed rural church of Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire, commissioned in 1775 by Lord Lionel Lyde of the eponymous manor. The Doric columns of this church, with their "pie-crust crimped" details, are taken from drawings that Revett made of the Temple of Apollo on the Cycladic island of Delos, in the collection of books that he (and Stuart in some cases) produced, largely funded by special subscription by the Society of Dilettanti. See more in Terry Friedman's book The Georgian Parish Church, Spire Books, 2004.
Seen in its wider social context, Greek Revival architecture sounded a new note of sobriety and restraint in public buildings in Britain around 1800 as an assertion of
One of the greatest British proponents of the style was Decimus Burton.
In London, twenty three Greek Revival Commissioners' churches were built between 1817 and 1829, the most notable being St.Pancras church by William and Henry William Inwood. In Scotland the style was avidly adopted by William Henry Playfair, Thomas Hamilton and Charles Robert Cockerell, who severally and jointly contributed to the massive expansion of Edinburgh's New Town, including the Calton Hill development and the Moray Estate. Such was the popularity of the Doric in Edinburgh that the city now enjoys a striking visual uniformity, and as such is sometimes whimsically referred to as "the Athens of the North".
Within
Greece
Following the
Examples of Greek Revival architecture in Greece include the
It was not until the expedition to Greece funded by the
The rediscovery of the three relatively easily accessible Greek temples at Paestum in Southern Italy created huge interest throughout Europe, and prints by Piranesi and others were widely circulated. The Napoleonic Wars denied access to France and Italy to traditional Grand Tourists, especially from Britain. Aided by close diplomatic relations between Britain and the Porte, British travellers, artists and architects went to Greece and Turkey in ever larger numbers to study ancient Greek monuments and excavate or collect antiquities. The Greek War of Independence ended in 1832; Lord Byron's participation and death during this had brought it additional prominence.
Russia
The style was attractive in
Leo von Klenze's expansion of the palace that is now the Hermitage Museum is another example of the style.
Turkey
During the late period of the Ottoman Empire, Greek Revival Architecture had its examples in the empire. The prominent examples are Istanbul Archaeology Museums (1891)
Rest of Europe
The style was generally popular in northern Europe, and not in the south (except for Greece itself), at least during the main period. Examples can be found in Poland, Lithuania, and Finland, where the assembly of Greek buildings in Helsinki city centre is particularly notable. At the cultural edges of Europe, in the Swedish region of western Finland, Greek Revival motifs might be grafted on a purely Baroque design, as in the design for Oravais Church by Jacob Rijf, 1792. A Greek Doric order, rendered in the anomalous form of pilasters, contrasts with the hipped roof and boldly scaled cupola and lantern, of wholly traditional Baroque inspiration.
In Austria, one of the best examples of this style is the Parliament Building designed by Theophil Hansen.
North America
Canada
In Canada, Montreal architect John Ostell designed a number of prominent Greek Revival buildings, including the first building on the McGill University campus and Montreal's original Custom House, now part of the Pointe-à-Callière Museum. The Toronto Street Post Office, completed in 1853, is another Canadian example.
United States
While some 18th-century Americans had feared Greek democracy, sometimes called
In 1803, Thomas Jefferson appointed Benjamin Henry Latrobe as surveyor of public building, and Latrobe designed a number of important public buildings in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, including work on the United States Capitol and the Bank of Pennsylvania.[9]
Latrobe's design for the U.S. Capitol was an imaginative interpretation of the classical orders not constrained by historical precedent, incorporating American motifs such as corncobs and tobacco leaves. This idiosyncratic approach became typical of the American attitude to Greek detailing. His overall plan for the Capitol did not survive, though many of his interiors did. He also did notable work on the Supreme Court interior (1806–1807), and his masterpiece was the Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Baltimore (1805–1821).
Latrobe claimed, "I am a bigoted Greek in the condemnation of the Roman architecture", but he did not rigidly impose Greek forms. "Our religion," he said, "requires a church wholly different from the temple, our legislative assemblies and our courts of justice, buildings of entirely different principles from their basilicas; and our amusements could not possibly be performed in their theatres or amphitheatres."[10] His circle of junior colleagues became an informal school of Greek revivalists, and his influence shaped the next generation of American architects.
Greek revival architecture in the United States also included attention to interior decoration. The role of American women was critical for introducing a wholistic style of Greek-inspired design to American interiors. Innovations such as the Greek-inspired "sofa" and the "klismos chair" allowed both American women and men to pose as Greeks in their homes, and also in the numerous portraits of the period that show them lounging in Greek-inspired furniture.[11]
The second phase in American Greek Revival saw the pupils of Latrobe create a monumental national style under the patronage of banker and
From 1820 to 1850, the Greek Revival style dominated the United States, such as the Benjamin F. Clough House in Waltham, Massachusetts. It could also be found as far west as Springfield, Illinois. Examples of vernacular Greek Revival continued to be built even farther west, such as in Charles City, Iowa.[12]
This style was very popular in the south of the US, where the
Other notable American architects to use Greek Revival designs included Latrobe's student Robert Mills, who designed the Monumental Church and the Washington Monument, as well as George Hadfield and Gabriel Manigault.[9]
At the same time, the popular appetite for the Greek was sustained by architectural pattern books, the most important of which was Asher Benjamin's The Practical House Carpenter (1830). This guide helped create the proliferation of Greek homes seen especially in northern New York State and in Connecticut's former Western Reserve in northeastern Ohio.
Polychromy
The discovery that the Greeks had painted their temples influenced the later development of the style. The archaeological dig at Aegina and Bassae in 1811–1812 by Cockerell, Otto Magnus von Stackelberg, and Karl Haller von Hallerstein had disinterred painted fragments of masonry daubed with impermanent colours. This revelation was a direct contradiction of Winckelmann's notion of the Greek temple as timeless, fixed, and pure in its whiteness.
In 1823, Samuel Angell discovered the coloured metopes of Temple C at Selinunte, Sicily and published them in 1826. The French architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff witnessed the exhibition of Angell's find and endeavoured to excavate Temple B at Selinus. His imaginative reconstructions of this temple were exhibited in Rome and Paris in 1824 and he went on to publish these as Architecture polychrome chez les Grecs (1830) and later in Restitution du Temple d'Empedocle a Selinote (1851). The controversy was to inspire von Klenze's "Aegina" room at the Munich Glyptothek of 1830, the first of his many speculative reconstructions of Greek colour.
Hittorff lectured in Paris in 1829–1830 that Greek temples had originally been painted ochre yellow, with the moulding and sculptural details in red, blue, green and gold. While this may or may not have been the case with older wooden or plain stone temples, it was definitely not the case with the more luxurious marble temples, where colour was used sparingly to accentuate architectural highlights.
Henri Labrouste also proposed a reconstruction of the temples at Paestum to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1829, decked out in startling colour, inverting the accepted chronology of the three Doric temples, thereby implying that the development of the Greek orders did not increase in formal complexity over time, i.e., the evolution from Doric to Corinthian was not inexorable. Both events were to cause a minor scandal. The emerging understanding that Greek art was subject to changing forces of environment and culture was a direct assault on the architectural rationalism of the day.
See also
Notes
- ^ J. Turner (ed.), Encyclopedia of American art before 1914, New York, p. 198..
- ^ But Giles Worsley detects the first Grecian-influenced architectural element in the windows of Nuneham Park from 1756; see Giles Worsley, "The First Greek Revival Architecture", The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 127, No. 985 (April 1985), pp. 226–229.
- ^ Crook 1972, pp. 1–6
- ^ "The Antiquities of Athens", British Museum
- ^ Crook 1972, pp. 13–18.
- ISBN 9781900639408. Retrieved 2015-06-24.
- ^ Caroline Winterer, The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, pp. 44–98.
- ^ Hamlin 1944, p. 339
- ^ a b Federal Writers' Project (1937), Washington, City and Capital: Federal Writers' Project, Works Progress Administration / United States Government Printing Office, p. 126.
- ^ The Journal of Latrobe, quoted in Hamlin, Greek Revival d1944), p. 36 (Dover Edition).
- ^ Caroline Winterer, The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the Classical Tradition, 1780–1900 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), pp. 102–41
- ^ Gebhard & Mansheim, Buildings of Iowa, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993 p. 362.
- ^ Jenrette, Richard Hampton (2005). Adventures with Old Houses, p. 179. Wyrick & Company.
References
Primary sources
- Jacob Spon, Voyage d'Italie, de Dalmatie, de Grèce et du Levant, 1678
- George Wheler, Journey into Greece, 1682
- Richard Pococke, A Description of the East and Some Other Countries, 1743-5
- R. Dalton, Antiquities and Views in Greece and Egypt, 1751
- Comte de Caylus, Recueil d'antiquités, 1752–67
- Marc-Antoine Laugier Essai sur l'architecture, 1753
- J. J. Winkelmann, Gedanken uber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst, 1755
- J. D. LeRoy, Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce, 1758
- James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, The Antiquities of Athens, 1762–1816
- J. J. Winkelmann, Anmerkungen uber die Baukunst der alten Tempel zu Girgenti in Sicilien, 1762
- J. J. Winkelmann, Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, 1764
- Thomas Major, The ruins of Paestum, 1768
- Stephen Riou, The Grecian Orders, 1768
- R. Chandler et al., Ionian Antiquities, 1768–1881
- G. B. Piranesi, Differentes vues...de Pesto, 1778
- J. J. Barthelemy, Voyage du jeune Anarcharsis en Grèce dans le milieu du quatrième siecle avant l'ère vulgaire, 1787
- William Wilkins, The Antiquities of Magna Grecia, 1807
- Leo von Klenze, Der Tempel des olympischen Jupiter zu Agrigent, 1821
- S Agnell and T. Evens, Sculptured Metopes Discovered among the ruins of Selinus, 1823
- Peter Oluf Brøndsted, Voyages et recherches dans le Grèce, 1826–1830
- Otto Magnus Stackelberg, Der Apollotempel zu Bassae in Arcadien, 1826
- J. I. Hittorff and L. von Zanth, Architecture antique de la sicile, 1827
- C. R. Cockerell et al., Antiquities of Athens and other places of Greece, Sicily, etc., 1830
- A. Blouet, Expedition scientifique de Moree, 1831-8
- F. Kugler, Uber die Polychromie der griechischen Architektur und Skulptur und ihr Grenze, 1835
- C. R. Cockerell, The Temples of Jupiter Panhellenius at Aegina and of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae, 1860
Architectural Pattern Books
- Asher Benjamin, The American Builder's Companion, 1806
- Asher Benjamin, The Builder's Guide, 1839
- Asher Benjamin, The Practical House Carpenter, 1830
- Owen Biddle, The Young Carpenter's Assistant, 1805
- William Brown, The Carpenter's Assistant, 1848
- Minard Lafever, The Young Builder's General Instructor, 1829
- Minard Lafever, The Beauties of Modern Architecture, 1833
- Thomas U. Walter, Two Hundred Designs for Cottages and Villas, 1846.
Secondary sources
- Winterer, Caroline. The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780–1910 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002)
- Winterer, Caroline. The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the Classical Tradition, 1780–1900 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007)
- Crook, Joseph Mordaunt (1972), The Greek Revival: Neo-Classical Attitudes in British Architecture 1760–1870, John Murray, ISBN 0-7195-2724-4
- Hamlin, Talbot (1944), Greek Revival Architecture in America, Ohio University Press
- Kennedy, Roger G. (1989), Greek Revival America
- Wiebenson, Dora (1969), The Sources of Greek Revival Architecture
- Hoecker, Christopher (1997), "Greek Revival America? Reflections on uses and functions of antique architectural patterns in American architecture between 1760–1860", Hephaistos — New approaches in Classical Archaeology and related fields, vol. 15, pp. 197–241
- Ruffner, Clifford H. Jr. (1939), Study of Greek Revival Architecture in the Seneca and Cayuga Lake Regions
- Tyler, Norman and Ilene R. Tyler (2014). Greek Revival in America: Tracing its architectural roots to ancient Athens. Ann Arbor. ISBN 9781503149984.)
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