Italianate architecture
The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of
The Italianate style was first developed in Britain in about 1802 by
The style was employed in varying forms abroad long after its decline in popularity in Britain. For example, from the late 1840s to 1890, it achieved huge popularity in the United States,[5] where it was promoted by the architect Alexander Jackson Davis.
Elements
Key visual components of this style include:[6]
- Low-pitched or flat roofs; roof is frequently hipped
- Projecting eaves supported by corbels
- Imposing cornice structures
- Pedimented windows and doors
- Arch-headed, pedimented or Serlian windows with pronounced architraves and archivolts
- Tall first floor windows suggesting a piano nobile
- Belvedere or machicolated signorial towers
- Cupolas
- Quoins
- Loggias
- Balustrades concealing the roof-scape
- About 15% of Italianate houses in the United States include a tower[7]
By region
England and Wales
A late intimation of John Nash's development of the Italianate style was his 1805 design of Sandridge Park at Stoke Gabriel in Devon. Commissioned by the dowager Lady Ashburton as a country retreat, this small country house clearly shows the transition between the picturesque of William Gilpin and Nash's yet to be fully evolved Italianism. While this house can still be described as Regency, its informal asymmetrical plan together with its loggias and balconies of both stone and wrought iron; tower and low pitched roof clearly are very similar to the fully Italianate design of Cronkhill,[10] the house generally considered to be the first example of the Italianate style in Britain.
Later examples of the Italianate style in England tend to take the form of
Anthony Salvin occasionally designed in the Italianate style, especially in Wales, at Hafod House, Carmarthenshire, and Penoyre House, Powys, described by Mark Girouard as "Salvin's most ambitious classical house."[14]
Thomas Cubitt, a London building contractor, incorporated simple classical lines of the Italianate style as defined by Sir Charles Barry into many of his London terraces.[4] Cubitt designed Osborne House under the direction of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and it is Cubitt's reworking of his two-dimensional street architecture into this freestanding mansion[4] which was to be the inspiration for countless Italianate villas throughout the British Empire.
Following the completion of Osborne House in 1851, the style became a popular choice of design for the small mansions built by the new and wealthy industrialists of the era. These were mostly built in cities surrounded by large but not extensive gardens, often laid out in a terrace
An example that is not very well known, but a clear example of Italianate architecture, is St. Christopher's Anglican church in Hinchley Wood, Surrey, particularly given the design of its bell tower.[16]
Portmeirion in Gwynedd, North Wales, is an architectural fantasy designed in a southern Italian Baroque style and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in a loose style of an Italian village. It is now owned by a charitable trust. Williams-Ellis incorporated fragments of demolished buildings, including works by a number of other architects. Portmeirion's architectural bricolage and deliberately fanciful nostalgia have been noted as an influence on the development of postmodernism in architecture in the late 20th century.
Scotland
The Italianate revival was comparatively less prevalent in Scottish architecture,[citation needed] examples include some of the early work of Alexander Thomson ("Greek" Thomson) and buildings such as the west side of George Square.
Lebanon
The Italian, specifically Tuscan, influence on architecture in Lebanon dates back to the
When the Ottomans exiled Fakhreddine to Tuscany in 1613, he entered an alliance with the
United States
United States East Coast
The Italianate style was popularized in the United States by
Italianate was reinterpreted to become an indigenous style. It is distinctive by its pronounced exaggeration of many Italian Renaissance characteristics: emphatic
This architectural style became more popular than
Other U.S. regions
The popularity of Italianate architecture in the time period following 1845 can be seen in Cincinnati, Ohio, the United States' first boomtown west of the Appalachian Mountains.[25] This city, which grew along with the traffic on the Ohio River, features arguably the largest single collection of Italianate buildings in the United States in its Over-the-Rhine neighbourhood, built primarily by German-American immigrants that lived in the densely populated area. In recent years, increased attention has been called to the preservation of this impressive collection, with large-scale renovation efforts beginning to repair urban blight. Cincinnati's neighbouring cities of Newport and Covington, Kentucky also contain an impressive collection of Italianate architecture.
The Garden District of New Orleans features examples of the Italianate style, including:[26]
- 1331 First Street, designed by Samuel Jamison,
- the Van Benthuysen-Elms Mansion at 3029 St. Charles Avenue, and
- 2805 Carondelet Street (technically located a block outside the Garden District).
In California, the earliest
Additionally, the
Australia
The Italianate style was immensely popular in Australia as a domestic style influencing the rapidly expanding suburbs of the 1870–1880s and providing rows of neat villas with low-pitched roofs, bay windows, tall windows and classical cornices. The architect William Wardell designed Government House in Melbourne—the official residence of the governor of Victoria—as an example of his "newly discovered love for Italianate, Palladian and Venetian architecture."[28] Cream-colored, with many Palladian features, it would not be out of place among the unified streets and squares in Thomas Cubitt's Belgravia, London, except for its machicolated signorial tower that Wardell crowned with a belvedere.
The
Many examples of this style are evident around Sydney and Melbourne, notably the Old Treasury Building (1858), Leichhardt Town Hall (1888), Glebe Town Hall (1879) and the fine range of state and federal government offices facing the gardens in Treasury Place. No.2 Treasury Gardens (1874).[29] This dignified, but not overly exuberant style for civil service offices contrasted with the grand and more formal statements of the classical styles used for Parliament buildings. The acceptance of the Italianate style for government offices was sustained well into the 20th century when, in 1912, John Smith Murdoch designed the Commonwealth Office Buildings as a sympathetic addition to this precinct to form a stylistically unified terrace overlooking the gardens.
The Italianate style of architecture continued to be built in outposts of the British Empire long after it had ceased to be fashionable in Britain itself. The Albury railway station in regional New South Wales, completed in 1881, is an example of this further evolution of the style.
New Zealand
As in Australia, the use of Italianate for public service offices took hold but using local materials like timber to create the illusion of stone. At the time it was built in 1856, the official residence of the Colonial Governor in Auckland was criticized for the dishonesty of making wood look like stone. The 1875 Old Government Buildings, Wellington are entirely constructed with local kauri timber, which has excellent properties for construction. (Auckland developed later and preferred Gothic detailing.) As in the United States, the timber construction common in New Zealand allowed this popular style to be rendered in domestic buildings, such as Antrim House in Wellington, and Westoe Farm House in Rangitikei[30] (1874), as well as rendered brick at "The Pah" in Auckland (1880).
On a more domestic scale, the suburbs of cities like
Image galleries
Great Britain
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The Reform Club (1837–41) in Pall Mall by Barry was highly influential in its design and context at the heart of power structures in London
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The main aspect and belvedere of Runcorn Town Hall in Cheshire, England
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The former headquarters of the Royal Southern Yacht Club in Southampton, England, built in 1846
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Johnston School, Kirkcudbright, 1847
United States
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ItalianateSan Francisco, California
-
Series of ItalianateCincinnati, Ohio.
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Boardman–Mitchell House Located in Stapleton, Staten Island, NY.
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The Bidwell Mansion, built in 1865, Chico, California
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Robert Patrick Fitzgerald House, Milwaukee, 1876: potpourri of "Italianate" features
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Annefield, Charlotte County, Virginia, built in 1858.
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The Farnam Mansion in Oneida, New York, built in 1862.
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Ledyard Block Historic District, seven interconnected Italianate buildings in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, constructed between 1859 and 1874.
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Aldrich Building, Grand Rapids, Michigan, built in 1869.
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Peck Block, Grand Rapids, Michigan, built in 1875.
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Aldrich Godfrey and White Block, Grand Rapids, Michigan, built in 1874.
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Toledo Central High School in Toledo, Ohio, 1864
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William Reddick Mansion in Ottawa, Illinois. Built in 1855.
Australia and New Zealand
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Railway station ofAlbury, New South Wales, Australia(1881).
-
Randwick Town Hall, New South Wales
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Goulburn Post Office, New South Wales
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Italianate house in Randwick, New South Wales
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Italianateterraces in Millers Point, Sydney
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Former National House, Sydney
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Myrnong Hall, Acland Street, St Kilda, Victoria, Melbourne
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Kamesburgh, North Road, Brighton, Victoria
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Italianate terraces, Randwick, New South Wales
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Antrim House, Wellington
See also
References
- ^ a b Wilson, Richard Guy (2002). Buildings of Virginia: Tidewater and Piedmont. Oxford University Press. p. 517.
- Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture 1941 etc.
- BookRags.com. 13 June 1928. Archived from the originalon 12 May 2006. Retrieved 18 January 2010.
- ^ ISBN 1-85074-249-9
- ^ Kibbel, Bill. "The Italianate Style". Old House Web Blog. Retrieved 18 January 2010.
- ^ "Italianate Architectural Elements". Middleburgh Elementary Library Information Center [self-published source]. Middleburgh Telephone Company. Archived from the original on 3 October 2009. Retrieved 18 January 2010.
- ^ McAlester, Virginia & Lee, A Field Guide to American Houses, Alfred H. Knopf, New York 1984 p. 211
- ^ "Historic Houses In Buckinghamshire". Touruk.co.uk. Archived from the original on 24 February 2010. Retrieved 18 January 2010.
- ISBN 0-540-01185-1
- ^ Photograph of Cronkhill Archived 16 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine The house is still more a picturesque cottage than great Italian Villa or Palazzo
- ISBN 0-300-02273-5.
- ISBN 0-540-01185-1
- ISBN 0-540-01185-1
- ^ Girouard 1978, p. 415.
- ^ Girouard 1978, p. 272.
- ^ "St. Christopher's Church, Hinchley Wood (C) Dr Neil Clifton". Geograph Britain and Ireland. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
- ISBN 978-1-86450-333-3. Retrieved 18 January 2010.
- ISBN 978-0-86372-297-4. Retrieved 18 January 2010.
- ^ "Premium content". The Economist. 11 September 2008. Retrieved 18 January 2010.
- ISBN 978-0-7385-2367-5.
- ^ a b Sheridan, Ellen M.; Lentz, Marlene H. (15 December 1987). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory — Nomination Form" (PDF). Greensboro Preservation Society. National Park Service. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
- Downing, Andrew Jackson, "Victorian Cottage Residences", Dover Architectural Series, 1981, a reprint of "Cottage Residences: or A Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage Villas and their Gardens and Grounds Adapted to North America", 1873 p. 152
- ISBN 0-262-73069-3.
- Hamlin, Talbot, Greek Revival Architecture in America: Being an account of important trends in American architecture and American life prior to the War Between the States, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1944, a 1964 edition pp. 334–337
- ^ Clubbe, John. Cincinnati Observed: Architecture and History, Ohio State University Press, Columbus 1992 p. xxi
- ^ "Self Guided Garden District Tour – Things to See". Free Tours by Foot. 1 February 2018. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
- ^ Terras, Donald J. (3 August 1998). "National Historic Landmark Nomination: Grosse Point Light Station" (PDF). National Park Service. Retrieved 20 July 2008. – "Accompanying 9 images" (PDF).
- ^ "Historic Buildings in Berry". The Age. Melbourne. 25 June 2008. Retrieved 18 January 2010.
- ^ Fishlock, Sean. "State Government Offices – 2 Treasury Place, EAST MELBOURNE". Walking Melbourne Forum. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
- ^ "Search the List – Westoe". Heritage New Zealand. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
External links
- Italianate, 1850–1890 The Old House Web
- Italianate (1850–1900) Ontario Architecture
- The Picturesque Style: Italianate Architecture Blog on Italianate architecture
- Italianate Architecture Arthemia
- 1840–1885: Italianate Archived 20 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine Picture Dictionary of House Styles in North America and Beyond
- Italianate in Buffalo – 1840–1885
- Victorian Italianate, c. 1840-c. 1890 Sydney Architecture Images
- Italianate and Italian Villa (1850–1890) Architectural Styles of America
- Italianate Architecture flickr
- The Pah Homestead, Auckland, New Zealand