Palazzo style architecture
Palazzo style refers to an
While early Palazzo style buildings followed the forms and scale of the Italian originals closely, by the late 19th century the style was more loosely adapted and applied to commercial buildings many times larger than the originals. The architects of these buildings sometimes drew their details from sources other than the Italian Renaissance, such as
History
Origins
The Palazzo style began in the early 16th century essentially as a
Early 19th century
The earliest true
In England, the earliest 19th-century application of the Palazzo style was to a number of London
Early examples are the London clubs, The
After Charles Barry, the Palazzo style was adopted for different purposes, particularly banking. The Belfast Bank had its premises remodelled by Sir Charles Lanyon in 1845. No. 15 Kensington Palace Gardens (1854) by James Thomas Knowles freely adapts features of the palazzo.[3]
1850s to 1900
A major 19th-century architect to work extensively in the Palazzo style was
From the 1850s, a number of buildings were designed that expand the Palazzo style with its rustications, rows of windows, and large cornice, over very long buildings such as Grosvenor Terrace in Glasgow (1855) by J. T. Rochead and Watts Warehouse (Britannia House), Manchester, (1856) by Travis and Magnall, a "virtuoso performance" in Palazzo design.[3] From the 1870s, many city buildings were designed to resemble Venetian rather than Florentine palazzi, and were more ornately decorated, often having arcaded loggias at street level, like James Barnet's General Post Office Building in Sydney, (1866 and 1880s). The Palazzo style was extremely popular in Manchester in the United Kingdom, particularly the work of Edward Walters, whose finest Palazzo works include the Free Trade Hall (1853) and 38 and 42 Mosley Street (1862).
The Palazzo style found wider application in the late 19th century when it was adapted for retail and commercial buildings. Henry Hobson Richardson designed a number of buildings using the Palazzo form but remarkable for employing the Italian Romanesque rather than Renaissance style. The largest and best known of such works was Marshall Field's Wholesale Store in Chicago (1885, demolished 1930) which, with its large windows set into arcades demonstrates the direction that commercial architecture was to take, in the replacement of structural outer walls with screen walls protecting an inner structural core.[6] Only one of Richardson's palazzo style commercial buildings remains intact, the Hayden Building in Boston.
The American architect Louis Sullivan pioneered steel-frame construction, meaning that both the floors and outer walls of a building were supported by an internal steel frame, rather than the structure of the walls. This technological development permitted the construction of much taller habitable buildings than was previously possible. Sullivan's Prudential (Guaranty) Building in Buffalo and the Wainwright Building in St. Louis demonstrate the application of the Palazzo style to tall structures, which maintain the Renaissance features of a cornice and differentiated basement but which have its cliff-like walls composed mainly of glass, the rows of windows separated by vertical bands, which also define corners of the building, giving a similar effect to quoins.[6]
Early 20th century
Palazzo style architecture remained common for large department stores through the first half of the 20th century, sometimes being given
The style was also applied to much taller buildings such as The Equitable Building (1915), designed by Ernest R. Graham, a 38-story office building in Lower Manhattan which is a landmark engineering achievement as a skyscraper.[8]
The 1930s saw the construction of a number of government buildings in
With the development of Moderne architecture the Palazzo style became less common.
Postmodern architecture
Postmodern architecture has seen some revival in the Palazzo style, in greatly simplified and eclectic forms. The Italian architect Aldo Rossi has designed a number of Palazzo style buildings, including Hotel Il Palazzo in Fukuoka, Japan, (1989) which combines elements of a typical palazzo facade, including projecting cornice, with the intense red found in Japanese traditional architecture, and the green of patinated bronze.[9] In 1996 Rossi designed a building complex on a large corner block in the Schützenquartier, Berlin, and previously occupied by a section of the Berlin Wall. Rossi's study of the architecture of the city led him to construct a single building with the appearance of multiple structures, of varying widths, designs and colours, many of which have elements of Palazzo architecture.[10]
Characteristics
The characteristic appearance of a Palazzo style building is that it draws on the appearance of an Italian palazzo or town house such as those found in Florence and along the Grand Canal in Venice. The style is usually Renaissance Revival but may be Romanesque or, more rarely, Italian Gothic. The facade is cliff-like, without any large projecting portico or pediment. There are several storeys with regular rows of windows which are generally differentiated between levels, and sometimes have pediments that are alternately triangular and segmental. The facade is symmetrical and usually has some emphasis around its centrally placed portal. The basement or ground floor is generally differentiated in the treatment of its masonry, and is often rusticated. The corners of early-19th-century examples generally have quoins or, in 20th-century buildings, there is often some emphasis that gives visual strength to the corners. Except in some Postmodern examples, there is always emphasis on the cornice, which may be very large and overhang the street. All public faces of the building are treated in a similar manner, the main difference being in the decoration of doors.
Palazzo style buildings
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The Athenaeum Club, London, by Decimus Burton early 19th century
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Bauakademie, Berlin by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, (1832–36), demolished 1962
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The Free Trade Hall, Manchester, a Venetian-style building by Edward Walters, (1853)
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38 and 42 Mosley Street, Manchester, Edward Walters (1862)
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Former Bank of New South Wales, George Street, Sydney, late 19th century
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The Guaranty Building, Buffalo, US, (1894) by Louis Sullivan
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The Machinery Hall at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, by C. V. Kerr of Patten & Fisher (1901)
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The former Cunard Building, Liverpool (1914–17) designed by William Edward Willink and Philip Coldwell Thicknesse
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The Carlton Hotel, now known as The St. Regis, was designed by Mihran Mesrobian in 1926.
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FormerWashington D.C. (1929), Starrett & van Vleck
See also
- List of architectural styles
- Richardson Romanesque
- Chicago school (architecture)
References
- ^ Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture, Penguin, (1964)
- ISBN 978-0-19-280017-6
- ^ ISBN 0-7153-9144-5
- ^ ISBN 0-7506-2267-9
- ISBN 0-909723-17-6
- ^ ISBN 0-15-503752-8
- ^ Library of Congress, photos of Rich's Department Store, 45 Broad Street, Atlanta
- ISBN 0-300-05536-6.
- ^ "HOTEL IL PALAZZO - Chuo-ku - Lonely Planet Hotels & Hostels". Archived from the original on 2011-10-03. Retrieved 2011-03-27. Lonely Planet, Michael Clark, Hotel Il Palazzo, accessed 2011-03-27
- ^ [1], Jay Berman, Newspaper Area Complex, Aldo Rossi 1996, (1999), accessed 2011-03-27