The Story of Architecture

Chapter 17 From Pioneers to Establishment: The Americas and Beyond

The New World

Where the Europeans established colonies or missionary activity, the architectural style was at first a primitive version of the parent country with adaptations to climate, local materials and the skills of local craftsmen.Sometimes it was a straight import; sometimes the native tradition won out.

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Mercedarian Monastery, Quito, Ecuador, 1630

Brunellesci’s Foundling Hospital transplanted in more lush surroundings 3

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Governor’s Palace, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1610 (adobe)

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Parlange, Pointe Coupee Parish, New Orleans 1750

Distinctive French style with colonnaded galleries

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Metropolitan Cathedral, Mexico City 1563

Churrigeresque ornament

Sagrario (Sacrament Chapel)

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ESTÍPITEA column or pilaster, tapered at the bottom and formed of several elaborately carved sections. Typical of late Baroque buildings in Spain and Latin America.

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Between 1720 and 1760, the Churrigueresque column, or estipite, in the shape of an inverted cone or obelisk, was established as a central element of ornamental decoration.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churrigueresque

Cathedral Zacatecas 1729

Folk Baroque

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http://www.mexicanarchitecture.org/glossary/pages/slideshow.php?building=Zacatecas_Zacatecas_Cathedral_full&id=43

Sao Francisco, Salvador, Brazil 1701

Aztec/Baroque forms in gilt wood and plaster

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17th Century Cathedral, Cuzco, Peru and the Campania 1651

Basic severe classicism of Spain’s Philip II Escorial but with slim pillars on the West front

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From the Il Gesu, Rome

San Francisco, Tiaxcala, Mexico 1521

Cortez is said to have founded the earliest church on the continent where local cedar wood was used for beams.

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Cathedral, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 1521-41

Late Spanish Gothic in the Plateresque West front

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San Agustin Acolman, Mexico City 1520s

Gothic and Moorish details grafted on a Spanish Plateresque style

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The elegant alfíz on San Agustín’s façade is a work of magnificent plateresque, elaborate yet well contained and proportioned.

AlfizThe alfiz architectonic adornment, is a moulding, usually a rectangular panel, which encloses the outward side of an arch. Although islamic, it appears in Christian Spanish architecture since 8th century.As the image illustrates, there are two alfiz variants:A Alfiz starting from the impost.B Alfiz starting from the floor.The space between the arch and the alfiz is called enjuta or arrabá, usually

richly decorated (iron-gray in the illustration).

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Sagrario, Ocotlan, Mexico 1745

Aleijadinho, Ouro Preto, Brazil 1766

South American Baroque: a combination of naivety with dazzling beauty

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From stone to woodFrom exuberant Baroque tempered with peasant innocence to the severe simplicity of early settlements on the eastern seaboard of North AmericaThe Europeans who landed in South America were conquerors; while settlers in the New England states came seeking freedom to worship and to escape from poverty and fear

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Parson Capen House, Topsfield, Massachusetts

Parson Capen House, Topsfield, Massachusetts

A distinctive type of frame house evolved – the balloon frame which could be easily erected by the community, as a barn-raising. Timber frame and shingle roof; clad in clapboard. Upper floor juts over the lower typical of English Elizabethan frame houses.

Windows not recessed as in Georgian brick but flush with the wall as suits

timber.18

Longfellow House, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1759A later, more elegant form of frame house in Georgian style with captain’s walk on the roof

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Shirley Plantation, Virginia 1723

A handsome, two-storey Palladian colonnade with tall slim pillars looking across ample parkland

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Mount Vernon, Virginia 1757 George Washington’s timber Georgian house

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Mount Pleasant Philadelphia 1761

Rubbled walls stuccoed over and scored to look

like brick with brick on

the quoins

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College of William and Mary

Earliest Renaissance buildings in America possibly by Sir Christopher Wren

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William Byrd, Westover, Charles City County, Virginia 1730

Imported English fittings for this gracious and ample brick house

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Thomas Jefferson, Monticello 1770

Palladian Villa

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University of Virginia 1817

An “academic village”, now a typical campus

A living museum of different sizes and types of classical buildings; the library modelled on the Pantheon

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Pierre Charles L’Enfant, Plan for Washington, D.C.

Laid out in a grid crossed diagonally by avenues with the names of the states

they point to

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The “Palladian” White House, by James Hoban 1792

It has an air of reticence and good breeding, not dominating Washington

but reflecting its elegance

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Characteristic American Church of the period based on Wren and GibbsChristchurch, Boston

St. Michael’s, Charleston

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Latrobe, Catholic Cathedral, Baltimore1805-18

America’s first coffered dome adapted from French and English classical influences

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Classicism in AmericaLatrobe, Bank of

Philadelphia 1832

William Strickland, Philadelphia Merchant’s Exchange, “a stunning piece of Greek revival”; a colonnaded apse surmounted, not with a dome, but a simple tempietto lantern based on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates 31

Capitol, Washington, D.C. 1793-1867

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Capitol, Washington, D.C. 1793-1867

The triple-tiara dome by Thomas Walter gives it its world-famous silhouetteMade of cast iron

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Cast Iron in BuildingsInisfail is a fine example of the impressive 1880's Victorian Filigree architecture located on Royal Parade in the Melbourne suburb of Parkville. An incredible example of fretwork at its finest. Just beautiful.

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Cast Iron in BuildingsTrinity Terrace is a set of five beautiful and well preserved Victorian Filigree style terrace houses that are located on Royal Parade in the Melbourne suburb of Parkville. Completed in 1887, they each feature an elaborately detailed parapet and finely crafted floral cast iron lace work which is of the highest quality.

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Elizabeth House, Parkville, Melbourne

Started construction as a law court, redesigned as the cathedral with Greenway brickwork and copper-sheathed spire

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Georgian Houses in Hobart, Tasmania

A Victorian interpretation of Italian Renaissance

Similar to the terraces of Brighton Sussex with views out to sea

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Sydney Street Scene

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neo-Palladian and neo-Classical Style throughout the British Empire

Penang Town Hall, Malayasia

The plans of Kedleston Hall (1759-1789), Derby, by Robert Adam, had been published and became the model for Government House, Calcutta.

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The last romantic

The era of European architectural styles being exported world-wide became an accepted norm. Other revivals will come and go with new stylistic features. But new materials and methods of construction are on the horizon and will change architecture down to its very roots.

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