American renaissance; a review of domestic architectureDow, Joy Wheeler
History
American renaissance; a review of domestic architecture
Dow, Joy Wheeler
Architecture -- United States; Architecture, Domestic
But the Eastlake style was not the only product of the Centennial.
Contemporary if not coördinate was the Romanesque revival undertaken by
H. H. Richardson (see Plate V), also a certain type of Victorian-Gothic
(see Plate LXIII) associated more or less with the name of Richard
Morris Hunt, neither of which could be expressed in wood, and therefore,
represented the more expensive fashions. The references to the
Romanesque revival which occur in Chapter I of this review will answer,
I hope, for that fashion in architecture, so I will proceed with some
desultory reflections upon the Victorian-Gothic style.
Mr. Hunt was probably the most remarkable
PLATE LXIII.
[Illustration: “BELLWOOD,” MADISON, N. J. EPOCH 1878.]
architect this country has produced. His professional training occupied
some twelve years of his life, which he spent mostly in universities
abroad. He told me this himself when I called upon him, now many years
since, for encouragement and advice. He sat me upon a high stool in his
private office, and related about twelve chapters of his memoirs, as
nearly as I can recollect, i. e., one chapter for each year of his
prodigious scholarship, all of which I have no doubt was intended for my
good, which I trust it has, in some measure, accomplished. Returning to
this country laden with scholastic honors, for twenty-five years this
brilliant _diplomé_ concerned himself principally with academic detail.
Rarely did he go beyond the integument of a structure with his
characteristic impress, apparently satisfied to decorate according to
the canons of the Ecole des Beaux Arts the architecture _sui generis_ of
America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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