The American Renaissance was a period of American architecture and the arts from 1876 to 1917, [1] characterized by renewed national self-confidence and a feeling that the United States was the heir to Greek democracy, Roman law, and Renaissance humanism. Local conditions and requirements of America, including the aforementioned nationalism, spurred this change of style, allowing it to slowly developed over time in various places around the United States. [2] The era spans the period between the Centennial Exposition (celebrating the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence) and the United States' entry into World War I.
The early building material for the structures of the American Renaissance was wood, the United States' great national building commodity of the time given its plentiful availability. Due to a lack of money for the fairly new country, stone, the material used by the Greeks and Romans, was out of reach. Columns were initially carved of wood for the earliest structures of this period. With an increase of national wealth, architects and builders were able to begin using white marble, a more durable material, for intricate carvings and details. [3]
Both materials had their benefits. Wood is more easily repaired and replaced given its lack of lengthy durability in addition to its charm, warmth, and personality, which is characteristic of the American style. Stone, especially white marble, has a shine and glow to it. It is also more durable and able to withstand harsh weather conditions.
Decorative elements, such as arches, domes, vaulted ceilings, and columns were commonplace during the American Renaissance. There was a strong desire for the revival of Classical forms, symmetrical designs, and elaborate decorative elements. A sense of national identity was created and explored through the use of local materials and motifs.
Structures of the American Renaissance were made using both building materials, with early ones more commonly being entirely done in wood and painted. [4] A great variety of buildings were made using this style, such as townhouses, cottages, state houses, libraries, capitol buildings, museums, banks, railway terminals, and more. [5]
During the period of the American Renaissance, the United States' preoccupation with national identity (or New Nationalism) was expressed by modernism and technology, as well as academic classicism. This classicism made way for a new form of creative and artistic rhetoric, which in turn helped establish the new aesthetic of the time. [6] It expressed its self-confidence in new technologies, such as the wire cables of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. It found its cultural outlets in Prairie School houses and in Beaux-Arts architecture and sculpture, in the "City Beautiful" movement, and in the creation of the American empire. [7] A goal of the "City Beautiful" movement, which coincides with the American Renaissance, was, "to shape American culture and society aesthetically, morally, and professionally". Through this goal, order, acculturation, and assimilation were meant to be brought to the American city, easing the transition for immigrants while also establishing a professional authority through architecture. [8] Americans felt that their civilization was uniquely the modern heir, and that it had come of age. Politically and economically, this era coincides with the Gilded Age and the New Imperialism.
The classical architecture of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois in 1893 was a demonstration that impressed Henry Adams, who wrote that people "would some day talk about Hunt and Richardson, La Farge and Saint-Gaudens, Burnham and McKim and Stanford White, when their politicians and millionaires were quite forgotten." [9] Praise for this exhibition included the unity and consistency of the symmetrical structures, which inspired many of Charles McKim's campus projects, a mall, and other buildings in the city center of Washington D.C. In 1909, the year of McKim's death, his architectural firm was the largest in the world, having produced nearly 900 buildings of Classical orders and finely proportioned masonry. [10]
In the dome of the reading room at the new Library of Congress, Edwin Blashfield's murals were on the given theme, The Evolution of Civilization.
The exhibition American Renaissance: 1876–1917 at the Brooklyn Museum, 1979, encouraged the revival of interest in this movement.
The above images, displaying the notable example buildings, all contain architectural elements of the American Renaissance.
The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America.
Beatrix Cadwalader Farrand was an American landscape gardener and landscape architect. Her career included commissions to design about 110 gardens for private residences, estates and country homes, public parks, botanic gardens, college campuses, and the White House. Only a few of her major works survive: Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden on Mount Desert, Maine, the restored Farm House Garden in Bar Harbor, the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden, and elements of the campuses of Princeton, Yale, and Occidental.
Néo-Grec was a Neoclassical Revival style of the mid-to-late 19th century that was popularized in architecture, the decorative arts, and in painting during France's Second Empire, the reign of Napoleon III (1852–1870). The Néo-Grec vogue took as its starting point the earlier expressions of the Neoclassical style inspired by 18th-century excavations at Pompeii, which resumed in earnest in 1848, and similar excavations at Herculaneum. The style mixed elements of the Graeco-Roman, Pompeian, Adam and Egyptian Revival styles into "a richly eclectic polychrome mélange." "The style enjoyed a vogue in the United States, and had a short-lived impact on interior design in England and elsewhere."
Beaux-Arts architecture was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorporated Renaissance and Baroque elements, and used modern materials, such as iron and glass, and later, steel. It was an important style and enormous influence in Europe and the Americas through the end of the 19th century, and into the 20th, particularly for institutional and public buildings.
The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture.
William Laurel Harris was an American muralist, educator, editor, and arts organizer.
Charles Adams Platt was an American architect, garden designer, and artist of the "American Renaissance" movement. His garden designs complemented his domestic architecture.
McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm based in New York City. The firm came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York.
The State Dining Room is the larger of two dining rooms on the State Floor of the Executive Residence of the White House, the home of the president of the United States in Washington, D.C. It is used for receptions, luncheons, larger formal dinners, and state dinners for visiting heads of state on state visits. The room seats 140 and measures approximately 48 by 36 feet.
The University of Pennsylvania Press, also known as Penn Press, is a university press affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Daniel Pabst was a German-born American cabinetmaker of the Victorian Era. He is credited with some of the most extraordinary custom interiors and hand-crafted furniture in the United States. Sometimes working in collaboration with architect Frank Furness (1839–1912), he made pieces in the Renaissance Revival, Neo-Grec, Modern Gothic, and Colonial Revival styles. Examples of his work are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Queen Anne style architecture was one of a number of popular Victorian architectural styles that emerged in the United States during the period from roughly 1880 to 1910. It is sometimes grouped as New World Queen Anne Revival architecture. Popular there during this time, it followed the Second Empire and Stick styles and preceded the Richardsonian Romanesque and Shingle styles. Sub-movements of Queen Anne include the Eastlake movement.
Charles Caryl Coleman was an American artist.
Territorial Revival architecture describes the style of architecture developed in the U.S. state of New Mexico in the 1930s. It derived from New Mexico vernacular Territorial Style, an original style from Santa Fe de Nuevo México following the founding of Albuquerque in 1706. Territorial Revival incorporated elements of traditional regional building techniques with higher style elements. The style was intended to recall the Territorial Style and was extensively employed for New Mexico state government buildings in Santa Fe.
The Nathaniel H. Burt House is a historic house located at 400 Fifth Avenue in Leavenworth, Kansas. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 27, 1987.
Kimbel & Cabus was a Victorian-era furniture and decorative arts firm based in New York City. The partnership was formed in 1862 between German-born cabinetmaker Anthony Kimbel and French-born cabinetmaker Joseph Cabus (1824–1894). The company was noted for its Modern Gothic and Anglo-Japanese style furniture, which it popularized at the 1876 Centennial Exposition.
Frederic Rhinelander King, was an American architect, and the co-founder with Marion Sims Wyeth of the architecture firm Wyeth and King.
In the New World, Queen Anne Revival was a historicist architectural style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was popular in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries. In Australia, it is also called Federation architecture.
Dianne Hauserman Pilgrim was an American art historian and museum professional.
Augusta de Wit was a Dutch writer, born in the Dutch East Indies and best known for writing about Java.