Gingerbread is an architectural style that consists of elaborately detailed embellishment known as gingerbread trim. [1] It is more specifically used to describe the detailed decorative work of American designers in the late 1860s and 1870s, [2] which was associated mostly to the Carpenter Gothic style. [3] It was loosely based on the Picturesque period of English architecture in the 1830s. [2]
During the 1830s and 1840s, American home builders started interpreting the European Gothic Revival architecture, which had elaborate masonry details, in wood to decorate American timber frame homes. This was also known as Carpenter Gothic. The early designs started with simple stickwork such as vertical sawtooth siding. By the middle of the 19th century, with the invention of the steam-powered scroll saw, the mass production of thin boards that were cut into a variety of ornamental parts had helped builders to transform simple cottages into unique houses. At the time, standard sized gingerbread elements were manufactured at low cost in the American East Coast. [1] [4]
Not everyone approved of this architectural style. Andrew Jackson Downing, a prominent advocate of the Gothic Revival criticized this style in his Architecture of Country Houses in 1852. He classified homes in the United States into three types: villas for the wealthy, cottages for working people and farmhouses for farmers. He argued that the lower-cost cottages which were small in size and had simplistic style should not be ornamented with the elaborate embellishment of a villa. He further argued that the vergeboard of the Rural Gothic gable should have been carefully carved in thick and solid plank to appreciate its beauty instead of an ornamental part which was "sawn out of thin board, so as to have a frippery and 'gingerbread' look which degrades, rather than elevates, the beauty of the cottage." [5]
The style lived on and flourished in the residential areas of Chicago in the 1860s. That didn't last very long as the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 destroyed many of those buildings. [6] Some attributed a cause of the fire to be worsened due to the cheap construction materials and the gingerbread decorations in hoping other cities would heed the warning. [7] Still, the style continued to spread to the West. By the late 1870s, San Francisco had many gingerbread houses at a similar level of Chicago five or ten years earlier. [8]
In Ontario, Canada, a house style in the area called Ontario Cottage had been evolving since the 1830s. In the third quarter of the 19th century, the builders incorporated gingerbread elements to large houses. A prominent character was to use ornamental bargeboard and finials to decorate the gables. [9] As railways were expanded into cities such as Stratford, more Ontario cottages and houses were built. They were typically one and a half story to one and three-quarter story brick homes with gingerbread wood trim on gables and the front facade. This type of house became prominent from the 1870s to the 1890s. [10]
In 1878, a fire in Cape May, New Jersey, destroyed 30 blocks of properties of the seaside town. The town rebuilt quickly. Many were rebuilt with much gingerbread trim and many gables and turrets. This resulted in a high concentration of late 19th century buildings in the town. [11] [12] According to the National Register of Historic Places, "Cape May has one of the largest collections of late 19th century frame buildings left in the United States. It contains over 600 summer houses, old hotels, and commercial structures that give it a homogeneous architectural character, a kind of textbook of vernacular American building." [13]
In the 1880s, many houses in California adopted the Eastlake style, which was named after Charles Eastlake a British architect and furniture designer. Eastlake published a book that contained illustrations of interior designs of incised wood panels and knobs to complement his furniture designs. American home builders expanded that to home exteriors by replacing flat-cut gingerbread ornamental elements with lathe-turned spindlework for balusters and wall surface decoration. However, Eastlake criticized the American adaptation as "extravagant and bizarre". The style was later combined with Italianate and Second Empire elements to create the "San Francisco Style". [14]
Residential buildings of wealthy individuals in Haiti during the Gingerbread era, between the 1880s and the 1920s, had a unique architecture that combined the local traditions and adaptation of foreign influences. The adaptation was influenced by many factors including manuals of styles that were circulated from Europe and North America, Haitian architects who studied abroad, and French artisans who set up woodworking shops to train Haitian artisans. [15] Those Gingerbread houses were highly decorative with fretworks, latticeworks with patterns that are unique to Haiti. The structures of this style typically have large windows and doors, tall ceilings, large attics, and deep porches. [16] [17]
The movement of the style began in 1881 with the second Haitian National Palace during the presidency of Lysius Salomon. This was followed by the construction of a private villa, now known as Hotel Oloffson, commissioned by President Tirésias Simon Sam's son in 1887. In 1895, three young Haitians—Georges Baussan, Léon Mathon, and Joseph-Eugène Maximilien—traveled to Paris to study architecture, were inspired to build upon the nascent architectural movement, and modified the style to the climate in Haiti by designing homes with vibrant patterns and flamboyant colors of French resort architecture. Many large houses in upscale neighborhoods of Pacot, Turgeau, and Bois-Verna in Port-au-Prince were built in this style. A notable example of those is Villa Miramar (also known as Villa Cordasco) in Pacot, built in 1914. The style then spread to the rest of the country including Saint-Marc, Jérémie, Les Cayes, Petit-Goâve, and Léogâne until 1925. [17] [18]
After 1925, new construction materials became available including concrete, and a new regulation that mandated masonry, reinforced concrete, or iron structures for fire prevention. That caused the architectural styles in Haiti to shift away from the gingerbread style. [19] [17] However, after 1946, the middle class families in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods incorporated parts of the styles into their modest sized houses. [18]
Gingerbread was coined by American tourists in the 1950s, who appreciated the style which bore similarity to that of the Victorian-era buildings with gingerbread trim in the United States. [17] [20]
Prior to 2010, the style had bad connotations due to its associations with colonialism and elitism. After the 2010 earthquake, people in Haiti considered rebuilding their homes in gingerbread style due to its resilience to earthquakes. It shifted the tone for the style to be more positive in local communities. [19]
The gingerbread house by design combines architectural knowledge that stemmed abroad, into an understanding of the Caribbean climate and its living conditions. They were constructed with tall doors, high ceilings, with steep turret roofs to redirect hot air above its inhabitable rooms, along with a cross-breeze of louvered shutter windows on all sides instead of glass to offset the most scorching of days, flexible timber frames with the innate ability to weather some of the toughest storms and tremors, and built with wrap-around verandas. [21] [22] The houses are usually constructed of wood, masonry, or stone and clay. [17] [23]
This specific architectural heritage in Haiti is now threatened as the natural aging of the wood, the weather, the high cost of restoration and repairs are all detrimental to the survival of this style. The style was listed on the 2010 World Monuments Watch. [17] The listing was just before the 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti. Surprisingly, only five percent of the estimated 200 gingerbread houses were partially or fully collapsed, in contrast to about 300,000 collapsed buildings which were 40% of all other structures. This left U.S. conservation experts to believe that this architecture can be a model for seismic-resistant structures for the future. [25] [22] [21] The gingerbread neighborhood of Haiti was listed as one of twenty-five sites on the 2020 World Monuments Watch. [26]
During the European colonisation of Southeast Asia in the 19th century, wood was in high demand. The British timber industry started logging in India for teak, a tropical hardwood native to south and southeast Asia. The teak logging industry then expanded from India to Burma following British rule in Burma. Although Thailand was not a colony, Britain still wanted to expand its teak logging to Thailand. In 1883, Britain won logging a concession agreement with a local ruler in the northern provinces, making Phrae the center of British teak logging in Thailand. [27] The British companies and rulers in northern Thailand built their teak gingerbread houses based on the styles from Britain. [27] The Western architectural style with gingerbread trim was blended with Asian architectural elements such as perforated wood panels to create a style known locally as Lanna Colonial. [28]
During that period, American style gingerbread houses with decorative wooden fretwork became popular. The style caught on in some British colonies including Singapore and Burma, and then spread to Thailand. Thais of high social standing in the era of King Rama V built teak gingerbread houses to showcase the craftsmanship. [29]
Eventually, the popularity of gingerbread houses in Thailand faded away due to high construction and maintenance costs. [29] Today, the remaining gingerbread houses in Thailand can be seen in various locations in Bangkok, Nakhon Pathom, Phrae, Lampang and Chanthaburi. [30]
Gingerbread houses in the northern provinces of Thailand combined the Lan Na arts and crafts and Victorian-era architecture. Additionally, commercial buildings owned by Chinese settlers and Burmese logging workers incorporated elaborate gingerbread decoration as part of the unique half-wood half-concrete structure called Saranai (or Salanai). These buildings are terraced houses with folding front doors on the first floor that can be fully opened to use as a storefront. The eaves, air passages above the doors, and ornate balustrades are decorated with intricately carved wood panels in different styles including Burmese style. These commercial buildings can be seen in Chiang Mai and Lampang. [31]
There were no specific patterns on the gingerbread trim used in the houses in Bangkok and the northern provinces. The principal design elements of Victorian Gothic such as quatrefoil, cross, and flame were used as an inspiration and several gingerbread patterns were developed locally. Popular patterns included, tulips, vines, geometric shapes, mosquito larvae, fruits and vegetables. The fretworks were made by using both perforated and carved woods. Most artisans were local and Chinese that made the fretwork locally, but some of the gingerbread trim was made in Bangkok and shipped to construction sites. [30] [32]
A unique character of gingerbread houses in Thailand, to adapt to warmer climate, was the use of gingerbread-style fretwork to create air passages and install them near the floor or under the roof to allow air to flow throughout the house. [30]
Many of the gingerbread houses that are owned by the Thai government or temples are preserved in good condition. However, many private homes are at risk of destruction by the elements due to high costs of maintenance of intricate fretwork. Another approach to preservation is to repurpose the buildings. Some private homes have been preserved and given a new life as museums. [30] [29] A deserted gingerbread house, a former private residence in Bangkok, was restored and turned into a cafe. [33]
Many teak gingerbread houses in the northern provinces, especially in Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, and Phayao, have been destroyed throughout the years as the owners demolished them to sell the wood due to high demand of second-hand teak wood since 1989. To combat this issue, the Phrae Architectural Heritage Club has engaged the communities in Phrae to preserve their gingerbread houses and turned them into a major tourist attraction for Phrae. [27]
The Eastlake movement was a nineteenth-century architectural and household design reform movement started by British architect and writer Charles Eastlake (1836–1906). The movement is generally considered part of the late Victorian period in terms of broad antique furniture designations. In architecture the Eastlake style or Eastlake architecture is part of the Queen Anne style of Victorian architecture.
Uttaradit is one of Thailand's seventy-six provinces (changwat). It lies in upper northern Thailand. Neighboring provinces are Phitsanulok, Sukhothai, Phrae and Nan. To the east it borders Xaignabouli of Laos. Uttaradit is 488 km north of Bangkok, and 238 km southeast of Chiang Mai.
Victorian architecture is a series of architectural revival styles in the mid-to-late 19th century. Victorian refers to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), called the Victorian era, during which period the styles known as Victorian were used in construction. However, many elements of what is typically termed "Victorian" architecture did not become popular until later in Victoria's reign, roughly from 1850 and later. The styles often included interpretations and eclectic revivals of historic styles (see Historicism). The name represents the British and French custom of naming architectural styles for a reigning monarch. Within this naming and classification scheme, it followed Georgian architecture and later Regency architecture and was succeeded by Edwardian architecture.
Fretwork is an interlaced decorative design that is either carved in low relief on a solid background, or cut out with a fretsaw, coping saw, jigsaw or scroll saw. Most fretwork patterns are geometric in design. The materials most commonly used are wood and metal. Fretwork is used to adorn furniture and musical instruments. The term is also used for tracery on glazed windows and doors. Fretwork is also used to adorn/decorate architecture, where specific elements of decor are named according to their use such as eave bracket, gable fretwork or baluster fretwork, which may be of metal, especially cast iron or aluminum. Installing elaborate wooden fretworks on residential buildings, known as gingerbread trims, became popular in North America in the late 19th century.
Lampang, also called Nakhon Lampang to differentiate from Lampang province, is the third largest city in northern Thailand and capital of Lampang province and the Mueang Lampang district. Traditional names for Lampang include Wiang Lakon and Khelang Nakhon. The city is a trading and transportation center. Lampang lies 601 km (373 mi) north of Bangkok and 101 km (63 mi) southeast of Chiang Mai.
The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture with picturesque aesthetics. The resulting style of architecture was essentially of its own time. "The backward look transforms its object," Siegfried Giedion wrote of historicist architectural styles; "every spectator at every period—at every moment, indeed—inevitably transforms the past according to his own nature."
Phrae is a town and capital of Phrae Province and Mueang Phrae district. It is located in Northern Thailand on the east bank of the Yom river, 555 km north of Bangkok by road.
In Great Britain and former British colonies, a Victorian house generally means any house built during the reign of Queen Victoria. During the Industrial Revolution, successive housing booms resulted in the building of many millions of Victorian houses which are now a defining feature of most British towns and cities.
The Vimanmek Mansion is a former royal villa in Bangkok, Thailand. It is in the Dusit Palace complex in Dusit District. As of 2019 it has been dismantled to allow for foundation repairs and will be rebuilt upon its completion.
Carpenter Gothic, also sometimes called Carpenter's Gothic or Rural Gothic, is a North American architectural style-designation for an application of Gothic Revival architectural detailing and picturesque massing applied to wooden structures built by house-carpenters. The abundance of North American timber and the carpenter-built vernacular architectures based upon it made a picturesque improvisation upon Gothic a natural evolution. Carpenter Gothic improvises upon features that were carved in stone in authentic Gothic architecture, whether original or in more scholarly revival styles; however, in the absence of the restraining influence of genuine Gothic structures, the style was freed to improvise and emphasize charm and quaintness rather than fidelity to received models. The genre received its impetus from the publication by Alexander Jackson Davis of Rural Residences and from detailed plans and elevations in publications by Andrew Jackson Downing.
Australian residential architectural styles have evolved significantly over time, from the early days of structures made from relatively cheap and imported corrugated iron to more sophisticated styles borrowed from other countries, such as the California bungalow from the United States, the Georgian style from Europe and Northern America, and the Victorian style from the United Kingdom. A common feature of the Australian home is the use of fencing in front gardens, also common in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall or the Thai Handicraft Museum is a Throne Hall located within Dusit Palace to use as a throne hall and banquet facilities for Dusit Palace. Its construction started in 1903 and completed in 1904 in the reign of King Chulalongkorn. Architectural design by Mario Tamagno. Currently it use for a museum about Thai Handicraft in Bangkok, Thailand.
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.
The National Palace was the official residence of the president of Haiti, located in the capital Port-au-Prince, facing Place L'Ouverture near the Champs de Mars. It was severely damaged during the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake. The ruins of the building were demolished in 2012 under the Martelly administration, and plans to rebuild the palace were announced by then-president Jovenel Moïse in 2017, but it is unclear if or when reconstruction will begin.
The Bangkok Thailand Temple is a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Bangkok, Thailand.
The Port-au-Prince Haiti Temple is a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétionville, Haiti. It is located adjacent to an existing meetinghouse at the intersection of Route de Frères and Impasse Saint-Marc.
Bois Verna is a neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It has one of the largest concentration of the historic Haitian gingerbread style houses present.
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.
The Heimatstil is an architectural style of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth referring to the historicist tendencies which one encounters in the German-speaking countries, including Switzerland, but also in Victorian England and even in the north and eastern parts of France, as well as Belgium and Flanders. The Heimatstil is characterized by the use of wood on the façade and sculpted beams, connected by protruding or rusticated stone, recalling the illustrations from literature and folklore, especially Germanic ones, from the time period.
The Embassy of France in Bangkok is the chief diplomatic mission of France in Thailand, and one of the oldest in the country. It was established as a consulate in its current location on the Chao Phraya River off Charoen Krung Road in Bangkok's Bang Rak District in 1857, following the signing of the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce which re-established diplomatic relations between the two countries the previous year. The mission was elevated to a legation in 1892 and an embassy in 1949, and supports the ambassador in promoting political, economic and cultural ties between the two countries.
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