19TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE

The Architecture of the Victorian Age

Outline

Socio-Economic Background

Technological Advancements

Battles of Architecture in the Industrial Revolution

The Neo-Classical

The Neo Gothic

Other Styles

Applications of New Technology

The Next Step

An Age of Uncertainty

By the opening of the 19th C the confidence apparent in the architecture of the age of elegance in the preceding century had evaporated.

The agitation brought about by the French Revolution of 1789 had never fully subsided, and a different kind of society began to take place.

There was another revolution every bit as influential as the French, the Industrial Revolution which was cradled in Britain, from roughly 1750-1850 although it was not seen as a revolution but only new ways of making things.

A time of rapid change in UK and in Europe

The Industrial Revolution Began in England, (1750-1920)

Time of major changes in Agriculture Manufacturing Mining Transport Technology These had a profound effect on the

socio-economic and cultural conditions, starting in the United Kingdom, then subsequently spreading throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world.

It marked a major turning point in

human history, almost every aspect of daily life was eventually influenced in some way.

The Stockton and Darlington Railway

Inventions

It began with textiles.

Finance

Trading opportunities

A change in the way goods were produced from human labor to machine.

The three basics were present- coal (energy), iron and other metals, population of workers.

The Industrial Revolution

Development and growth of new socio- economic classes: working class, bourgeoisie, wealthy industrial class.

Population change

The urban population dramatically increased, towns and cities multiplied in number and size, a new urban society emerged. The demand for new buildings was greater that ever before.

Brought a flood of new building materials

Iron was mined efficiently.

The formula for concrete was rediscovered 1756 by John Smeaton.

To the fashionable architects the central problem was to discover a style appropriate to this time of change.

Factors for the Progress of the Industrial Revolution

The Invention of Machines

The invention of machines to do the work of hand tools

The use of steam, and later of other kinds of power, in place of the muscles of human beings and of animals

The Spinning Jenny invented by James Hargreaves

The 1698 Savery Engine – the world's first commercially useful steam engine built by Thomas Savery

The adoption of the factory system.

New Materials

After the Baroque slowly faded away, the 18th century architecture considered primarily of revivals of previous periods.

Building materials were made out of only a few manmade materials along with those available in nature: timber, stone, lime.

Mortar and concrete

Iron

Brick

Glass

Portland Cement – strong, durable, fire resistant type of cement developed in 1824.

But in the 1800’s, there was a great amount of production in Iron. These made architects and engineers design buildings made out of iron. There are 3 types of iron:

cast, wrought, and steel.

Characteristics, 19th C Architecture

Curtain walls were used

Steel skeletons were covered with masonry

Large skylights were popular

Lacked in imagination and style

Main focus was functionality

Glass Making

A new method of

producing glass, known as the cylinder process, was developed in Europe during the early 19th century. In 1832, this process was used by the Chance Brothers to create sheet glass. They became the leading producers of window and plate glass.

TheCrystal Palace held the Great Exhibition of 1851

Iron making

In the Iron

industry, coke was finally applied to all stages of iron smelting, replacing charcoal. This had been achieved much earlier for lead and copper as well as for producing pig iron in a blast furnace, but the second stage in the production of bar iron depended on the use of potting and stamping.

Nasmyth’s steam hammer of 1840 at work in 1871

The Architecture of the Industrial Age

Neo-Classical

Neo-Gothic

Renaissance

Baroque

Romantic

Chinese

Saracenic

But Neo-Classical and Neo-Gothic were the main contenders in the Battle of the Styles of the 19th C.

Architecture and the art turned into the past. Architects searched for their own style but they searched for it in the previous styles returning to the style of Bramante, Palladio and Michelangelo .

The Architects of the Victorian Period

The Neo-Classicists

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841)

Sir John Sloane (1753-1837)

Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1766-1820)

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

The Gothic Revival

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852)

Richard Upjohn (1802-78)

Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879)

The Neo-Classicists

The entire structure is raised on a high base and is dominated by an Ionic portico with receding planes to either side articulated by plain pilasters and precise, shallow mouldings that appear to have been stretched tightly over an internal skeleton.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Schauspielhaus, Berlin, 1818-21.

The leading exponent of Neo-Classicism in England at this time was Sir John Soane, an idiosyncratic architect whose work also has Romantic qualities.

John Soane (1753-1837), Bank of England, London

Latrobe presented both Gothic and Neo-Classical designs of this church to his client. The classical proposal was selected but did not include the towers.

Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Roman Catholic Cathedral, Baltimore, 1805-18.

For his own house Jefferson turned the familiar Palladian five-part organization backward in order to focus the complex on spectacular mountain views. This view from the front shows that Jefferson disguised the two-storey elevation to appear as only one story.

Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1770.

The William Brown Library and Museum (now the World Museum Liverpool), designed by Thomas Allom (1804-1872), UK

The Neo-Gothic

Gothic Revival (also called “Neo-Gothic”)

Neo-Gothic buildings have many of these features:

- Strong vertical lines and a sense of great height

- Pointed windows with decorative tracery

- Gargoyles and other carvings

- Pinnacles

• The first Gothic Revival homes

- Stone and Bricks

- American Version: Lumber and Factory Made Trims

The Trinity Church in New York, USA

Charles Barry and A.W.N. Pugin, Houses of Parliament, London, 1836-51.

The government had decided that the new building should be in the style thought to represent England at its best – Elizabethan or Jacobean, which occured during Late Gothic.

House of Parliament, London, 1836-1867

Richard Upjohn (1802-78), Trinity Church, New York City, 1839-46.

Upjohn’s first major commission was for Trinity Church in New York City, which was designed for a growing and wealthy congregation. The Trinity Church has been dwarfed by skyscrapers, which once included the now destroyed World Trade Center. However, in 1846 the church was a prominent landmark.

French architect and theorist

Famous for interpretive “restorations” of

medieval buildings Gothic Revival Architect

Notre Dame de Paris

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc

Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

The leading proponent of the Gothic Revival in France was Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), an architect who shared Pugin’s enthusiasm for medieval works.

He saw the system of the rib vault, pointed arch, and flying buttress as analogous to 19th C iron framing, and he aspired to a modern architecture based on engineering accomplishments that would have the integrity of form and detail found in medieval works.

Tower Bridge, London Horace Jones and John Wolfe Barry, 1840

All Saints Sir Charles Barry Stand, Manchester, 1860

Neo-Renaissance, Italian Renaissance, French Renaissance, Neo-Romanesque offered the architect and client other choices.

A Merry Mix of Styles

Richard Morris Hunt, Biltmore, Asheville, North Carolina, 1890-95.

The first American to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was Richard Morris Hunt (1827-95) who entered the school in 1846. Newly rich industrial magnates wanted houses that imitated the ancestral mansions of European nobility, and of all American architects Hunt was best able to provide the designs desired.

Richard Morris Hunt, The Breakers, Newport, Rhode Island, 1892-95.

Richard Morris Hunt was the first American to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The knowledge he gained there of academic planning and monumental design made him the architect of choice among the late 19th C American elite.

Interiors, The Breakers, Newport, Rhode Island, 1892-95.

The firm of McKim, Mead and White established the model for the large-scale American architectural practice. They based this residential structure on Roman palazzi such as the Palazzo Farnese.

McKim, Mead and White, Villard Houses New York City, 1882-85.

The New West End Synagogue by George Audsley (1838-1925) in St Petersburgh Place, London was in the Neo-Romanesque.

Westminster Cathedral

by John Francis Bentley London, Neo-Romanesque.

Travelers’ Club 1829-1832

Italian Renaissance, Sir Charles Barry

London Reform Club 1837- 1841

Semper Oper, Dresden, Germany 1838-1841

Italian Renaissance Gottfried Semper

Art Gallery of the Zwinger 1847-1854

Gottfried Semper

Neo-Renaissance

Grand Opera, Paris, 1860-1874

Jean Louis Charles Garnier

Externally as well as internally the stylistic elements derive from the Italian Cinquecento and from the France of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, from Renaissance and from Baroque.

Polychromy is widely used to heighten the impact yet further. The façade is massive and heavily decorated and gilded, and really monumental.

Paris Opera House

Grand Opera, Paris, 1860-1874

The great stair hall is perhaps Garnier’s greatest triumph. There is a tension in every form. The flights of the stairs fly easily and with perfect fluency through the stair hall. With its related corridors and foyers

the stair provides the best of all possible ceremonial approaches to the auditorium.

Palais de Justice (Law Courts), Details

Brussels, 1866-1883 Joseph Poelaert

Palais de Justice (Law Courts), Brussels, 1866-1883 Joseph Poelaert

Palais de Justice (Law Courts), Interiors

Brussels, 1866-1883

Neo-Renaissance

Schwerin Castle, Hungary, 1851 Friedrich

August Stüler (1800-1865)

Neo-Renaissance

National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm, 1846-1866

Friedrich August Stüler

National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm, 1846-1866

Interiors Friedrich August Stüler

Romanesque Crane Library, Quincy, Massachusetts , 1880 Henry Hobson Richardson

Romanesque Crane Library, Quincy, Massachusetts , 1880

Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-86)

St. Pancras Parish Church, London, 1819-21 Greek Revival

World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, 1893

The White City

Hunt’s Administration Building stands at the head of the Court of Honor and its lagoon. The “White City” captivated the American public. Using widespread exterior electric lighting for the first time, it started a movement that produced proposals for new civic cores in cities nationwide.

Richard Morris Hunt, Administration Building, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, 1893.

The White City, Chicago’s World Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus arrival in the New World in 1492

The City Beautiful Movement was a reform movement in North American architecture and urban planning that flourished in the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of using beautification and monumental grandeur in cities.

Advocates of the movement believed that such beautification could thus promote a harmonious social order that would increase the quality of life.

Daniel Burnham, Architect and Urban Planner

City planning projects :

Cleveland

San Francisco

Washington DC

Manila

Baguio

Designed the Chicago’s World Fair.

Proponent of the ‘City Beautiful’ movement.

Burnham only stayed for six weeks in the Philippines. He later hired the services of William Parsons, a New York architect who stayed in the country for eight years.

IRON AND STEEL STRUCTURES of the 19th CENTURY

Architectural Applications of Iron and Steel Construction

Iron and steel were not admired for their architectural qualities in the 19th C: prevailing Neo-Classical and Romantic attitudes looked to past ages buildings had always been of load-bearing masonry construction.

Everything that architects and their clients admired and felt comfortable with could be constructed by using traditional materials and methods.

Architects were slow to exploit the possibilities of iron and steel, which were first used in industrial utilitarian buildings, such as textile mills, warehouses, and greenhouses.

Progress in iron fabrication

18th C industrial production of cast and wrought iron so increased its availability that iron replaced wood in the frame of any building where heavy loads or the danger of fire was of concern.

Cast iron was favoured for columns, while the superior tensile qualities of wrought iron made it the recommended material for beams.

In the 19th C iron began to be used instead of wood in the fabrication of truss bridges built for roads and railroads that crossed rivers or valleys.

Linear two-dimensional fragile-looking material

Elegant linearity is its most rational form

Solid, Block-like, Closed type Building

Open, Linear, Articulated frame

Greenhouses Covered Markets

Halls Exhibition Pavilions

Passages Utility Buildings

Iron

Decimus Burton and Richard Turner Palm House, Kew Gardens, London, 1845-47.

Iron was most elegantly employed in landscape gardening. Victorian England, prosperous from the wealth of its empire, had a fascination with the tropical plants that were brought back from India, Africa, and the Far East.

Wrought Iron

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel

PALM HOUSE, Royal Botanical Garden, Kew, London, 1845-1848

Applications of Iron Steel

PALM HOUSE, Royal Botanical Garden, Kew, London, 1845-1848

Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace, 1851.

Joseph Paxton designed a building with prefabricated parts that could be mass-produced and erected rapidly. It stood in stark contrast to traditional, massive stone construction.

Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace, 1851.

Once the exhibition opened, the building was visited by about one-quarter of the population of England and was universally acclaimed for its vast, airy interior space. Journalists dubbed it the Crystal Palace, a name it had retained.

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel CRYSTAL PALACE – Hyde Park, London, 1850-1851

Joseph Paxton

Henri Labrouste (1801-1875) made a fine architectural use of cast iron in the Bibliotheque Ste.-Genevieve in Paris. On the exterior the building presents a correct Neo-Classical facade recalling Italian Renaissance palace and church designs; but on the interior at the 2nd floor level one finds for that time an unprecedentedly great reading room which extends the width and length of the building, covered by light semicircular cast iron arches.

Henri Labrouste, Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve, Paris, 1842-50.

Henri Labrouste, Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve, Paris, 1842-50

Henri Labrouste, Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve, Paris, 1842-50

THE CRYSTAL PALACE

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel Bibliotheque Nacionale 1857-1867

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel Bibliotheque Nacionale 1857-1867

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel

Gustave Eiffel 1823-1932

320 metres (1,050 ft) tall

First real example

of frame building technique

Remains the

largest iron construction in the world

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel EIFFEL TOWER, PARIS, 1884-1887

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel EIFFEL TOWER, PARIS, 1884-1887

Stands 151-ft (46m) One of the earliest examples of curtain

wall construction in which the exterior of the structure is not load bearing, but is instead supported by an interior framework.

He included two interior spiral staircases, to make it easier for visitors to reach the observation point in the crown.

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel STATUE OF LIBERTY

Gustave Eiffel, Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1889.

The most famous French designer using iron in the second half of the 19th C was Gustav Eiffel (1832-1923). This engineer gained fame for his graceful bridge designs and then used his experience with iron construction to build the world’s tallest tower, the 1010 ft high Eiffel Tower, erected for the Paris International Exposition of 1889. Not until the completion of the Chrysler Building in New York was Eiffel’s tower exceeded in height, and it remains the largest iron construction in the world, for steel was rapidly becoming the preferred material for metal framing.

Gustave Eiffel, Auguste Bartholdi and Richard Morris Hunt, Statue of Liberty, New York City, 1883-86.

In New York harbor stands another of Eiffel’s engineering projects, the internal skeleton for the 151 ft Statue of Liberty (1883-86). Miss Liberty’s copper skin is supported by iron straps attached to a steel framework that Eiffel designed to withstand the considerable wind loads of the harbour. At the time of its construction, the Statue of Liberty had the most advanced diagonally braced frame to be found in any structure in the U.S.

420mL & 115m W

Destroyed in 1910

19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel GALERIE DES MACHINES, 1887-1889

Charles Dutert 1845-1906

In seeking to expand the market for iron and improve the desirable qualities of the material, 19th c ironmongers experimented with new methods for manufacturing steel, which is an alloy of low-carbon iron and trace amounts of other metals. The Brooklyn Bridge used steel cables.

J.A. And W.A. Roebling, Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, 1869-83.

The Early Skyscrapers

William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907), the designer of the Home Insurance Building (1884-85), is generally credited with the early development of the skyscraper although the Home Life Insurance Building is not entirely metal-framed as the first floor contains sections of masonry bearing wall.

The Early Skyscrapers

Daniel Burnham and John Welborn Root, Monadnock Building, Chicago, 1890-91

Daniel Burnham and John Welborn Root, Reliance Building, Chicago, 1894-95.

The Arts and Crafts Movement

Two issues – social values and the artistic quality of manufactured products – were at the heart of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which flourished from about 1850-1900 in Britain and in the U.S. Originating in Victorian England,its ideas spread to Europe. John Ruskin (1819-1900), a prolific critic of art and society, may be regarded as the originator of the Arts and Crafts ideals. In Ruskin’s view, the Industrial Revolution was a grievous error exerting a corrupting influence on society.

Right: Philip Webb, Red House, Bexleyheath, Kent, 1859-60.

FIN