European medieval architecture in North America
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Medieval architecture in North America is an anachronism. The age of exploration and European discovery of America marks the difference between the Middle Ages and the modern world.
Some structures in North America can however be classified as medival, either by style of construction, by age or origin. In some rare cases these structures are seen as evidence on pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. Independent of whether one believes in the disputed pseudoscience, these buildings are of interest to American scholars of medieval architecture.
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[edit] Pre-Columbian buildings
- L'Anse aux Meadows, a Viking settlement in Newfoundland. Authentic foundations (not visible because they were reburied) with modern reconstructions.
- Hvalsey Church, a Viking church in Greenland
[edit] Alleged
- Newport Tower (Rhode Island), a romanesque-style tower of disputed origin.
[edit] Modern romanesque and gothic buildings
This lists contains buildings built in true romanesque and gothic styles using medieval construction methods. It does not include 19th century and 20th century buildings of gothic revival or romanesque revival styles.
- Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York City
- Washington National Cathedral (minimal steel and concrete used)
[edit] Transported buildings
Medieval building that have been transported to North America in modern times.
- The Cloisters museum, New York City, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art housed in a complex integrating elements from several different medieval structures
- St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church in Florida
- Elements of a twelfth-century cloister from Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines, a romanesque portal, and a fifteenth-century chapel in the Philadelphia Museum of Art
- Part of a romanesque cloister in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio
- Chapelle de St Martin de Sayssuel, (St. Joan of Arc Chapel) Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Agecroft Hall, Richmond, Virginia
- Chapterhouse of the Abbey of Santa Maria de Ovila, under reconstruction in Vina, California
- A 1524 sidechapel from France in the Detroit Institute of Arts
Other later period buildings were also transported like the Cotswold Cottage, built in the early 1600s in Chedworth, Gloucestershire, England, now in The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, London, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1677 is now in Fulton, Missouri. It includes a spiral staircase which probably dates to the 15th century.
