Georgian architecture
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Georgian architecture is the name given in English-speaking countries to the architectural styles current between about 1720 and 1840, named after the four British monarchs named George.
It succeeded the English Baroque of Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor. Among the first architects to promote the change in direction from baroque were Colen Campbell and the engravings in Vitruvius Britannicus, Lord Burlington and his protegé William Kent, Thomas Archer and the Venetian Giacomo Leoni, who passed his career in England.
The styles that resulted fall within several categories. In the mainstream of Georgian style were both Palladian architecture— and its whimsical alternatives, Gothic and Chinoiserie, which were the English-speaking world's equivalent of European Rococo. From the mid-1760s a range of Neoclassical modes were fashionable, associated with the British architects Robert Adam, James Gibbs, Sir William Chambers, James Wyatt, Henry Holland and Sir John Soane. Greek Revival was added to the design repertory, after about 1800. See also: Adam style, Georgian Dublin.
Georgian architecture is characterized by its proportion and balance; simple mathematical ratios were used to determine the height of a window in relation to its width or the shape of a room as a double cube. "Regular" was a term of approval, implying symmetry and adherence to classical rules: the lack of symmetry, where Georgian additions were added to earlier structures, was deeply felt as a flaw. Regularity of housefronts along a street was a desirable feature of Georgian town planning. Georgian designs usually lay within the Classical orders of architecture and employed a decorative vocabulary derived from ancient Rome or Greece.
Georgian style was equally suited to brick and stone, usually defined by reddish brick walls that contrasted with white used for window trimming and cornices. The entrances were often emphasized by a portico.
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[edit] Colonial Georgian architecture
Georgian Architecture was widely disseminated in the English colonies of the time. In the American colonies, colonial Georgian blended with the neo-Palladian style to become known more broadly as 'Federal' building styles. In the American colonies, Georgian buildings were also built of wood with clapboards; even columns were built of timber, framed up and turned on an oversized lathe. The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is an excellent example of Georgian architecture. In that sense, unlike the Baroque style that it replaced, a style which was generated almost solely in the context of palaces and churches, this style had wide currency in the upper and middle classes. Within the residential context, the best remaining example is the pristine Hammond-Harwood House (1774) in Annapolis, Maryland. This house was designed by colonial architect William Buckland and modeled on the Villa Pisani at Montagnana, Italy as depicted in Andrea Palladio's Four Books Of Architecture. The establishment of Georgian architecture was to a large degree aided by the fact that unlike earlier styles, which were disseminated among craftsmen through the direct experience of the apprenticeship system, Georgian architecture was also disseminated to builders through the new medium of inexpensive suites of engravings. From the mid-18th century, Georgian styles were assimilated into an architectural vernacular that became part and parcel of the training of every carpenter, mason and plasterer, from Edinburgh to Maryland.
[edit] Post-Georgian developments
After about 1840 Georgian conventions were slowly abandoned as a number of Revival styles, including Gothic revival, enlarged the design repertoire. In the United States this style declined in popularity after the revolution, due to its association with the colonial regime; but later in the early decades of the twentieth century when there was a growing nostalgia for its sense of order, the style was revived and came to be known as the Colonial Revival. In Canada the United Empire Loyalists embraced Georgian architecture as a sign of their fealty to Britain, and the Georgian style was dominant in that country for most of the first half of the 19th century. The Grange, for example, a manor built in Toronto, was built in 1817.
[edit] Notes
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 3rd ed. 1995.
- John Cornforth, Early Georgian Interiors, (Paul Mellon Centre) 2005.
- James Stevens Curl, Georgian Architecture.
- Christopher Hussey, Early Georgian Houses,, Mid-Georgian Houses,, Late Georgian House,. Reissued in paperback, Antique Collectors Club, 1986.
- Frank Jenkins, Architect and Patron 1961.
- Barrington Kaye, The Development of the Architectural Profession in Britain 1960.
- Sir John Summerson, Georgian London, (1945). Revised edition, edited by Howard Colvin, 2003.
- Sir John Summerson, Architecture in Britain (series: Pelican History of Art) Reissued in paperback 1970
