Architecture of the United States
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Indigenous
The oldest structures on the territory that is now known as the United States are Pueblo villages of New Mexico. The Tiwa speaking people have inhabited Taos Pueblo continuously for over 1000 years. The related Chacoan civilization built extensive public architecture in northwestern New Mexico from CE 700 - 1250 until drought forced them to relocate. Another related culture, now best known as the Anasazi, created distinctive cliff dwellings in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona from the twelfth through to the fourteenth century.
Images of local Algonquonian villages Pomeiooc and Secoton in what later became coastal North Carolina survive from the late sixteenth century. Artist and cartographer [John White] stayed at the short-lived Roanoake colony for 13 months and recorded over 70 watercolour images of indigenous people, plants, and animals.
-->Hawaii's late entry to the United States gives it a substantial history of precolonial architecture. Late nineteenth century Hawaiian architecture shows European influence. Earlier structures reflect Polynesian heritage.
Colonial Architecture (16th Century - 18th Century)
When the Europeans settled in North America, they brought with them their architectural traditions and their construction techniques. The colonial architecture is evidently subject to western influences. Construction was dependent upon the available resources : wood and brick are the common elements of English buildings in New-England. It is also related to the logistics of colonialization which leads to a political appropriation of space by the mother country (governor's palace, forts). The mark of European domination is also economical (customs, plantations, warehouses) and religious (churches, Protestant churches, Franciscan and Jesuit missions).
Spanish influence in the south and southwest
Spanish exploration of the American southwest began in the 1540s. The conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado crossed this dry region in search of the Pueblo Indians' mythical cities of gold. The Pueblo people built houses of adobe, a sun-dried clay brick, held together with exposed wooden beams. Their cubic form and dense arrangement gave villages a singular aspect which would be emulated by the Americans (pueblo style). One can imagine the disappointment of the conquistador in the face of these modest, unadorned structures, but under their roofs the temperature remained constant and cool. The Spanish finally conquered these villages and made Santa Fe the administrative capital of the region in 1609. The governors' palace was built between 1610 and 1614, mixing Indian and Spanish influences, with adobe walls and wrought iron fences. The building is long and has a patio. The San Miguel chapel of Santa Fe, dating from 1610, used the adobe technique, which gave this religious edifice a striking look of majesty and austerity.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Spanish founded a series of forts (presidios) from present-day Los Angeles to present-day San Francisco. From 1769 to 1823, they created a network of missions in the southwest. The missions had a significant influence on later regional architecture. The most celebrated of these settlements is that of Mission Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. The mission at the Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico has an adobe church with a rectangular nave, exterior buttresses, and two symmetric, unadorned towers. The Mission San Xavier del Bac in Arizona is a good example of the Churrigueresque style in vogue in the rest of Latin America. The facade is framed by two massive towers and the portal is flanked by estipites, finely worked columns that serve only as ornamentation.
Spanish construction style was also applied in Florida intermittently from 1559 to 1821. Here, the conch style had a certain success at Pensacola, for example, adorning houses with balconies of wrought iron; the same tendency appears in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Fires in 1788 and 1794 destroyed the original Spanish structures in New Orleans. Many of the city's [present buildings] date to late 18th-century rebuilding efforts.
The earliest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States is St. Augustine, Florida founded in 1565. The Castillo de San Marcos fort 1672-1695 is its oldest surviving structure. It remains one of the rare architectural vestiges of the 17th century in the United States together with the Spanish fort at Pensacola.
English influence on the east coast
The colonial architecture of the Thirteen Colonies is marked by the English style, but climatic and religious differences produced some American elements. In New England, at the house of Pastor Capen in Topsfield (Massachusetts, 1683), the central position of the fireplace is reflective of the heating needs of the winter. It is covered with clapboard and uses wood for the frame, two characteristics typically American. Puritanism imposed simple and sober houses of worship, free of all showy ornaments. Meeting Houses were used as temples but also social clubs. In the Old Ship Meeting House in Hingham (Massachusetts, 1681), the pulpit is placed at the centre and the framework is left visible and bare on purpose.
The Georgian style appeared during the 18th Century and Palladian architecture took hold of Williamsburg, Virginia. The Governor's palace, built in 1706-1720, has a vast gabled entrance at the front, which is adorned by a small lantern hanging from the bannister. It respects the principle of symmetry and uses the materials that are found in New England: red brick, white painted wood, and blue slate used for the roof with a double slant. This style is used to build the houses of plantation workers and the rich merchants living on the Atlantic coast (see below "Aristocratic Rural Houses").
In religious architecture, the common design features were brick, stone-like stucco, and a single spire that tops the entrance. They can be seen in Saint Michael's Church in Charleston (1761) or Saint Paul's Chapel of Trinity in New York (1766). The architects of this period were strongly influenced by canons of Old World architecture. Peter Harrison (1716-1755) brought out his European techniques which he applied in the state of Rhode Island. Between 1748 and 1761, he constructed the Redwood library and the Newport market. Boston and Salem were the two main cities where the English style took hold, but in a more uncluttered style, more adapted to the American way of life. The Architect Charles Bulfinch fitted the Massachusetts State House in 1795-1798 with an original gilded dome. He worked on the construction of several houses in the Beacon Hill quarter and Louisburg Square in his home city of Boston.
Excavations at the first permanent English speaking settlement, Jamestown, Virginia (founded 1607) have unearthed part of the triangular James Fort and numerous artifacts from the early 17th century. Nearby Williamsburg was Virginia's colonial capital and is now a tourist attraction as a well preserved eighteenth century town.
The oldest remaining building of Plymouth, Massachusetts is the [Harlow House] built 1677 and now a museum. The Balch House (1636) in Beverly, Massachusetts is the oldest remaining wood frame house in North America. Several notable colonial era buildings remain in Boston [link]. Boston's Old North Church, built 1723 in the style of Sir Christopher Wren, became an influential model for later United States church design.
Public Architecture of the Young Nation
In 1776, the members of congress declared the independance of the Thirteen Colonies. The Treaty of Paris (1783) recognized the existence of the new republican country, the United States of America. Even though it was a break with the United Kingdom on the political stage, English influences continue to mark the buildings constructed in this part of the world. Public, philanthropic and commercial controls grew in parallel with the growing demographics and territorial extension. The buildings of these new federal and judicial institutions adopted the classic vocabulary (columns, domes and pediment), in reference to ancient Rome and Greece. Architectural publications multiplied: in 1797, Benjamin Asher published "The Country Builder's Assistant". Americans looked to affirm their independance in all domains: politics, economics but also culture, with the foundation of universities and museums. It's at the end of the 19th century that this independance and dynamism expressed itself to the fullest.
Thomas Jefferson was a skilled amateur architect who designed the original buildings at the University of Virginia and his estate Monticello. Work commenced in 1768 and modifications continued until 1809. This North American variation on Palladian architecture borrowed from British and Irish models and revived the portico. This interest in Roman elements appealed in a political climate that looked to the ancient Roman republic as a model.
The Federal style was popular along the Atlantic coast from 1780 to 1830. Characteristics of the federal style include neoclassical elements, bright interiors with large windows and white walls and ceilings, and a decorative yet restrained appearance that emphasized rational elements. Other significant federal style architects include Asher Benjamin, Charles Bulfinch, Samuel McIntire, Alexander Parris, and William Thornton.
Domestic Architecture
Aristocratic Rural Houses
They developped on the east coast where the rich proprietors and planters had sumptous and comfortable residences constructed from around the 17th century, who sought to imitate the English residences.
17th to 18th Centuries
The diffusion of architectural traits in the colonial aristocracy permitted the Georgian style to assert itself. At Mount Pleasant (Philadelphia), John McPherson had a residence constructed in 1761-1762 equipped with an entrance topped by a pediment supported by Doric columns. We can recognize here a roof with a balustrade and a symmetrical arrangement, characteristic of the neoclassic style en vogue at the time in Europe. In Salem, Sameul McIntire was the architect of the John Gardiner-Pingree house (1805); he designed the roof with a gentle slope, a balustrade and built it out of brick. He took up Palladio's idea of linking the buildings by a semi-circular portico supported by columns.
In the 1780s, the Federal style began to diverge bit by bit from the Georgian style and became a uniquely American genre. At the time of the War of Independence, houses stretched out along a strictly rectangular plan, adopting curved lines and favouring the decorative details such as garlands and urns. Certain openings were ellipsoidal in form, one or several pieces were oval or circular.
Thomas Jefferson elaborated the plans of his own house of Monticello in Virginia, close to Charlottesville. A beautiful example of the Palladian style, it brings to mind the Salm Hotel situated in Paris, that Jefferson had been able to gaze at when he was an ambassador in France. He used antique components such as Doric columns, tetrastyle porticos and a central dome.
In Louisiana, the colonial houses sometimes support a neogrecian pediment with columns, as is the case at Belle Meade Plantation in Tennessee. With symmetrical allure, the residence has at its disposal a columned porch and narrow windows. But the domestic architecture in the South had consciously freed itself from the classic model when it supported a mid-height balcony on the front and left out the pediment on the entrance portico (Charleston, South Carolina, Oak Alley plantation in Louisiana). The houses were adapted to the regional climate and registered themselves into the economy of the plantation. They sported a stucco and cast iron decor just like in the French quarter.
19th Century
Much later, the great families of the coast had immense estates and villas constructed in the neogothic style, with antipodes of neoclassicism. They took the house of Sir Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill as a model. Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892) worked on the villa projects in the Hudson river valley and dressed them with fantasy details taken from the medieval repetoire. For George Merritt's residence at Lyndhurst, he chose to build a building with a complex plan and to open several ears who could be made to think of Church stained glass windows.
In the second half of the 19th century, the architects Richard Morris Hunt, Henry Hobson Richardson and Frank Furness usually responded to the orders of the rich families such as the Ames or the Vanderbilt and they constructed neoroman or neorenaissance residences. The industry or transportation magnates invested in the stone and commissioned villas imitating European palaces. The Biltmore Estate, close to Asheville in North Carolina, was the largest private residence in the country. Richard Morris Hunt copied the Louis XII and François I wings from the Château de Blois. It was the golden age for large agencies such as McKim, Mead and White and for the Beaux-Arts style, comprised there for private constructions. The architecture was an expression of notable Americans' presteige.
Modest Homes
The Popular Home: Pioneer Architecture
At the beginning of the 19th century, less technical manuals ("pattern books") had been distributed. The settlement of the western United States changed the needs of the architecture in use. The pioneers used the "balloon frame" technique in the 1840s and 1850s. The first use of which seems to have been in 1833 for the construction of St. Mary's Church in Chicago. Its success lies in the quickness of construction (standardised boards and nails). It allowed anyone to easily build the framework of the house which was then covered with siding. The interior of the walls were covered with plaster or wood. It encouraged the fast development of towns and encouraged great mobility. However, these houses did not offer good sanitary conditions and burned easily in the case of a fire.
Different Architectural Currents in the 19th Century
The "Stick Style" is one American method of house construction that uses wooden rod trusswork. The buildings are topped by high roofs with steep slopes. The design is asymmetrical and the interior space opens out onto several verandas. The exterior is not bare of decoration, even though the main objective remains comfort. Richard Morris Hunt constructed John N. Griswold's house in Newport in 1862. The "Stick Style" was progressively abandoned after the crisis of 1873.
Then the "Shingle Style" replaced the "Stick Style". It is characterised by simpicity and the attention to comfort. Henry Hobson Richardson constructed William Watts Sherman's house in 1874-1875 by leaving the wooden structure visible. Mrs. F. Stoughton's house in Cambridge (1882-1883) and the Newport Casino (1879-1881) used shingle coverings.
On the west coast, where more and more American architects were attrated, the domestic architecture evolved equally towards a more and more modern style.
The Haight Ashbury quarter, in San Francisco, is representative of the Italianised Victorian style (1860-1900). Constructed with sequoia wood, they resisted the town's fire in 1906 and were extremely decorated and coloured. In that era, they offered all the modern comforts: central heating, electricity, running water... Their dimensions were standardised: 8 metres (26 feet) for the facade and 30 metres (98 feet) deep. They were comprised of several floors and some wings.
Interest in the simplification of the volumes and the exterior decoration progressed thanks to the discoveries of Irving Gill, whom we can thank for several Californian houses with flat roofs in the 1910s (Walter Luther Dodge's house, in Los Angeles, for example). Rudolf M. Schindler and Richard Neutra adapted European modernism to the Californian context in the 1920s ("Lovell Beach House", Newport Beach (California) and "Health House" in Los Angeles).
Frontier vernacular
The Homestead Act of 1862 brought property ownership within reach for millions of citizens, displaced native peoples, and changed the character of settlement patterns. The law offered a modest farm free of charge to any adult male who cultivated the land for five years and built a residence on the property. This established a rural pattern of isolated farmsteads in the Midwest and West instead of the European influenced villages of the northeastern states. Settlers built homes from local materials, often erecting log cabins in the forested eastern states or sod houses in the treeless prairie. A few original log cabins remain, most of which have been concealed by clapboard facades. Related Straw-bale construction, pioneered in Nebraska with early baling machines, has endured as a modern building material.
Rural residents preferred homes built from milled lumber and constructed these instead of sod or log homes when they could afford the materials. Railroads delivered building supplies to the nearest town. Grant Wood's famous American Gothic painting takes its name from the upper window in the farmhouse behind the couple. The arched window was a popular 1880s design element sometimes known as "carpenter gothic."
The Sears Catalog Home that sold from 1908 to 1940 supplanted the remaining sod homes and most of the log homes. These complete homebuilding kits included lumber and plans. The "balloon style" framing architecture could be erected with a small construction team of family members and friends. Decorative elements were conservative, reminiscent of late Victorian esthetics. The double hung sash windows of the Sears Catalog homes are the most common residential window type in the United States. Sears Catalog homes remain popular for their better than average quality.
The most notable United States architectural innovation has been the skyscraper. Several technical advances made this possible. In 1853 Elisha Otis invented the first safety elevator. This prevented a cab from falling down the shaft if the suspending cable broke.
Elevators allowed buildings to rise above the four or five stories that people were willing to climb by stairs for normal occupancy. An 1868 competition decided the design of New York City's six story Equitable Life Building, which would become the first commercial building to use an elevator. Construction commenced in 1873. Other structures followed such as the Auditorium Building, Chicago in 1885 by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. This adopted Italian palazzo design details to give the appearance of a structured whole: for several decades American skyscrapers would blend conservative decorative elements with technical innovation.
Soon skyscrapers encountered a new technological challenge. Load bearing stone walls become impractical as a structure gains height, reaching a technical limit at about 20 stories. Professional engineer William LeBaron Jenney solved the problem with a steel support frame in Chicago's 10 story Home Insurance Building, 1885. Arguably this is the first true skyscraper. The use of a thin curtain wall in place of a load bearing wall reduced the building's overall weight by two thirds.
Another feature that was to become familiar in twentieth century skyscrapers first appeared in Chicago's Reliance Building, designed by Charles B. Atwood and E.C. Shankland, Chicago, 1890 - 1895. Because outer walls no longer bore the weight of a building it was possible to increase window size. This became the first skyscraper to have plate glass windows take up a majority of its outer surface area.
One culturally significant early skyscraper was New York City's Woolworth Building designed by architect Cass Gilbert, 1913. Raising previous technological advances to new heights, 792 ft (241 m), it was the world's tallest building until 1930. Frank Woolworth was fond of gothic cathedrals. Cass Gilbert constructed the office building as a cathedral of commerce and incorporated many Gothic revival decorative elements. The main entrance and lobby contain numerous allegories of thrift, including an acorn growing into an oak tree and a man losing his shirt. Security concerns following the attack on the nearby World Trade Center have closed the lobby to public viewing. The popularity of the new Woolworth Building inspired many Gothic revival imitations among skyscrapers and remained a popular design theme until the art deco era. Other public concerns emerged following the building's introduction. The Woolworth Building blocked a significant amount of sunlight to the neighborhood. This inspired the New York City setback law that remained in effect until 1960. Basically the law allowed a structure to rise to any height as long as it reduced the area of each tower floor to one quarter of the structure's ground floor area.
Another significant event in skyscraper history was the competition for Chicago's Tribune Tower. Although the competition selected a gothic design inflenced by the Woolworth building, some of the numerous competing entries became influential to other twentieth century architectural styles. Second place finisher Eliel Saarinen submitted a modernist design. An entry from Walter Gropius brought attention to the Bauhaus school.
The Reliance Building's move toward increased window area reached its logical conclusion in a New York City building with a Brazilian architect on land that is technically not a part of the United States. United Nations headquarters, 1949-1950, by Oscar Niemeyer has the first complete glass curtain wall.
Some of the most graceful early towers were designed by Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), America's first great modern architect. His most talented student was Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), who spent much of his career designing private residences with matching furniture and generous use of open space. One of his best-known buildings, however, is a public one: the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
European architects who emigrated to the United States before World War II launched what became a dominant movement in architecture, the International Style. Perhaps the most influential of these immigrants were Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) and Walter Gropius (1883-1969), both former directors of Germany's famous design school, the Bauhaus. Based on geometric form, buildings in their style have been both praised as monuments to American corporate life and dismissed as "glass boxes." In reaction, younger American architects such as Michael Graves (1945- ) have rejected the austere, boxy look in favor of postmodern buildings with striking contours and bold decoration that alludes to historical styles of architecture.
Suburbs
The 1944 G. I. Bill of Rights was another federal government decision that changed the architectural landscape. Government backed loans made home ownership affordable for many more citizens. Affordable automobiles and popular preference for single family detached homes led to the rise of suburbs. Simultaneously praised for their quality of life and condemned for architectural monotony, these have become a familiar feature of the United States landscape.
See also
- United States
- Architecture
- Architectural style
- Culture of the United States
- Hawaiian architecture
- Chicago school (architecture)
- List of bridges in the United States
- Sculpture of the United States
External links
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