Mission Revival Style architecture

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This article is part of the
Spanish missions in California
series.
Architecture of the California missions
Mission Revival Style architecture
California mission clash of cultures

The Mission Revival Style was an architectural movement that began in the late 19th Century and drew inspiration from the early Spanish missions in California. The movement enjoyed its greatest popularity between 1890 and 1915, though numerous modern residential, commercial, and institutional structures (particularly schools and railroad depots) display this instantly-recognizable architectural style.

All of California's missions shared certain design characteristics, owing both to the limited selection of building materials available to the founding padres and an overall lack of advanced construction experience. Each installation utilized massive walls with broad, unadorned surfaces and limited fenestration, wide, projecting eaves, and low-pitched clay tile roofs. Other features included long, arcaded corridors, piered arches, and curved gables. Exterior walls were coated with plaster (stucco) to shield the adobe bricks beneath from the elements.

Each of these elements are replicated, to varying degrees, in Mission Revival buildings. Modern construction materials and building practices render these characteristics largely cosmetic, however.

A view looking down an exterior corredor at Mission San Fernando Rey de España, a common architectural feature of the Spanish Missions that is often emulated in Mission Revival Style architecture.

'Plymouth Rock was a state of mind.

'So were the California Missions.

:Charles Fletcher Lummis

:The Spanish Pioneers, 1929

'Give me neither Romanesque nor Gothic;

'much less Italian Renaissance,

'and least of all English Colonial--

'this is California--give me Mission.

:Anonymous

San Diego's Union Station in 1919. The complex was constructed in the Mission Revival Style by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway four years prior in preparation for the Panama-California Exposition. The depot is located just 9 miles from Mission San Diego de Alcalá and is still in use today.

A list of structures designed in the Mission Revival Style

[Canoga Mission Gallery] in Canoga Park, California, completed in 1936
[Mission Inn] in Riverside, California, completed in 1902
Fred Harvey's Hotel Castañeda in Las Vegas, New Mexico, built in 1898 (demolished in 1970)
[Moravian Tile & Pottery Works] in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, established in 1898
San Gabriel Civic Auditorium in San Gabriel, California, completed in 1927
Santa Fe Railway Depot in San Juan Capistrano, California, completed in 1894
Union Station in San Diego, California, completed in 1915
Villa Rockledge in Laguna Beach, California, completed in 1935
[Wattles Mansion] in Hollywood, completed in 1907

One of the earliest examples of Mission Revival Style architecture, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway depot in San Juan Capistrano (with its 40-foot high dome and bell) was considered to be one of the railroad's finest when it was completed on October 8, 1894. It is rumored that the stonework, bricks, and roof tiles were salvaged from then-decaying Mission San Juan Capistrano.

The former passenger depot of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in San Juan Capistrano, California as it appeared in 2005. The plaster finish has been removed (exposing the brickwork beneath) at all but the dome of the original structure.

Mission Revival Style architecture

A list of structures designed in the Mission Revival Style

References

See also