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| Essential
Architecture- Search by style
Ruskinian / Victorian High Gothic Architecture |
| Many
of the following images copyright Jeffery Howe. Special thanks to
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/hvgothic.html |
| England |
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| Dean and Woodward: Natural History
Museum, Oxford, 1855. |
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| G.G. Scott: Midland Hotel and
St. Pancras Station
(Barlow and Ordish), London. |
St. Pancras Station |
St. Pancras Station |
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St. Pancras Station |
Sir G.G. Scott:
The Albert Monument
, London |
William Butterfield: Keble College, Oxford,
1867-83. |
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| Sir G.G. Scott:
The Albert Monument,
London |
The Albert Monument |
William Butterfield: All Saint's Margaret
Street, London. 1849 |
| United States |
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| William Ware & Henry van Brunt:
Memorial Hall, Harvard University, 1871-78 |
Memorial Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA |
Memorial Hall |
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Memorial Hall |
Sturgis and Brigham: Former Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, 1871-78 |
Copley Square, Boston |
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| F. Furness:
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , Philadelphia, 1876 |
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Provident Life and Trust Company, Philadelphia |
Ware and Van Brunt: First Church,
Boston, 1868 |
Cummings and Sears: New Old South Church,
Boston, 1874-75 |
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| New Old South Church |
New Old South Church |
New Old South Church |
| Australia |
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| Olderfleet Buildings. Collins Street,
Melbourne. Completed 1888 |
St George's Presbyterian Church. East
St Kilda. Completed 1880 |
Former Stock Exchange. Collins Street,
Melbourne. Completed 1888. |
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| Former Safe Deposit Building. Collins
Street, Melbourne. Completed 1890. |
ANZ Bank, Collins Street Melbourne.
Completed 1883 |
Old Rialto. Collins Street, Melbourne.
Completed 1888 |
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| Former Metropolitan Gas Company
Buildings; Flinders Street, Melbourne. Completed 1892; Venetian Gothic
applied to a tall building |
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At the start of Queen Victoria’s long reign,
the Gothic Revival in Britain was gathering momentum, with Barry and Pugin
showing the way as their Houses of Parliament arose beside the Thames at the
very heart of the British Empire. This was a time when architects made it
their business to journey to the great cathedrals, the monasteries, the
parish churches, the castles and the manor houses of the Middle Ages and to
record them in measured drawings and freehand sketches. With inexpensive
architectural periodicals providing professionals with a wealth of
up-to-the-minute information, dedicated architects were able to acquire a
wealth of knowledge about mediaeval buildings. It is thus not surprising
that a high degree of scholarship is evident in the design of many Victorian
buildings which adopted a Gothic style.
But there were good reasons why the designers of many buildings in the
Gothic idiom were not especially concerned with archaeological correctness.
Most nineteenth-century buildings had requirements vastly different from
those of the Middle Ages; some, like railway stations, had no precedent.
Many architects saw ‘modern Gothic’ as a style of the present, not the past.
And there were those who lacked the expertise, and perhaps the desire, to
take a scholarly approach to the re-use of elements of medieval
architecture.
The writings of Ruskin, full of moral fervour and glowing descriptions of
that most ‘impure’ of styles, Venetian Gothic, also tended to lead
architects away from a drily academic regurgitation of medieval details to
experiment with picturesque silhouettes and polychromatic surfaces. The
rich, complex rhythms and textures of William Pitt’s late nineteenth-century
commercial façades which line the city streets of Melbourne show how
exuberantly Free Gothic designers departed from academic correctness as they
expressed something of the euphoria generated by the city’s financiers in
the years before the crash of the early 1890s.
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Quoted from:
"A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Austrlian Architecture; Styles and Terms
from 1788 to the Present"
RICHARD APPERLY, ROBERT IRVING, PETER REYNOLDS. PHOTOGRAPHS BY SOLOMON
MITCHELL.
Angus & Robertson Sydney 1995 ISBN 0207 18562 X
Copyright © 1989 by Richard Apperly, Robert Irving and Peter Reynolds. |
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Between 1855 and 1885, John
Ruskin and other critics and philosophers stirred interest in authentic
recreations of Gothic architecture. These buildings, called High Gothic
Revival, High Victorian Gothic, or Neo-Gothic, were closely modeled after
the great architecture of medieval Europe.
Perhaps the most famous example of High Victorian Gothic architecture is
Victoria Tower at the royal Palace of Westminster in London, England. A fire
destroyed most of the original palace in 1834. After lengthy debate, it was
decided that architects Sir Charles Barry and A.W. Pugin would rebuild
Westminster Palace in a High Gothic Revival style that imitated 15th century
Perpendicular Gothic styling. Victoria Tower was named after the reigning
Queen Victoria who took delight in Gothic Revival architecture.
High Victorian Gothic Revival architecture has many of these features:
Masonry construction
Patterned brick and multi-colored stone
Stone carvings of leaves, birds, and gargoyles
Strong vertical lines and a sense of great height
Realistic recreation of authentic medieval styles
Not surprisingly, Victorian High Gothic Revival architecture was usually
reserved for churches, museums, rail stations, and grand public buildings.
Private homes were considerably more restrained. Meanwhile in the United
States, builders put a new spin on the Gothic Revival style.
Across the Atlantic, American builders began to borrow elements of British
Gothic Revival architecture. New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis was
evangelical about the ecclesiastical Gothic Revival style. He published
floor plans and three-dimensional views in his 1837 book, Rural Residences.
His design for Lyndhurst, an imposing country estate in Tarrytown, New York,
became a showplace for Victorian Gothic architecture in the United States. |
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