American Renaissance

This article is about the American Renaissance in architecture and the arts. For the use of the term in literary criticism, see American Renaissance (literature). For the white supremacist magazine and website, see American Renaissance (magazine).
Gilded stencilling on an olive green ground in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. in 1879, reflecting American Renaissance-era art
The central vignette of the US$2 bill, Edwin Blashfield's Science presents Steam and Electricity to Commerce and Manufacture, published in 1896
The Bergen County Court House in Hackensack, New Jersey, designed in the American Renaissance style

The American Renaissance was a period of American architecture and the arts from 1876 to 1917,[1] characterized by renewed national self-confidence and a feeling that the United States was the heir to Greek democracy, Roman law, and Renaissance humanism. Local conditions and requirements of America, including the aforementioned nationalism, spurred this change of style, allowing it to slowly developed over time in various places around the United States.[2] The era spans the period between the Centennial Exposition (celebrating the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence) and the United States' entry into World War I.

Building Materials

The early building material for the structures of the American Renaissance was wood, the United States' great national building commodity of the time given its plentiful availability. Due to a lack of money for the fairly new country, stone, the material used by the Greeks and Romans, was out of reach. Columns were initially carved of wood for the earliest structures of this period. With an increase of national wealth, architects and builders were able to begin using white marble, a more durable material, for intricate carvings and details.[3]

Both materials had their benefits. Wood is more easily repaired and replaced given its lack of lengthy durability in addition to its charm, warmth, and personality, which is characteristic of the American style. Stone, especially white marble, has a shine and glow to it. It is also more durable and able to withstand harsh weather conditions.

Decorative elements, such as arches, domes, vaulted ceilings, and columns were commonplace during the American Renaissance. There was a strong desire for the revival of Classical forms, symmetrical designs, and elaborate decorative elements. A sense of national identity was created and explored through the use of local materials and motifs.

Structures of the American Renaissance were made using both building materials, with early ones more commonly being entirely done in wood and painted.[4] A great variety of buildings were made using this style, such as townhouses, cottages, state houses, libraries, capitol buildings, museums, banks, railway terminals, and more.[5]

Characteristics

During the period of the American Renaissance, the United States' preoccupation with national identity (or New Nationalism) was expressed by modernism and technology, as well as academic classicism. This classicism made way for a new form of creative and artistic rhetoric, which in turn helped establish the new aesthetic of the time.[6] It expressed its self-confidence in new technologies, such as the wire cables of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. It found its cultural outlets in Prairie School houses and in Beaux-Arts architecture and sculpture, in the "City Beautiful" movement, and in the creation of the American empire.[7] A goal of the "City Beautiful" movement, which coincides with the American Renaissance, was, "to shape American culture and society aesthetically, morally, and professionally". Through this goal, order, acculturation, and assimilation were meant to be brought to the American city, easing the transition for immigrants while also establishing a professional authority through architecture.[8] Americans felt that their civilization was uniquely the modern heir, and that it had come of age. Politically and economically, this era coincides with the Gilded Age and the New Imperialism.

The classical architecture of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois in 1893 was a demonstration that impressed Henry Adams, who wrote that people "would some day talk about Hunt and Richardson, La Farge and Saint-Gaudens, Burnham and McKim and Stanford White, when their politicians and millionaires were quite forgotten."[9] Praise for this exhibition included the unity and consistency of the symmetrical structures, which inspired many of Charles McKim's campus projects, a mall, and other buildings in the city center of Washington D.C. In 1909, the year of McKim's death, his architectural firm was the largest in the world, having produced nearly 900 buildings of Classical orders and finely proportioned masonry.[10]

In the dome of the reading room at the new Library of Congress, Edwin Blashfield's murals were on the given theme, The Evolution of Civilization.

The exhibition American Renaissance: 1876–1917 at the Brooklyn Museum, 1979, encouraged the revival of interest in this movement.

Notable examples

The Boston Public Library
  • Cuyahoga County Courthouse (1906–1912): the exterior includes sculpture by Karl Bitter, Daniel Chester French, Herbert Adams, Isidore Konti and Herman Matzen, while the interior contains murals by Frank Brangwyn, Violet Oakley, Charles Yardley Turner, Max Bohm and Frederick Wilson. A stained glass window was designed and executed by Frederick Wilson and Charles Schweinfurth.[11]
  • San Francisco City Hall (completed 1915): designed by Arthur Brown, Jr, who also designed several other buildings in the style in San Francisco, including the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, Veterans Building, Temple Emanuel, Coit Tower and the Federal office building at 50 United Nations Plaza.
  • The Boston Public Library (1888-1895): designed and created by Charles McKim, inspired by the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, among other Classical structures. The interior contains a grand vaulted, coffered ceiling, lavish decorative elements, and large windows which provide natural light.
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1870s-1910): designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, with work later done by Richard Morris Hunt and his son, Richard Howland Hunt, and the firm of McKim, Mead & White. This grand museum, being the fourth largest in the world, displays the American Renaissance style with its arched windows, grand columns, and lavish decorative elements present on the main facade and lobby.
    Cuyahoga County Courthouse, located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio
    San Francisco City Hall
    Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in New York City





The above images, displaying the notable example buildings, all contain architectural elements of the American Renaissance.

Notes

  1. ^ Wilson, Richard Guy, ‘’The American Renaissance: 1876–1917’’, The Brooklyn Museum 1979
  2. ^ Dow, Joy Wheeler (1904). American Renaissance: A Review of Domestic Architecture. New York: Press of J.J. Little & Co. ISBN 9781330085431.
  3. ^ Dow, Joy Wheeler (1904). American Renaissance: A Review of Domestic Architecture. New York: Press of J.J. Little & Co. ISBN 9781330085431.
  4. ^ Dow, Joy Wheeler (1904). American Renaissance: A Review of Domestic Architecture. New York: Press of J.J. Little & Co. ISBN 9781330085431.
  5. ^ Benert, Annette L. (2004). "Edith Wharton, Charles McKim, and the American Renaissance". Edith Wharton Review. 20 (2): 10–17. ISSN 2330-3964.
  6. ^ Diller, Christopher (1998). "The Art of Rhetoric: Aesthetics and Rhetoric in the American Renaissance". Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 28 (3): 5–31. ISSN 0277-3945.
  7. ^ Wilson, Richard Guy, ‘’The American Renaissance: 1876–1917’’, The Brooklyn Museum 1979 p. 15
  8. ^ Benert, Annette L. (2004). "Edith Wharton, Charles McKim, and the American Renaissance". Edith Wharton Review. 20 (2): 10–17. ISSN 2330-3964.
  9. ^ "The Education of Henry Adams: Chapter XXII. Chicago (1893) by Henry Adams @ Classic Reader". www.classicreader.com. Archived from the original on 2008-09-05. Retrieved 2005-01-02.
  10. ^ Benert, Annette L. (2004). "Edith Wharton, Charles McKim, and the American Renaissance". Edith Wharton Review. 20 (2): 10–17. ISSN 2330-3964.
  11. ^ "The Old Courthouse Painting Project - Cuyahoga County Department of Public Works". publicworks.cuyahogacounty.us.

References

  • Howard Mumford Jones, "The Renaissance and American origins," Ideas in America 1945.
  • Richard Guy Wilson, "The great civilization", forward essay to The American Renaissance 1876–1917. Exhibition catalogue, The Brooklyn Museum, 1979–1980.
  • Henry Hope Reed, The Golden City, (New York: Norton Library) 1971, Ch. 3:"The American contribution" pp 62–98.
  • Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. New York: Knopf, 1988; rpt., New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • Diller, Christopher. “The Art of Rhetoric: Aesthetics and Rhetoric in the American Renaissance.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 3, 1998, pp. 5–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3886378.
  • Dow, Joy Wheeler. "American Renaissance: A Review of Domestic Architecture." (1904).
  • Benert, Annette L. “Edith Wharton, Charles McKim, and the American Renaissance.” Edith Wharton Review, vol. 20, no. 2, 2004, pp. 10–17. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43512971.