Saturday, April 27, 2024

Victorian Architecture: Characteristics, Influences, Ambassadors And Sights

gothic victorian house

Stick style houses are, as the name implies, decorated with intricate stickwork and half-timbering. Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal boards create elaborate patterns on the facade. But if you look past these surface details, a stick style house is relatively plain. Medieval architecture and the great cathedrals of the Gothic age inspired all sorts of flourishes during the Victorian era.

Who is the most representative architect of Victorian architecture?

This delightful 1886 Pasadena home is a charming example of the Folk Victorian style of architecture. These dollhouse like houses were much more functional than most Victorian styles, with family-friendly, regular floor plans and a lack of ornamentation—perfect for hardworking, everyday people. Victorian home façades often sported things like corbels, which are wooden blocks that add a bit of flair to porches or eaves, often featuring carved or scalloped detailing, as SF Gate explains. These architectural details contribute in a major way to the overall appearance of Victorian homes, giving them a distinctive look that architecture fans have coveted in the decades since they were first in fashion.

Gothic architecture vs Gothic Revival architecture

Victorian architects found inspiration in earlier Gothic, Italianate, and Tudor eras, freely adapting historical motifs like arches, ribbed vaults, and bay windows to create novel combinations. Post-modern architects similarly sample eclectically from the past while avoiding strict historical replication. Victorian architecture developed through the influence of economic growth, expanding wealth, and industrialization which enabled mass production of building materials and components.

Sub-varieties of the Gothic Revival style

As the name suggests, this particular architectural style takes its inspiration from Italian villa properties, bringing a dose of Tuscany to any American city. It still incorporates some ornamentation and decorative embellishments, with flourishes like cast-iron details on the balconies and porches or small details on the cornices and door frames. Unlike the curves and steep slopes of some other Victorian styles, Italianate homes often had quite simple lines, as The Spruce explains, with characteristic architectural flourishes such as square towers, as well as columns around the entrance. You may find that the detailed elements – tall ceilings, arched windows, and intricate trims – of a Gothic Revival house are a perfect fit for what you’re looking for in a home. You can find Gothic Revival style houses across the country, whether you’re looking at country houses around Boston, MA, or a city-center home in San Francisco, CA.

Because this style is generally a realistic recreation of authentic medieval styles, telling the difference between Gothic and Gothic Revival can be difficult. If it was built between 1100 and 1500 AD, the architecture is Gothic; if it's built in the 1800s, it's Gothic Revival. From medieval castles to Victorian mansions, Gothic architecture is as varied as it is imposing. Hallmarks of this dramatic style include vaulted ceilings, arched windows and ornate details, such as flying buttresses and the occasional leering gargoyle.

Octagon Style

gothic victorian house

One of the most famous examples of High Victorian Gothic architecture is Victoria Tower (1860) at the Royal Palace of Westminster in London, England. 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.

North America

However, those hues were the exception rather than the norm — as Love To Know explains, a muted color palette was more common. Victorians favored dark, moody, saturated earth tone hues in shades like brown, green, dark reds such as maroons, and dark yellows such as gold or ochre tones. This excess of architectural detailing wasn't just because it was the fashion, although that likely played a role.

Why the Victorian mansion is a horror icon - Vox.com

Why the Victorian mansion is a horror icon.

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Second Empire Style (Mansard Style)

A home must have no minimum or maximum number of rooms to qualify as a Victorian home. Built in 1908, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles, gorgeous rooms, updated while preserving historic details, 4 bedrooms, 4 acre lot. In deprived areas, Victorian houses were often very small, for example, back-to-back houses built in extremely cramped conditions. Some of these areas became slums or 'rookeries', and were later cleared. Some smaller, two-up two-down houses still survive, for example in Salford, Greater Manchester. After the Erie Canal was finished in 1825, the stonemason builders never left upstate New York.

Eagle Rock Queen Anne

It was during the Victorian era, from 1837 to 1901, that Los Angeles transformed from a small, dusty Mexican outpost into a Gilded Age American boom town. Thousands of homes were built during this time, and though many were lost, the structures mapped here survive. One of the easiest ways to add a Victorian twist to your home is to use the colors of the era, as MasterClass suggests — opt for navy blue, burgundy, deep brown, and other darker, muted hues. Decorative woodwork is also a must, whether you incorporate it on your home's exterior or in the interior. Consider adding wallpaper to make a statement, or bring in some of the preferred Victorian fabrics, such as velvet and heavy silk damask, in your cushions and drapery, as Impressive Interior Design advocates. When thinking of Victorian color palettes, you might immediately picture the vibrant Painted Ladies and other colorful Queen Anne-style homes.

Rich details include carved Corinthian columns, an imperial staircase and ornate stained glass depicting mythical Celtic scenes attributed to WG and KK Keir, who also worked on Glasgow Cathedral. Beautifully appointed interior, stunning staircases, soaring ceilings, restored to its original beauty, 5 bedrooms, 4508 square feet, 18 acres lot. The tactic of using gradations of the same color is one approach, but feel free to accentuate the architectural details with other deep colors as accents in the plum, blue, or even dark red family. Most often, you will see naturally occurring colors, like organic greens or rich chocolate browns and deep reds, which were consistently popular for this style of home.

It’s known for being rectangular or L-shaped and having low-pitched or flat roofs, round-arched windows, overhanging eaves, corbels, and columned porticoes. Strictly speaking, a Victorian house is a home built during the Victorian era, when Queen Victoria ruled, between 1837 and 1901. But, while Brits tend to refer to those dates rigidly to determine what is and is not a Victorian house, Americans are a bit more fluid.

Cool Gothic Revival house or church out of place? See this Florida listing for yourself - Miami Herald

Cool Gothic Revival house or church out of place? See this Florida listing for yourself.

Posted: Mon, 27 Feb 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Instead, they took their skills and Victorian-era cleverness to build a variety of stately, rural homes. The James Coolidge Octagon House in Madison, New York is even more unique for 1850 because it is inlaid with cobblestones — another 19th-century fad in more rocky locales. Some famous buildings in this unique style in England include The Houses of Parliament, Highclere Castle, All Souls College at the University of Oxford, and the Strawberry Hill House. This 1895, Queen Anne-style house was built in the very trendy Victorian neighborhood of Boyle Heights.

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