page_title: Palladian architecture
section_title: North American Palladianism
hierarchical_section_title: Palladian architecture / Neo-Palladian / North American Palladianism
caption_attribution_description: Hammond-Harwood House (Md. Ave. Facade)
context_page_description: Palladian architecture is a European architectural style derived from and inspired by the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. What is recognised as Palladian architecture today is an evolution of his original concepts. Palladio's work was strongly based on the symmetry, perspective, and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. From the 17th century Palladio's interpretation of this classical architecture was adapted as the style known as "Palladianism". It continued to develop until the end of the 18th century.
  In Britain, Palladianism was briefly in vogue during the 17th century, but its flowering was cut short by the onset of the English Civil War and the imposition of austerity which followed. In the early 18th century it returned to fashion, not only in England but also, directly influenced from Britain, in Prussia.
context_section_description: Palladio's influence in North America is evident almost from the beginning of architect-designed building there, though the Irish philosopher George Berkeley may have been America's pioneering Palladian. Acquiring a large farmhouse in Middletown, near Newport in the late 1720s, Berkeley dubbed it "Whitehall" and improved it with a Palladian doorcase derived from William Kent's Designs of Inigo Jones (1727), which he may have brought with him from London. Palladio's work was included in the library of a thousand volumes he amassed for the purpose and sent to Yale College. In 1749, Peter Harrison adopted the design of his Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, more directly from Palladio's I quattro libri dell'architettura, while his Brick Market, also in Newport, of a decade later is also Palladian in conception.
  The Hammond-Harwood House in Annapolis, Maryland (illustration) is an example of Palladian architecture in the United States. It is the only existing work of colonial academic architecture that was principally designed from a plate in Palladio’s Quattro libri. The house was designed by the architect William Buckland in 1773–74 for wealthy farmer Matthias Hammond of Anne Arundel County, Maryland. It was modeled on the design of the Villa Pisani in Montagnana, Italy in Book II, Chapter XIV of I quattro libri dell’achitettura.
  The politician and architect Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) once referred to Palladio's  Quattro libri as his bible. Jefferson acquired an intense appreciation of Palladio's architectural concepts, and his designs for his own beloved Monticello, the James Barbour Barboursville estate, Virginia State Capitol, and the University of Virginia were based on drawings from Palladio's book. Realizing the powerful political significance pertaining to ancient Roman buildings, Jefferson designed his civic buildings in the Palladian style. Monticello (remodelled between 1796 and 1808) is quite clearly based on Palladio's Villa Capra, however, with modifications, in a style which is described in America today as Colonial Georgian. Jefferson's Pantheon or Rotunda at the University of Virginia is undeniably Palladian in concept and style.
  In Virginia and Carolina, the Palladian manner is epitomised in numerous Tidewater plantation houses, such as Stratford Hall or Westover Plantation, or Drayton Hall near Charleston. These examples are all classic American colonial examples of a Palladian taste that was transmitted through engravings, for the benefit of masons—and patrons, too—who had no first-hand experience of European building practice. A feature of American Palladianism was the re-emergence of the great portico which, again, as in Italy, fulfilled the need of protection from the sun; the portico in various forms and size became a dominant feature of American colonial architecture. In the north European countries the portico had become a mere symbol, often closed, or merely hinted at in the design by pilasters, and sometimes in very late examples of English Palladianism adapted to become a porte-cochère; in America, the Palladian portico regained its full glory.
  One house which clearly shows this Palladian-Gibbs influence is Mount Airy, in Richmond County, Virginia, built in 1758–62.
  At Westover the north and south entrances, made of imported Portland stone, were patterned after a plate in William Salmon's Palladio Londinensis (1734).
  The distinctive feature of Drayton Hall, its two-storey portico, was derived directly from Palladio.
  The neoclassical presidential mansion, the White House in Washington, was inspired by Irish Palladianism. Both Castle Coole and Richard Cassel's Leinster House in Dublin claim to have inspired the architect James Hoban, who designed the executive mansion, built between 1792 and 1800. Hoban, born in Callan, County Kilkenny, in 1762, studied architecture in Dublin, where Leinster House (built c. 1747) was one of the finest buildings at the time. The White House is more neoclassical than Palladian, particularly the South façade, which closely resembles James Wyatt's 1790 design
caption: The Hammond-Harwood House was modeled after the Villa Pisani at Montagnana from The Four Books of Architecture by Andrea Palladio
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