Gothic Revival

**Gothic Revival** (also referred to as **Victorian Gothic,** **neo-Gothic,** or **Gothick**) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. Its popularity grew rapidly in the early 19th century, when increasingly serious and learned admirers of neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval Gothic architecture, in contrast to the neoclassical styles prevalent at the time. Gothic Revival draws features from the original Gothic style, including decorative patterns, finials, lancet windows, hood moulds and label stops.

The Gothic Revival movement emerged in 18th-century England, gaining ground in the 19th. Its roots were intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with Catholicism and a re-awakening of High Church or Anglo-Catholic belief concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism. Ultimately, the "Anglo-Catholicism" tradition of religious belief and style became widespread for its intrinsic appeal in the third quarter of the 19th century. Gothic Revival architecture varied considerably in its faithfulness to both the ornamental style and principles of construction of its medieval original, sometimes amounting to little more than pointed window frames and a few touches of Gothic decoration on a building otherwise on a wholly 19th-century plan and using contemporary materials and construction methods.

In parallel to the ascendancy of neo-Gothic styles in 19th-century England, interest spread rapidly to the continent of Europe, in Australia, Sierra Leone, South Africa and to the Americas; the 19th and early 20th centuries saw the construction of very large numbers of Gothic Revival and Carpenter Gothic structures worldwide. The influence of the Revival had nevertheless peaked by the 1870s. New architectural movements, sometimes related as in the Arts and Crafts movement, and sometimes in outright opposition, such as Modernism, gained ground, and by the 1930s the architecture of the Victorian era was generally condemned or ignored. The later 20th century saw a revival of interest, manifested in the United Kingdom by the establishment of the Victorian Society in 1958.

## Roots

The rise of Evangelicalism in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw in England a reaction in the High church movement which sought to emphasise the continuity between the established church and the pre-Reformation Catholic church. Architecture, in the form of the Gothic Revival, became one of the main weapons in the High church's armoury. The Gothic Revival was also paralleled and supported by "medievalism", which had its roots in antiquarian concerns with survivals and curiosities. As "industrialisation" progressed, a reaction against machine production and the appearance of factories also grew. Proponents of the picturesque such as Thomas Carlyle and Augustus Pugin took a critical view of industrial society and portrayed pre-industrial medieval society as a golden age. To Pugin, Gothic architecture was infused with the Christian values that had been supplanted by classicism and were being destroyed by industrialisation.

Gothic Revival also took on political connotations; with the "rational" and "radical" Neoclassical style being seen as associated with republicanism and liberalism (as evidenced by its use in the United States and to a lesser extent in Republican France), the more spiritual and traditional Gothic Revival became associated with monarchism and conservatism, which was reflected by the choice of styles for the rebuilt government centres of the Palace of Westminster (holding the Parliament of the United Kingdom) in London and Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

In English literature, the architectural Gothic Revival and classical Romanticism gave rise to the Gothic novel genre, beginning with *The Castle of Otranto* (1764) by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, and inspired a 19th-century genre of medieval poetry that stems from the pseudo-bardic poetry of "Ossian". Poems such as "Idylls of the King" by Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson recast specifically modern themes in medieval settings of Arthurian romance. In German literature, the Gothic Revival also had a grounding in literary fashions.

## Survival and revival

Gothic architecture began at the Basilica of Saint Denis near Paris, and the Cathedral of Sens in 1140 and ended with a last flourish in the early 16th century with buildings like Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster. However, Gothic architecture did not die out completely in the 16th century but instead lingered in on-going cathedral-building projects; at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and in the construction of churches in increasingly isolated rural districts of England, France, Germany, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and in Spain.

In Bologna, in 1646, the Baroque architect Carlo Rainaldi constructed Gothic vaults (completed 1658) for the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, which had been under construction since 1390; there, the Gothic context of the structure overrode considerations of the current architectural mode. Guarino Guarini, a 17th-century Theatine monk active primarily in Turin, recognized the "Gothic order" as one of the primary systems of architecture and made use of it in his practice.

Likewise, Gothic architecture survived in an urban setting during the later 17th century, as shown in Oxford and Cambridge, where some additions and repairs to Gothic buildings were considered to be more in keeping with the style of the original structures than contemporary Baroque. Sir Christopher Wren's Tom Tower for Christ Church, University of Oxford, and, later, Nicholas Hawksmoor's west towers of Westminster Abbey, blur the boundaries between what is called "Gothic survival" and the Gothic Revival. Throughout France in the 16th and 17th centuries, churches such as St-Eustache continued to be built following gothic forms cloaked in classical details, until the arrival of Baroque architecture.

In the mid-18th century, with the rise of Romanticism, an increased interest and awareness of the Middle Ages among some influential connoisseurs created a more appreciative approach to selected medieval arts, beginning with church architecture, the tomb monuments of royal and noble personages, stained glass, and late Gothic illuminated manuscripts. Other Gothic arts, such as tapestries and metalwork, continued to be disregarded as barbaric and crude, however sentimental and nationalist associations with historical figures were as strong in this early revival as purely aesthetic concerns.

German Romanticists (such as philosopher and writer Goethe and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel), began to appreciate the picturesque character of ruins—"picturesque" becoming a new aesthetic quality—and those mellowing effects of time that the Japanese call *wabi-sabi* and that Horace Walpole independently admired, mildly tongue-in-cheek, as "the true rust of the Barons' wars." The "Gothick" details of Walpole's Twickenham villa, Strawberry Hill House begun in 1749, appealed to the rococo tastes of the time, and were fairly quickly followed by James Talbot at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire. By the 1770s, thoroughly neoclassical architects such as Robert Adam and James Wyatt were prepared to provide Gothic details in drawing-rooms, libraries and chapels and William Beckford's romantic vision of a Gothic abbey, Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire.

Some of the earliest evidence of a revival in Gothic architecture is from Scotland. Inveraray Castle, constructed from 1746, with design input from William Adam, displays the incorporation of turrets. These were largely conventional Palladian style houses that incorporated some external features of the Scots baronial style. Robert Adam's houses in this style include Mellerstain and Wedderburn in Berwickshire and Seton House in East Lothian, but it is most clearly seen at Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, remodelled by Adam from 1777. The eccentric landscape designer Batty Langley even attempted to "improve" Gothic forms by giving them classical proportions.

A younger generation, taking Gothic architecture more seriously, provided the readership for John Britton's series *Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain*, which began appearing in 1807. In 1817, Thomas Rickman wrote an *Attempt...* to name and define the sequence of Gothic styles in English ecclesiastical architecture, "a text-book for the architectural student". Its long antique title is descriptive: *Attempt to discriminate the styles of English architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation; preceded by a sketch of the Grecian and Roman orders, with notices of nearly five hundred English buildings*. The categories he used were Norman, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular. It went through numerous editions, was still being republished by 1881, and has been reissued in the 21st century.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th century, Gothic Revival was used across Europe, throughout the British Empire, and in the United States for public buildings and homes for the people who could afford the style, but the most common use for Gothic Revival architecture was in the building of churches. Churches all over in the countries that were influenced by the Gothic Revival, small and large, whether isolated in small settlements or in the big city, there is at least one church done in Gothic Revival style. Major examples of Gothic cathedrals in the U.S. include the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City and Washington National Cathedral (also known as "the Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Paul") on Mount St. Alban in northwest Washington, D.C.. One of the biggest churches in Gothic Revival style in Canada is Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate in Ontario.

Gothic Revival architecture was to remain one of the most popular and long-lived of the many revival styles of architecture. Although Gothic Revival began to lose force and popularity after the third quarter of the 19th century in the commercial, residential and industrial fields, some buildings such as churches, schools, colleges and universities were still constructed in the Gothic style (here often known as "Collegiate Gothic" style) which remained popular in England, Canada and in the United States (the United States has the most of Gothic Revival style architecture for Schools and Colleges/Universities) until well into the early to mid-20th century. Only when new materials, like steel and glass along with concern for function in everyday working life and saving space in the cities, meaning the need to build up instead of out, began to take hold did the Gothic Revival start to disappear from popular building requests.

### Decorative

The revived Gothic style was not limited to architecture. Classical Gothic buildings of the 12th to 16th Centuries were a source of inspiration to 19th-century designers in numerous fields of work. Architectural elements such as pointed arches, steep-sloping roofs and fancy carvings like lace and lattice work were applied to a wide range of Gothic Revival objects. Some examples of Gothic Revivals influence can be found in heraldic motifs in coats of arms, painted furniture with elaborate painted scenes like the whimsical Gothic detailing in English furniture is traceable as far back as Lady Pomfret's house in Arlington Street, London (1740s), and Gothic fretwork in chairbacks and glazing patterns of bookcases is a familiar feature of Chippendale's *Director* (1754, 1762), where, for example, the three-part bookcase employs Gothic details with Rococo profusion, on a symmetrical form. Sir Walter Scott's Abbotsford exemplifies in its furnishings the "Regency Gothic" style. Gothic Revival also includes the reintroduction of medieval clothes and dances in historical reenactments staged among historically-interested followers, especially in the second part of the 19th century, and which have been revived over a hundred years later in the popularity of so-called "renaissance fairs/festivals" in several states (such as in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia). Parties in medieval historical dress and entertainment were popular among the wealthy in the 1800s but has spread in the late 20th century to the well-educated middle class as well.

By the mid-19th century, Gothic traceries and niches could be inexpensively re-created in wallpaper, and Gothic blind arcading could decorate a ceramic pitcher. The illustrated catalogue for the Great Exhibition of 1851 is replete with Gothic detail, from lacemaking and carpet designs to heavy machinery.

In 1847, 8,000 British crown coins were minted in proof condition with the design using an ornate reverse in keeping with the revived style. Considered by collectors to be particularly beautiful, they are known as 'Gothic crowns'. The design was repeated in 1853, again in proof. A similar two shilling coin, the 'Gothic florin' was minted for circulation from 1851 to 1887.

## Romanticism and nationalism

French neo-Gothic had its roots in the French medieval Gothic architecture, where it was created in the 12th century. Gothic architecture was sometimes known during the medieval period as the "Opus Francigenum", (the "French Art"). French scholar Alexandre de Laborde wrote in 1816 that "Gothic architecture has beauties of its own", which marked the beginning of the Gothic Revival in France. Starting in 1828, Alexandre Brogniart, the director of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory, produced fired enamel paintings on large panes of plate glass, for King Louis-Philippe's Chapelle royale de Dreux, an important early French commission in Gothic taste, preceded mainly by some Gothic features in a few *jardins paysagers*.

The French Gothic Revival was set on sounder intellectual footings by a pioneer, Arcisse de Caumont, who founded the Societé des Antiquaires de Normandie at a time when *antiquaire* still meant a connoisseur of antiquities, and who published his great work on architecture in French Normandy in 1830 (Summerson 1948). The following year Victor Hugo's historical romance novel *The Hunchback of Notre-Dame* appeared, in which the great Gothic cathedral of Paris was at once a setting and a protagonist in a hugely popular work of fiction. Hugo intended his book to awaken a concern for the surviving Gothic architecture left in Europe, however, rather than to initiate a craze for neo-Gothic in contemporary life. In the same year that *Notre-Dame de Paris* appeared, the new French restored Bourbon monarchy established an office in the Royal French Government of Inspector-General of Ancient Monuments, a post which was filled in 1833 by Prosper Mérimée, who became the secretary of a new Commission des Monuments Historiques in 1837. This was the Commission that instructed Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to report on the condition of the Abbey of Vézelay in 1840. Following this, Viollet le Duc set to restore most of the symbolic buildings in France including Notre Dame de Paris, Vézelay, Carcassonne, Roquetaillade castle, the famous Mont Saint-Michel on its peaked coastal island, Pierrefonds, and Palais des Papes in Avignon. When France's first prominent neo-Gothic church was built, the Basilica of Saint-Clotilde, Paris, begun in September 1846 and consecrated 30 November 1857, the architect chosen was, significantly, of German extraction, Franz Christian Gau, (1790–1853); the design was significantly modified by Gau's assistant, Théodore Ballu, in the later stages, to produce the pair of *flèches* that crown the west end.

In Scotland, while a similar Gothic style to that used further south in England was adopted by figures including Frederick Thomas Pilkington (1832–98) in secular architecture it was marked by the re-adoption of the Scots baronial style. Important for the adoption of the style in the early 19th century was Abbotsford House, the residence of the novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott. Re-built for him from 1816, it became a model for the modern revival of the baronial style. Common features borrowed from 16th- and 17th-century houses included battlemented gateways, crow-stepped gables, pointed turrets and machicolations. The style was popular across Scotland and was applied to many relatively modest dwellings by architects such as William Burn (1789–1870), David Bryce (1803–76), Edward Blore (1787–1879), Edward Calvert (c. 1847–1914) and Robert Stodart Lorimer (1864–1929) and in urban contexts, including the building of Cockburn Street in Edinburgh (from the 1850s) as well as the National Wallace Monument at Stirling (1859–69). The rebuilding of Balmoral Castle as a baronial palace and its adoption as a royal retreat from 1855-8 confirmed the popularity of the style.

In the United States, the first "Gothic stile" church (as opposed to churches with Gothic elements) was Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven, Connecticut. It was designed by the prominent American Architect Ithiel Town between 1812 and 1814, even while he was building his Federalist-style Center Church, New Haven right next to this radical new "Gothic-style" church. Its cornerstone was laid in 1814, and it was consecrated in 1816. It thus predates St Luke's Church, Chelsea, often said to be the first Gothic-revival church in London, by a decade. Though built of trap rock stone with arched windows and doors, parts of its Gothic tower and its battlements were wood. Gothic buildings were subsequently erected by Episcopal congregations in Connecticut at St. John's in Salisbury (1823), St. John's in Kent (1823–26), St. Andrew's in Marble Dale (1821–23). These were followed by Town's design for Christ Church Cathedral (Hartford, Connecticut) (1827), which incorporated Gothic elements such as buttresses into fabric of the church. St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Troy, New York, was constructed in 1827–1828 as an exact copy of the Town's design for Trinity Church, New Haven, but using local stone; due to changes in the original, St. Paul's is closer to Town's original design than Trinity itself. In the 1830s, architects began to copy specific English Gothic and Gothic Revival Churches, and these "mature Gothic Revival" buildings "made the domestic Gothic style architecture which preceded it seem primitive and old-fashioned". Since then, Gothic Revival architecture has spread to thousands of churches and Gothic-revival buildings across America.

There are many examples of Gothic Revival architecture in Canada. The first major Gothic Revival structure in Canada was Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, Quebec, which was designed in 1824. During the War of 1812 many homesteads along the St. Lawrence River were destroyed. Most of the homes were built in the Georgian style; after their destruction they were rebuilt in the Gothic Revival or "Jigsaw Gothic" style. The capital city of Ottawa, Ontario is full of Gothic Revival architecture. The Parliament Hill buildings which were built in the last decades of the 19th century were built in the Gothic Revival style, as were many other buildings in the city and outlying areas, showing how popular the Gothic Revival movement had become. Other examples of Canadian Gothic Revival architecture are the Victoria Memorial Museum, (1905–08), the Royal Canadian Mint, (1905–08), and Connaught Building, (1913–16), all in Ottawa by David Ewart.

## Viollet-le-Duc and Iron Gothic

France had lagged slightly in entering the neo-Gothic scene, but produced a major figure in the revival in Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. As well as a powerful and influential theorist, Viollet-le-Duc was a leading architect whose genius lay in restoration. He believed in restoring buildings to a state of completion that they would not have known even when they were first built, theories he applied to his restorations of the walled city of Carcassonne, and to Notre-Dame and Sainte Chapelle in Paris. In this respect he differed from his English counterpart Ruskin, as he often replaced the work of mediaeval stonemasons. His rational approach to Gothic stood in stark contrast to the revival's romanticist origins.

Throughout his career he remained in a quandary as to whether iron and masonry should be combined in a building. Iron had in fact been used in Gothic buildings since the earliest days of the revival. It was only with Ruskin and the archaeological Gothic's demand for historical truth that iron, whether it was visible or not, was deemed improper for a Gothic building.

This argument began to collapse in the mid-19th century as great prefabricated structures such as the glass and iron Crystal Palace and the glazed courtyard of the Oxford University Museum were erected, which appeared to embody Gothic principles through iron. Between 1863 and 1872 Viollet-le-Duc published his *Entretiens sur l'architecture*, a set of daring designs for buildings that combined iron and masonry. Though these projects were never realised, they influenced several generations of designers and architects, notably Antoni Gaudí in Spain and, in England, Benjamin Bucknall, Viollet's foremost English follower and translator, whose masterpiece was Woodchester Mansion.

The flexibility and strength of cast-iron freed neo-Gothic designers to create new structural gothic forms impossible in stone, as in Calvert Vaux's cast-iron bridge in Central Park, New York (1860s; *illustration, below*). Vaux enlists openwork forms derived from Gothic blind-arcading and window tracery to express the spring and support of the arching bridge, in flexing forms that presage Art Nouveau.

## Vernacular adaptations

*Main article: Carpenter Gothic*

Carpenter Gothic houses and small churches became common in North America and other places in the late 19th century. These structures adapted Gothic elements such as pointed arches, steep gables, and towers to traditional American light-frame construction. The invention of the scroll saw and mass-produced wood moldings allowed a few of these structures to mimic the florid fenestration of the High Gothic. But, in most cases, Carpenter Gothic buildings were relatively unadorned, retaining only the basic elements of pointed-arch windows and steep gables. Probably the best-known example of Carpenter Gothic is a house in Eldon, Iowa, that Grant Wood used for the background of his famous painting American Gothic.

## 20th century

The Gothic style dictated the use of structural members in compression, leading to tall, buttressed buildings with interior columns of load-bearing masonry and tall, narrow windows. But, by the start of the 20th century, technological developments such as the steel frame, the incandescent light bulb and the elevator made this approach obsolete. Steel framing supplanted the non-ornamental functions of rib vaults and flying buttresses, providing wider open interiors with fewer columns interrupting the view.

Some architects persisted in using Neo-Gothic tracery as applied ornamentation to an iron skeleton underneath, for example in Cass Gilbert's 1913 Woolworth Building skyscraper in New York and Raymond Hood's 1922 Tribune Tower in Chicago. But, over the first half of the century, Neo-Gothic was supplanted by Modernism, although some modernist architects saw the Gothic tradition of architectural form entirely in terms of the "honest expression" of the technology of the day, and saw themselves as heirs to that tradition, with their use of rectangular frames and exposed iron girders.

In spite of this, the Gothic Revival continued to exert its influence, simply because many of its more massive projects were still being built well into the second half of the 20th century, such as Giles Gilbert Scott's Liverpool Cathedral and the Washington National Cathedral (1907–1990). Ralph Adams Cram became a leading force in American Gothic, with his most ambitious project the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York (claimed to be the largest cathedral in the world), as well as Collegiate Gothic buildings at Princeton University. Cram said "the style hewn out and perfected by our ancestors [has] become ours by uncontested inheritance."

Though the number of new Gothic Revival buildings declined sharply after the 1930s, they continue to be built. The cathedral of Bury St. Edmunds was constructed between the late 1950s and 2005. A new church in the Gothic style is planned for St. John Vianney Parish in Fishers, Indiana. A new building currently under construction in Peterhouse will adopt the neo-gothic style of the rest of the courtyard it is being built in.

## Appreciation

By 1872, the Gothic Revival was mature enough in the United Kingdom that Charles Locke Eastlake, an influential professor of design, could produce *A History of the Gothic Revival*, but the first extended essay on the movement that was written within the maturing field of art history was Kenneth Clark's, *The Gothic Revival. An Essay*, which appeared in 1928. The architect and writer Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel covered the subject of the Revival in an appreciative way in his Slade Lectures in 1934. But the conventional early 20th century view of the architecture of the Gothic Revival was strongly dismissive, critics writing of "the nineteenth century architectural tragedy", ridiculing "the uncompromising ugliness" of the era's buildings and attacking the "sadistic hatred of beauty" of its architects. The 1950s saw further small signs of a recovery in the reputation of Revival architecture. John Steegman's study, *Consort of Taste* (re-issued in 1970 as *Victorian Taste*, with a foreword by Nikolaus Pevsner), was published in 1950 and began a slow turn in the tide of opinion "towards a more serious and sympathetic assessment." This was followed by the foundation of the Victorian Society in 1958 and, in 1963, the publication of *Victorian Architecture*, an influential collection of essays edited by Peter Ferriday. By 2008, the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Victorian Society, the architecture of the Gothic Revival was more fully appreciated with some of its leading architects receiving scholarly attention and some of its best buildings, such as George Gilbert Scott's St Pancras Station Hotel, being magnificently restored.

## References

1. ↑ Guarino Guarini : Italian architect, priest, mathematician, and theologian. *Encyclopedia Britannica* (n.d.).
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Kyles, Shannon. Gothic Revival (1750–1900). OntarioArchitecture.com..
3. ↑ Gothic Revival. *Encyclopædia Britannica Online*.
4. ↑ Style Guide: Gothic Revival. Victoria and Albert Museum.
5. ↑ Zanzonico, Susan. Understanding Gothic Revival Architecture. *Streetdirectory.com*.
6. ↑ THE MANSION, Woodchester - 1340703. Historic England. Retrieved on 2018-05-11.
7. ↑ American Gothic House Center. Wapellocounty.org (18 December 2009). Archived from the original on 18 June 2009. Retrieved on 11 June 2011.
8. ↑ Pearman, Hugh (13 March 2005). Return of the Goths: the last Anglican cathedral is nearly finished. And built to last 1,000 years.. *Gabion: Retained Writing on Architecture*. Hugh Pearman. Archived from the original on 18 March 2005.
9. ↑ Mooney, Caroline. "Architectural plans unveiled for church and campus complex over the next two decades", *The Catholic Moment*, 27 April 2008.
10. ↑ St. John Vianney Fishers, Indiana. HDB/Cram and Ferguson. Archived from the original on 8 October 2008. Retrieved on 3 October 2008.

## Further reading

* Christian Amalvi, *Le Goût du moyen âge*, (Paris: Plon), 1996. The first French monograph on French Gothic Revival.
* *"Le Gothique retrouvé" avant Viollet-le-Duc.* Exhibition, 1979. The first French exhibition concerned with French Neo-Gothic.
* Hunter-Stiebel, Penelope, *Of knights and spires: Gothic revival in France and Germany*, 1989. ISBN 0-614-14120-6
* Phoebe B Stanton, *Pugin* (New York, Viking Press 1972, ©1971). ISBN 0-670-58216-6
* Summerson, Sir John, 1948. "Viollet-le-Duc and the rational point of view" collected in *Heavenly Mansions and other essays on Architecture*
* Sir Thomas G. Jackson, *Modern Gothic Architecture* (1873), *Byzantine and Romanesque Architecture* (1913), and three-volume *Gothic Architecture in France, England and Italy* (1915)

## External links

* Victoria and Albert Museum Style Guide
* Basilique Sainte-Clotilde, Paris
* Canada by Design: Parliament Hill, Ottawa at Library and Archives Canada
* Books, Research and Information
* Gothic Revival in Hamilton, Ontario Canada
* Proyecto Documenta's entries for neogothic elements at the Valparaíso's churches
* Toronto's Sanctuaries: Church Designs by Henry Langley