Greek Revival architecture in North America

also: American Greek Revival

movement style c. 1800-1860 United States Canada

American Greek Revival was an architectural style popular in the United States and Canada from about 1800 to 1860, the local reading of a wider international revival of ancient Greek forms. Benjamin Henry Latrobe introduced the Greek order to American public buildings with the Bank of Pennsylvania (1798) and work on the United States Capitol, and a generation of his pupils, backed by the banker Nicholas Biddle, turned it into a monumental national idiom - Strickland's Second Bank of the United States, Walter's Girard College. Two wars helped it along: the War of 1812 pushed Americans away from British fashions, and the Greek War of Independence made everything Greek admired. What made the style American was its rural and vernacular reach, from plantation colonnades to plain wooden farmhouses.

Lead image of the Wikipedia article "Greek Revival architecture in North America".
Lead image of the Wikipedia article "Greek Revival architecture in North America".CC BY-SA 3.0 (credit: Andrew J Peterman) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Columns or pilasters from the Greek orders on fronts of houses, banks, and churches
  • Bilateral symmetry: block- or temple-shaped massing with low-pitched or flat roofs
  • No arches - the arch was considered to have no place in Greek temple architecture
  • Wide colonnaded porches on antebellum plantation houses
  • Vernacular farmhouse variants such as the asymmetrical Upright and Wing plan
  • Greek-inspired interiors and furnishings (klismos chairs, Greek-style sofas)

Key figures

  • Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820) — Surveyor of public buildings who introduced the Greek order to the US (Bank of Pennsylvania, U.S. Capitol)
  • William Strickland (1788-1854) — Latrobe's pupil and designer of the Second Bank of the United States, the style's early masterpiece
  • Thomas U. Walter (1804-1887) — Designer of Girard College and Andalusia, who gave the style its monumental second phase
  • Robert Mills (1781-1855) — Latrobe pupil and designer of Monumental Church and the Washington Monument

Example works

Sources

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