I tend to assume that the Greek Revival style was popular in America in the early 1800s because it was associated with Greece and thus with both democracy and the struggle for independence, something Greece was known for historically and also in the early 1800s. I think it says a lot about how early Boston elites defined ideas such as liberty and independence that they chose to build a market in this style and very grandly in this style. Today it is the far right wing that we think of as championing the "Market" as the ultimate source, sign and guarantor of freedom. Back then I guess it was the 'liberal' eastern elites that thought that way.
There is also a late building in the Greek Revival style that exists to this day in Boston, the Custom House. It was built by the Federal government, yet it suggests that Boston elites continued to associate freedom with 'the Market'. I think it is perhaps the most successful Greek Revival building ever created in America, a building whose design is so well wrought that it has survived the replacement of its dome with a five hundred foot office tower without any real loss of artistic coherence, in my opinion...
Around mid-19th-century, the history of architecture in America gets a little weird. Where I grew up, in Boston, Greek Revival seems to have been abandoned just as it peaked, and not for artistic reasons. Artistically it was a style of unmatched dignity and power. Yet architecture seemed restless, now toying with styles hearkening back to the earlier federal period (Boston's South End) ...
... now exploring Egyptian Revival ...
... Gothic Revival in an early phase ...
In the 1860s, America seemed to settle on French Second Empire as its grand new style...
I think that this restless search for a consensus American style had a lot to do with the growing split between the North and the South. The growing rift between North and South over slavery had to mean that the two regions could not unproblematically share notions of freedom and liberty, much less an architectural style embodying those notions. My sense is that the South embraced Greek Revival longer than the North did, while the North searched for an appropriate new style. French Second Empire (ie French Second Repulic?) seemed to fill the bill for a while, but it too gave way to another consensus style, Italianate:
Here again associations played a big role I think in recomending italianate as a suitable style for a young nation espousing freedom and liberty. Italy was in the throes of establishing itself as a unified independent country in the 1860s and northern Italy in particular (which Italianate relates to particularly closely) was associated, presumably, with the culture of Florence and with Florence's own struggle for independence and a kind of democracy going back centuries. Italianate must have been particularly attractive to any Bostonians who prided themselves on the idea that Boston was the Florence of America!
So it's probably not surprising that the greatest achievement of Italianate as a consensus Great Style for America was in Boston: The Boston Public Library...
The conceit is that this building is based on the fortress-like palazzos of Florentine elites of the Renaissance, but repurposed to serve the people as their special home within the city...
It is interesting to compare the current Boston Public Library building to an earlier building for the BPL, also Italianate in style and also extraordinarily beautiful, as well as a very early version of the style ...
As with Greek Revival architecture, Boston seems to have created both an early great version of the style and possibly one of the latest and perhaps the greatest version too. Although Italianate was an international style, I think of it as the first style of architecture in which a uniquely American version began to develop. American Italianate has elements recognizable from the international style, but proportioned and arranged with a new freedom.
With Italianate, one gets the impression for the first time that American architects were less interested in showing that they could measure up to English and French counterparts and more interested in exploring a style in their own way. The search for a genuinely American style heated up after Italianate, with groundbreaking architects such as Furness, Richardson, Sullivan and Wright. Then came the allout aesthetic assault that was the Chicago World's Fair, which infamously stopped the development of an authentic American style in its tracks, establishing the grandeur of the European Beaux Arts style as the International Grand Style of Empire. To this day it's probably fair to say that there has never been an authentically American grand style. Maybe such a thing is a contradiction. Can something be grand without it being some kind of imperial posturing? Is artistic consensus possible or even desirable?
My next piece will be about Copley Square in Boston. It's one of my favorite places in the world and I have plans for it!!
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