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THE GOTHIC REVIVAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE

The Gothic Revival was an architectural movement which originated in mid-18th century England. In the nineteenth century, increasingly serious and learned neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval forms, in distinction to the classical styles which were prevalent at the time. The Gothic Revival was paralleled and supported by medievalism, which had its roots in antiquarian concerns with survivals and curiosities. The movement had significant influence throughout the United Kingdom as well as in Europe and North America, and perhaps more Gothic architecture was built in nineteenth and twentieth centuries than had originally ever been built.

In English literature, the architectural Gothic Revival and classical Romanticism gave rise to the Gothic novel genre, beginning with Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, and inspired a 19th century genre of medieval poetry which stems from the pseudo-bardic poetry of "Ossian." Poems like "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.

History
Survival and revival

Gothic architecture did not die out completely in the 15th century, but instead lingered on in on-going cathedral-building projects and the construction of churches in increasingly isolated rural districts of England, France, Spain and Germany. In Bologna, in 1646, the Baroque architect Carlo Rainaldi constructed Gothic vaults (completed 1658) for the Basilica of San Petronio which had been under construction since 1390; there, the Gothic context of the structure overrode considerations of the current architectural mode. Similarly, 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 apparently 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 College, Oxford University, and, later, Nicholas Hawksmoor's west towers of Westminster Abbey, blur the boundaries between what is called "Gothic survival" and the Gothic revival.

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 continued to be disregarded as barbaric and crude, however: tapestries and metalwork, as examples. Sentimental and nationalist associations with historical figures were as strong in this early revival, as purely aesthetic concerns. A few Britons, and soon some Germans, 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 which 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," (illustrated, left) appealed to the rococo tastes of the time, and 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, for a romantic vision of a Gothic abbey, Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire. Inveraray Castle, constructed from 1746 with design input from William Adam, displays early revival of Gothic features in Scotland. The "Gothick" style was an architectural manifestation of the artificial "picturesque" seen elsewhere in the arts: these ornamental temples and summer-houses ignored the structural logic of true Gothic buildings and were effectively Palladian buildings with pointed arches. The eccentric landscape designer Batty Langley even attempted to "improve" Gothic forms by giving them classical proportions.

A younger generation who took Gothic architecture more seriously provided the readership for J. Britten's series of Cathedral Antiquities, which began appearing in 1814. 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 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 and was still being republished in 1881.

Romanticism and nationalism

French neo-Gothic had its roots in a minor aspect of Anglomanie, starting in the late 1780s. In 1816, when French scholar Alexandre de Laborde said "Gothic architecture has beauties of its own," the idea was novel to most French readers. Starting in 1828, Alexandre Brogniart, the director of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory, produced fired enamel paintings on large panes of plate glass, for Louis-Philippe's royal chapel at Dreux. It would be hard to find a large, significant commission in Gothic taste that preceded this one, save for some Gothic features in a handful of jardins à l'anglaise.

The French Gothic revival was set on sounder intellectual footings by a pioneer, Arcisse de Caumont, who founded the Societé des Antiquaires de Normandy at a time when antiquaire still meant a connoisseur of antiquities, and who published his great work on Norman architecture in 1830 (Summerson 1948). The following year Victor Hugo's Nôtre Dame de Paris 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, however, rather than to initiate a craze for neo-Gothic in contemporary life. In the same year that Nôtre-Dame de Paris appeared, the new French monarchy established a post of Inspector-General of Ancient Monuments, a post filled in 1833 by Prosper Merimée, 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. When France's first prominent neo-Gothic church[2] was built, the Basilica of Sainte-Clothilde,[3] Paris, begun in September 1846 and consecrated 30 November 1857, the architect chosen was, significantly, of German extraction, François-Christian Gau (1790-1853); the design wassignificantly modified by Gau's assistant, Théodore Ballu, in the later stages, to produce the pair of flêches that crown the west end.

Meanwhile, in Germany, interest in the Cologne Cathedral, which had begun construction in 1248 and was still unfinished at the time of the revival, began to reappear. The 1820s Romantic movement brought back interest, and work began once more in 1824, significantly marking a German return of Gothic architecture.

Because of Romantic nationalism in the early 19th century, the Germans, French and English all claimed the original Gothic architecture of the 12th century as originating in their own country. The English boldly coined the term "Early English" for Gothic, a term that implied Gothic architecture was an English creation. In his 1832 edition of Notre Dame de Paris Victor Hugo said "Let us inspire in the nation, if it is possible, love for the national architecture", implying that Gothic was France's national heritage. In Germany with the completion of Cologne Cathedral in the 1880s, at the time the world's tallest building, the cathedral was seen as the height of Gothic architecture.

In Florence, the Duomo's temporary façade erected for the Medici-House of Lorraine nuptials in 1588-1589, was dismantled, and the west end of the cathedral stood bare again until 1864, when a competition was held to design a new facade suitable to Arnolfo di Cambio's structure and the fine campanile next to it. This competition was won by Emilio De Fabris, and work on his polychrome design and panels of mosaic was begun in 1876 and completed in 1887.
Pugin, Ruskin and the Gothic as a moral force.

In the late 1820s, A.W.N. Pugin, still a teenager, was working for two highly visible employers, providing Gothic detailing for luxury goods. For the Royal furniture makers Morel and Seddon he provided designs for redecorations for the elderly George IV at Windsor Castle in a Gothic taste suited to the setting. For the royal silversmiths Rundell Bridge and Co., Pugin provided designs for silver from 1828, using the 14th-century Anglo-French Gothic vocabulary that he would continue to favour later in designs for the new Palace of Westminster.

In Contrasts (1836), Pugin expressed his admiration not only for mediæval art but the whole mediæval ethos, claiming that Gothic architecture was the product of a purer society. In The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841), he suggested that modern craftsmen seeking to emulate the style of medieval workmanship should also reproduce its methods. Pugin believed Gothic was true Christian architecture, boldly saying "The pointed arch was produced by the Catholic faith". Pugin's most famous building is The Houses of Parliament in London, which he designed in two campaigns, 1836-1837 and again in 1844 and 1852, with the classicist Charles Barry as his co-architect. Pugin provided the external decoration and the interiors, while Barry designed the symmetrical layout of the building, causing Pugin to remark, "All Grecian, Sir; Tudor details on a classic body".

John Ruskin supplemented Pugin's ideas in his two hugely influential theoretical works, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1853). Finding his architectural ideal in Venice, Ruskin proposed that Gothic buildings excelled above all other architecture because of the "sacrifice" of the stone-carvers in intricately decorating every stone. By declaring the Doge's Palace to be "the central building of the world", Ruskin argued the case for Gothic government buildings as Pugin had done for churches, though only in theory. When his ideas were put into practice, Ruskin despised the spate of public buildings built with references to the Ducal Palace, including the University Museum in Oxford.

Ecclesiology

In England, the Church of England was undergoing a revival of Anglo-Catholic and ritualist ideology in the form of the Oxford Movement and it became desirable to build large numbers of new churches to cater for the growing population. This found ready exponents in the universities, where the ecclesiological movement was forming. Its proponents believed that Gothic was the only style appropriate for a parish church, and favoured a particular era of Gothic architecture - the "decorated". The Ecclesiologist, the publication of the Cambridge Camden Society, was so savagely critical of new church buildings that were below its exacting standards that a style called the 'archaeological Gothic' emerged, producing some of the most convincingly mediæval buildings of the Gothic revival. However, not every architect or client was swept away by this tide. Although Gothic Revival succeeded in becoming an increasingly familiar style of architecture, the attempt to associate it with superiority of the high church, as advocated by Pugin and the ecclesiological movement, was anathema to those with ecumenical or nonconformist principles. They looked to adopt it solely for its aesthetic romantic qualities, to combine it with other styles or look to northern Europe for Gothic of a more plain appearance, and to consciously choose a quite different style; or in some instances all three of these as at the ecumenical Abney Park Cemetery for whom the architect William Hosking FSA was engaged.

Viollet-le-Duc and Iron Gothic

If France had not been quite as early on the neo-Gothic scene, she produced a giant of the revival in Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. As well as being 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 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 was in stark contrast to the revival's romanticist origins, and considered by some to be a prelude to the structural honesty demanded by Modernism.

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 structural 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 Antonio Gaudi.
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, The Gothic Revival. An Essay, which appeared in 1928.

Gothic Revival in the decorative arts

The revived Gothic style was not limited to architecture. Whimsical Gothick detailing in English furniture is traceable as far back at 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 gothick details with Rococo profusion, on a symmetrical form. Sir Walter Scott's Abbotsford exemplifies in its furnishings the "Regency gothic". By the mid-nineteenth century Gothic traceries and niches could be inexpensively recreated 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.

The 20th century and beyond

At the turn of the 20th Century, technological developments such as the light bulb, the elevator, and steel framing caused many to see architecture that used load-bearing masonry as obsolete. Steel framing supplanted the non-ornamental functions of rib vaults and flying buttresses. Some architects used Neo-Gothic tracery as applied ornament to an iron skeleton underneath, for example in Cass Gilbert's 1907 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 became supplanted by Modernism. Some in the Modern Movement saw the Gothic tradition of architectural form entirely in terms of the "honest expression" of the technology of the day, and saw themselves as the rightful heir to this tradition, with their 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. In the USA, James Gamble Rodgers' reconstruction of the campus of Yale University and Charles Donagh Maginnis's early buildings at Boston College helped establish the prevalence of Collegiate Gothic architecture on American university campuses. The Gothic revival skyscraper on the University of Pittsburgh's campus, the Cathedral of Learning, for example, used very Gothic stylings both inside and out, while using modern technologies to make the building taller. 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." In addition to Princeton University, Lehigh University and Boston College, some of the buildings on West Chester University's campus are also built in the Collegiate Gothic style. Indeed, Atlanta's historic Oglethorpe University continues to build in the Collegiate Gothic style to this day, with its four newest residence halls mimicking the school's "Silent Faculty" of academic buildings.

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. In 2002, Demetri Porphyrios was commissioned to design a neo-Gothic residential college at Princeton University to be known as Whitman College. Porphyrios has won several commissions after votes by student bodies, not university design committees, confirming what modernist architects have suspected: that neo-gothic architecture may be more popular among the public, in spite of resistance to gothic as a "style" among the architectural establishment, and cost restraints.

GOTHIC REVIVAL ARCHITECTS

WILLIAM BUTTERFIELD

William Butterfield (7 September 1814 - 23 February 1900), born in London, architect of the Gothic revival, and associated with the Oxford Movement (aka the Tractarian Movement).
William Butterfield was born in London in 1814. His parents were strict non-conformists and ran a chemist shop in the Strand. He was one of nine children and was educated at a local school. At the age of 16, he was apprenticed to a builder in Pimlico, Thomas Arber, who later became bankrupt. He studied architecture under E. L. Blackburne (1833-1836). From 1838 to 1839, he was an assistant to Harvey Eginton, an architect in Worcester, where he became articled. He established his own architectural practice at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1840.

From 1842, Butterfield he was involved with the Cambridge Camden Society, later The Ecclesiological Society. He contributed designs to the Society's journal, The Ecclesiologist. His involvement influenced his architectural style. He also drew religious inspiration from the Oxford Movement and as such, he was very "High Church", despite his non-conformist upbringing. He was a Gothic revival architect, and as such he reinterpreted the original Gothic style in Victorian terms. Many of his buildings were for religious use, although he also designed for colleges and schools.
In 1884, Butterfield was the recipient of the RIBA Gold Medal. In 1900, he died in London.

FRANK FURNESS

Frank Heyling Furness (November 12, 1839 - June 27, 1912) was a noted American architect.
Furness was born in Philadelphia. His father, William Furness, was a prominent Unitarian minister, and his brother, Horace Furness, was an outstanding Shakespeare scholar; Furness, however, did not attend a university and apparently did not travel to Europe. He is remembered for his eclectic, often idiosyncratically scaled buildings and for his influence on Louis Sullivan and the acclaimed 20th theater designer William Harold Lee. Although much of Furness' architectural designs were uniquely his own creation, Gothic Revival was a prevailing theme throughout.

Furness began his architectural training in the office of John Fraser, Philadelphia, in the 1850s. He participated in the Beaux-Arts-inspired atelier of Richard Morris Hunt, New York, from 1859 to 1861 and again in 1865. During the Civil War he served as Captain and commander of Company F, 6th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry ("Rush's Lancers"), receiving a Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery at the Battle of Trevilian Station, Virginia, on June 12, 1864-the only American architect to receive this honor.

Furness considered himself Hunt's apprentice and was influenced by Hunt's dynamic personality and accomplished, elegant buildings. He was also influenced by the architectural concepts of Viollet-le-Duc and John Ruskin. Louis Sullivan worked briefly as a draftsman in Furness's office, and his use of decorative organic motifs can be traced, at least in part, to Furness.
During his career, Furness designed over four hundred buildings including banks, churches, synagogues, railway stations for the Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio railroads, and numerous stone mansions in Philadelphia and along Philadelphia's Main Line, as well as a handful of commissioned houses at the New Jersey seashore, Washington, D.C., New York state, and Chicago, Illinois.
Furness died on June 27, 1912, and is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Following decades of neglect, in which many of his most important buildings were destroyed, there was a revival of interest in Furness's work in mid-twentieth century. Robert Venturi in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture wrote, not unadmiringly, of the Philadelphia Clearing House: "... it is an almost insane short story of a castle on a city street."
A fictional desk built by Furness was featured in the John Bellairs novel The Mansion in the Mist.

COPE AND STEWARDSON

Cope & Stewardson (1885-1912) were an architecture firm best known for their academic building and campus designs. They are often regarded as Masters of the Collegiate Gothic style. Walter Cope and John Stewardson established the firm in 1885, and were later joined by Emlyn Stewardson in 1887. The firm went on to became one of the most influential and prolific Philadelphia firms to span from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. Between 1886 and 1904 they made formative additions to the campuses of Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Although Walter Cope and John Stewardson were major exponents and purveyors of the Collegiate Gothic architectual style which swept campuses across the country in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, they were equally adept at other styles and other building types. Their earliest important commission was Radnor Hall at Bryn Mawr College (1886), when, ironically, they replaced Cope's mentor Addison Hutton as campus architects. Commissions shortly followed for buildings on the campuses of the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Washington University in St. Louis (which were part of buildings designed for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair). Although these academic buildings were their hallmark, other projects included residential, commercial, institution, and industrial buildings.

As important as their contribution to the architecture of Philadelphia and its environs is the role which Cope & Stewardson played in architectural education. Great numbers of young apprentices and would-be architects passed their days of training in the office, making it a general stopping place for many architects who would later become famous in their own right. In 1923 the annual T-Square club exhibition catalog published a photograph of the Cope & Stewardson office from about 1899. Included in the number of partners and younger architects are: Walter Cope; John A. MacMahon; James O. Betelle (later of Newark, NJ); Emlyn Stewardson; S. A. Cloud; Wetherill P. Trout; Herbert C. Wise; James P. Jamieson; Eugene S. Powers; E. Perot Bissell; Louise Stavely; Charles H. Bauer (later in Newark, NJ); William Woodburn Potter; John Molitor, Camillo Porecca; and C. Wharton Churchman.

Walter Cope (1860-1902)

In 1860, Walter Cope was born and Christened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Thomas P. Cope and Elizabeth Waln Stokes Cope. After graduating from the Germantown Friends School, he attended classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1883. A year later, he traveled to England and France and in 1885 the firm of Cope and Stewardson was established.
Cope was a founding member of the T-Square Club in 1883 and later served as vice-president, secretary, treasurer, president, and as a member of the executive committee. He was also a Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania from 1892 to 1902. After teaching at Penn, he became a Professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Cope was also part of the investigating committee appointed to study conditions governing the new State Capitol Building competition in 1901. From 1896 to 1898 he was chairman of the committee on the restoration of Independence Hall.

John Stewardson (1858-1896)
John Stewardson, son of Thomas and Margaret Haines Stewardson, was born in 1858. His early education had been in private Christian schools in the Philadelphia area. He continued his studies at Adams Academy in Quincy, Massachusetts from 1873 to 1877. After graduation, he entered Harvard College, but left in 1878. He briefly continued he studies at the University of Pennsylvania and than joined the Atelier Pascal in Paris, France. In 1882 he returned to Philadelphia, working first in T. P. Chandler's office and then in the office of Frank Furness.

In 1884 he returned to Europe to travel through Italy and Belgium. A year later, he joined in personal practice with Walter Cope. They were joined in 1887 by John's younger brother Emlyn L. Stewardson, who had recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in civil engineering.
In 1892, Stewardson joined the University of Pennsylvania as staff lecturer in their new School of Architecture. He was also one of the founding members of the T-Square Club, serving in 1885 and 1891 as president of that organization. He also served as treasurer of the Philadelphia Chapter of the AIA in 1886.

He is credited with the taste for English Gothic Revival which Cope & Stewardson used in their collegiate buildings. Talbot Hamlin, in his biographical description, for the Dictionary of American Biography notes that, following Stewardson's trip to England in 1894, the buildings at the University of Pennsylvania, which were on the boards at the time, changed from stone structures to brick with stone trim.
Stewardson's career was abruptly halted in 1896 when he died following a skating accident on the Schuylkill River, where he had gone for an afternoon's outing with his friend Wilson Eyre.

RALPH ADAMS CRAM

Ralph Adams Cram, (December 16, 1863 - September 22, 1942), was an American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the gothic style. His work is represented on a number of campuses, including Cornell University, Sweet Briar College, University of Richmond, Williams College, Rice University, Wheaton College in Massachusetts, the United States Military Academy, and St. George's School, but he is most closely associated with Princeton, where he served as Consulting Architect from 1907 to 1929.

From 1898 to 1914 he was in partnership with Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue in the Boston firm then known as Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson.
Born into a Unitarian clerical family, as a young man Cram considered himself an agnostic. But after a dramatic conversion during Christmas Eve mass in Rome in 1887, he became and remained a fervent Anglo-Catholic. As author and lecturer as well as architect, he propounded an aesthetique holding that the Renaissance was in part an unfortunate dead-end detour for western culture: authentic development could come only by picking up where it had left off, i.e. by taking inspiration from Gothic.

ALEXANDER JACKSON DAVIES

Alexander Jackson Davis (A.J. Davis) (New York City July 24, 1803 - January 14, 1892) was the most successful and influential American architect of his generation.

He studied at the American Academy of Fine Arts, the New-York Drawing Association, and from the Antique casts of the National Academy of Design. Dropping out of school he became a respectable lithographer and from 1826 worked as a draftsman for Josiah R. Brady, a New York architect who was an early exponent of the Gothic revival: Brady's Gothic 1824 St Luke's Episcopal Church is the oldest surviving structure in Rochester, New York.

Davis made a first independent career as an architectural illustrator in the 1820s, but his friends, especially painter John Trumbull, convinced him to turn his hand to designing buildings. Picturesque siting, massing and contrasts remained essential to his work, even when he was building in a Classical style. In 1826, Davis went to work in the office of Ithiel Town and Martin E. Thompson, the most prestigious architectural firm of the Greek Revival; in the office Davis had access to the best architectural library in the country, in a congenial atmosphere where he gained a thorough grounding.
From 1829, in partnership with Town, Davis formed the first recognizably modern architectural office and designed many late classical buildings, including some of public prominence. In Washington, Davis designed the Executive Department offices and the first Patent Office building (1834), and the Custom House of New York City (1833 - 42, illustration,above right).

A series of consultations over state capitols followed, none apparently built entirely as Davis planned: the Indiana State House, Indianapolis (1831 - 35) elicited calls for his advice and designs in building other state capitols in the 1830s: North Carolina's (1833 - 40, with local architect David Paton), the Illinois State Capitol, often attributed entirely to the Springfield, Illinois architect John Rague, who was at work on the Iowa State Capitol at the same time, and in 1839 the committee responsible for commissioning a design for the Ohio Statehouse asked his advice. The resulting capitol in Columbus, Ohio, often attributed to the Hudson River Valley painter Henry Cole consulting with Davis and Ithiel Town, has a stark Greek Doric colonnade across a recessed entrance, flanked by recessed window bays that continue the rhythm of the central portico, all under a unique drum capped by a low saucer dome. With Town's partner James Dakin he designed the noble colossal Corinthian order of "Colonnade Row" on New York's Lafayette Street, the very first apartments designed for the prosperous American middle class (1833, half still standing). He continued in partnership with Town until shortly before Town's death in 1844.

In 1831 he was elected an associate member of the National Academy. Davis was one of three architects who established the American Institute of Architects in May, 1837; in his retirement years he resigned, because he believed the A.I.A. had strayed from its original purpose.
From 1835, Davis began work on his own on Rural Residences, his only publication, the first pattern book for picturesque residences in a domesticated Gothic Revival taste, which could be executed in carpentry, and also containing the first of the "Tuscan" villas, flat-roofed with wide overhanging eaves and picturesque corner towers. Unfortunately the Panic of 1837 cut short his plans for a series of like volumes, but Davis soon formed a partnership with Andrew Jackson Downing, illustrating his widely-read books.

house. Many of his villas were built in the scenic Hudson River Valley- where his style informed the vernacular Hudson River Bracketed that gave Edith Wharton a title for a novel - but Davis sent plans and specifications to clients as far afield as Indiana, with the understanding that construction would be undertaken by local builders. This practice put Davis's personal stamp on the practical builders' vernacular throughout the Eastern United States as far south as North Carolina, where he designed Blandwood, the 1846 home of Governor John Motley Morehead that stands as America's earliest Tuscan Villa. Innovative interior features, including his designs for mantels and sideboards, were also widely imitated in the trade. Other influential interior details include pocket shutters at windows, bay windows, and mirrored surfaces to reflect natural light.

In the late 1850s, Davis worked with the entrepreneur Llewellyn S. Haskell to create Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, a garden suburb that was one of the first planned residential communities in the United States.

Davis designed buildings for the University of Michigan in 1838, and in the 1840s he designed buildings for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
At Virginia Military Institute, Jackson's designs from 1848 through the 1850s created the first entirely Gothic revival college campus, built in brick and stuccoed to imitate stone. Davis's plan for the Barracks quadrangle was interrupted by the Civil War; it was sympathetically completed to designs of Bertram Goodhue in the early 20th century.

With the onset of Civil War in 1861, patronage in house building dried up, and after the war, new styles unsympathetic to Davis's nature, were in vogue. He built little in the last thirty years of his life, but spent his easy retirement in West Orange drawing plans for grandiose schemes that he never expected to build, and selecting and ordering his designs and papers, by which he determined to be remembered. They are shared by four New York institutions: the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, the New York Public Library, the New-York Historical Society, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A further collection of Davis material has been assembled at the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur Museum library.
Contemporary interest in Davis was spurred by a retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in 1992.

ANDREW JACKSON DOWNING

Andrew Jackson Downing (born October 30, 1815 - died July 28, 1852) was an American landscape designer and writer, a prominent advocate of the Gothic Revival style in the United States, and editor and publisher of The Horticulturist magazine (1846-52).
Downing was born in Newburgh, New York, United States, to Samuel Downing (a nurseryman) and Becky Crandall. After finishing his schooling at 16, he worked in his father's nursery and gradually became interested in landscape gardening and architecture. He began writing on botany and landscape gardening and then undertook to educate himself thoroughly in these subjects. In 1841 his first book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America, was published to a great success.

In 1842 Downing collaborated with Alexander Jackson Davis on the book Cottage Residences, a highly influential pattern book of houses that mixed romantic architecture with the English countryside's pastoral picturesque, derived in large part from the writings of John Claudius Loudon. The book was widely read and consulted, doing much to spread the so-called "Carpenter Gothic" and Hudson River Bracketed architectural styles among Victorian builders, both commercial and private.
With his brother, Charles, he wrote Fruits and Fruit Trees of America (1845), long a standard work. This was followed by The Architecture of Country Houses (1850), another influential pattern book.
In 1850, as Downing traveled in Europe, an exhibition of continental landscape watercolors by Englishman Calvert Vaux captured his attention. He encouraged Vaux to emigrate to the United States, and opened what was to be a thriving practice in Newburgh. Frederick Clarke Withers (1828-1901) joined the firm during its second year. Downing and Vaux worked together for two years, and during those two years, he made Vaux a partner. Together they designed many significant projects, including the grounds in the White House and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. Vaux's work on the Smithsonian inspired an article he wrote for The Horticulturist, in which he stated his view that it was time the government should recognize and support the arts.

Shortly afterwards in 1852, Downing died during a fire in a steamboat accident. A boiler explosion quickly spread flames across the wooden vessel and Downing was consumed in a bath of fiery death. A few ashen remains and his clothes were rescued days later. His remains were interred in Cedar Hill Cemetery, in his birthplace of Newburgh, New York. Withers and Vaux took over Downing's architectural practice.

Downing influenced not only Vaux but also landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted; the two men met at Downing's home in Newburgh. In 1858, their joint design--the Greensward Plan--was selected in a design competition for the new Central Park in New York City. In 1860, Olmsted and Vaux proposed that a bust of Downing be placed in the new park as an "appropriate acknowledgment of the public indebtedness to the labors of the late A. J. Downing, of which we feel the Park itself is one of the direct results." The monument was never built in the park, but a memorial honoring Downing stands near the Smithsonian main building in Washington, D.C. Botanist John Torrey named the genus Downingia after Downing.

BERTRAM GOODHUE

Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (April 28, 1869-April 23, 1924) was a renowned American architect celebrated for his work in neo-gothic design. He also designed notable typefaces, including Cheltenham and Merrymount for the Merrymount Press.

Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue was born in Pomfret, Connecticut to Charles Wells Goodhue and his second wife, Helen (Eldredge) Grosvenor Goodhue. Due to financial constraints he was educated at home by his mother until, at age 11 years, he was sent to Russell's Collegiate and Military Institute. Finances prevented him from attending university, but he received an honorary degree from Trinity College in 1911. In lieu of formal training he moved to New York in 1884 to apprentice at the architectural firm of Renwick, Aspinwall and Russell (one of its principals, James Renwick, Jr., was the architect of Grace Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral, both in New York City). Goodhue's apprenticeship ended in 1891 when he won a design competition for St. Matthew's in Dallas.

After completing his apprenticeship, Goodhue moved to Boston, where he was befriended by a group of young, artistic intellectuals involved in the founding of the Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston in 1897. This circle included Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard University and Ernest Fenellosa of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It was also through this group that Goodhue met Ralph Adams Cram, who would be his business partner for almost 25 years. Cram and Goodhue were members of several societies, including the "Pewter Mugs" and the "Visionists". In 1892-1893 they published a quarterly art magazine called The Knight Errant. The multitalented Goodhue was also a student of book design and type design. In 1896, he created the Cheltenham typeface for use by a New York printer, Cheltenham Press. This typeface came to be used as the headline type for The New York Times.

In 1891, Cram and Goodhue formed the architectural firm of Cram, Wentworth, and Goodhue, renamed Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson in 1898. The firm was a leader in neo-gothic architecture, with significant commissions from ecclesiastical, academic, and institutional clients. When Goodhue left to begin his own practice in 1914, Cram had already earned his dream Gothic commission at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Goodhue had successfully experimented with Byzantine style at the conspicuously-sited St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue in New York City (built on the new platform just above the Grand Central Terminal railyards). Goodhue had an eye for ornament and was not above introducing contemporary images into the carved reredos. In 1915, Goodhue re-interpreted a masterful Spanish Gothic style for the signature buildings on the toylike avenue, El Prado, in Balboa Park for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, for which he was the lead designer.

Eventually, Goodhue's architectural creations became freed of detail and more Romanesque, finally arriving at modern interpretations of gothic design. His work evidences his personal style, and his innovations paved the way for others to transition to modern architectural idioms. He is sometimes credited with the transition to art deco, as in his design for the Nebraska State Capitol building, by dint of which he may be classified as an American Modernist.

Over the course of his career, Goodhue relied on frequent collaborations with several significant artists and artisans. These included sculptor Lee Lawrie and mosaicist and muralist Hildreth Meiere. Their work is central to the aesthetic power and social messages implicit in Goodhue's best work, creating evocative examples of American architecture parlante that suggest a future that never was. Lawrie worked with Cram and Goodhue for the Chapel at West Point, Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Bartholomew's, and the reredos at Church of St. Thomas, and then after Goodhue's independence in 1914, on the Nebraska State Capitol, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, D.C., and Christ Church Cranbrook, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, the latter after Goodhue's death. Lawrie, Meiere, and "thematic consultant" Hartley Burr Alexander reassembled, in a way, for Rockefeller Center under architect Raymond Hood, who had also worked in Goodhue's office.

Goodhue was neurasthenic (plagued with fatigue and worry) and prone to extreme mood swings. His biographer Richard Oliver reports that he worried about money his whole life, even after achieving success. Goodhue died in New York City and, at his request, was buried at the building he considered his finest, the Church of the Intercession. There, Lawrie created for him a Gothic styled tomb, featuring Goodhue recumbent, crowned by a halo of carvings of some of his buildings. After Goodhue's death, many of his designs and projects were completed by a successor firm, Mayers Murray & Phillip. A significant archive of Goodhue's correspondence, architectural drawings, and professional papers is held by the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.

FRANCIS GOODWIN

Francis Goodwin (23 May 1784 - 30 August 1835) was an English architect, best known for his many provincial churches in the Gothic revival style, civic buildings such as the first Manchester Town Hall (1819-1834) and Macclesfield town hall (1823), plus country houses such as Lissadell House, County Sligo (1833).

Goodwin was born at King's Lynn, Norfolk, and became a pupil of J. Coxedge of Kensington. He exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1806 an Internal View of St. Nicholas' Chapel, Lynn.
He was also remembered for his allegedly aggressive business methods, particularly in respect of commissions for the so-called "Waterloo churches", constructed after British victory in the Battle of Waterloo, which effectively ended the Napoleonic Wars in 1815; Parliament voted one million pounds to the Church of England to show their gratitude for victory.

CHARLES DONAGH MAGINNIS

Considered the father of American Gothic architecture, Charles Donagh Maginnis was born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland on January 7, 1867. He emigrated to Boston at age 18 and got his first job apprenticing for architect Edmund Wheelwright as a draftsman. In 1900 he became a member of the Boston Society of Architects, serving as its president from 1924 to 1926. Though he worked in a number of styles, Maginnis became a distinguished proponent of Gothic architecture and an articulate writer and orator on the role of architecture in society. His pioneering work both influenced and was influenced by fellow Gothicist Ralph Adams Cram.

With Timothy Walsh, he formed what would become one of the leading architectural firms in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1909, Maginnis & Walsh won the competition to build the new campus of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The collegiate Gothic design was deemed "the most beautiful campus in America" by The American Architect magazine and established the firm's reputation in collegiate and ecclesiastical architecture. Maginnis & Walsh went on to design buildings at over twenty-five colleges and universities around the country, including the main buildings at Emmanuel College, the chapel at Trinity College and the law school at the University of Notre Dame. Moreover, the design of Gasson Tower at Boston College is considered a predecessor of the dominant towers of collegiate Gothic campuses such as Harkness Tower at Yale University and the chapel tower at Duke University by Horace Trumbauer of 1930-35.

In the Boston area, he also built the church of St. Catherine of Genoa in Somerville, Massachusetts and St. Aidan's Church in Brookline, Massachusetts where he was a parishioner along with the Kennedy family and other prominent Irish-Americans. St. Aidan's, the location of the christening of John F. Kennedy, has since been closed and converted into housing. Among his other designs are the chancel at Trinity Church in Boston's Copley Square and the high altar at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.

From 1937 to 1939 Maginnis held the office of President of the American Institute of Architects. In 1948 the Institute presented him with the Gold Medal for "outstanding service to American architecture," the highest award in the profession. He received honorary degrees from, among others, Boston College, Harvard, Holy Cross, Notre Dame and Tufts. He died in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1955.

The Charles D. Maginnis archives and the Maginnis & Walsh archives are housed at the Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections at Boston College. The Maginnis & Walsh collection at the Boston Public Library contains work of the architectural firm from 1913 to 1952.

BENJAMIN MOUNTFORT

Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort (13 March 1825-15 March 1898) was an English emigrant to New Zealand, where he became one of that country's most prominent 19th century architects. He was instrumental in shaping the city of Christchurch. He was appointed the first official Provincial Architect of the developing province of Canterbury. Heavily influenced by the Anglo-Catholic philosophy behind early Victorian architecture he is credited with importing the Gothic revival style to New Zealand. His Gothic designs constructed in both wood and stone in the province are considered unique to New Zealand. Today he is considered the founding architect of the province of Canterbury.

Early life

Mountfort was born in Birmingham, an industrial city in the Midlands of England, the son of perfume manufacturer Thomas Mountfort and his wife Susanna (née Woolfield). As a young adult he moved to London, where he studied architecture under the Anglo-Catholic architect Richard Cromwell Carpenter, whose medieval Gothic style of design was to have a lifelong influence on Mountfort. After completion of his training, Mountfort practised architecture in London. Following his 1849 marriage to Emily Elizabeth Newman, the couple emigrated in 1850 as some of the first settlers to the province of Canterbury, arriving on one of the famed "first four ships", the Charlotte-Jane. These first settlers, known as "The Pilgrims", have their names engraved on marble plaques in Cathedral Square, Christchurch, in front of the cathedral that Mountfort helped to design.

New Zealand

In 1850 New Zealand was a new country. The British government actively encouraged emigration to the colonies, and Mountfort arrived in Canterbury full of ambition and drive to begin designing in the new colony. With him and his wife from England came also his brother Charles, his sister Susannah, and Charles' wife, all five of them aged between 21 and 26. Life in New Zealand at first was hard and disappointing: Mountfort found that there was little call for architects. Christchurch was little more than a large village of basic wooden huts on a windswept plain. The new emigré's architectural life in New Zealand had a disastrous beginning. His first commission in New Zealand was the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Lyttelton, which collapsed in high winds shortly after completion. This calamity was attributed to the use of unseasoned wood and his lack of knowledge of the local building materials. Whatever the cause, the result was a crushing blow to his reputation. A local newspaper called him:
… a half-educated architect whose buildings… have given anything but satisfaction, he being evidently deficient in all knowledge of the principles of construction, though a clever draughtsman and a man of some taste.

Consequently, Mountfort left architecture and ran a bookshop while giving drawing lessons until 1857. It was during this period in the architectural wilderness that he developed a lifelong interest in photography and supplemented his meagre income by taking photographic portraits of his neighbours. Mountfort was a Freemason and an early member of the Lodge of Unanimity, and the only building he designed during this period of his life, in 1851, was its lodge. This was the first Masonic lodge in the South Island.

Return to architecture

In 1857 he returned to architecture and entered into a business partnership with his sister Susannah's new husband, Isaac Luck. Christchurch, which was given city status in July 1856 and was the administrative capital of the province of Canterbury, was heavily developed during this period. The rapid development in the new city created a large scope for Mountfort and his new partner. In 1858 they received the commission to design the new Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings, a stone building today regarded as one of Mountfort's most important works. The building's planning stage began in 1861, when the Provincial Council had grown to include 35 members and consequently the former wooden chamber was felt to be too small.

The new grandiose plans for the stone building included not only the necessary offices for the execution of council business but also dining rooms and recreational facilities. From the exterior, the building appears austere, as was much of Mountfort's early work: a central tower dominates two flanking gabled wings in the Gothic revival style. However the interior was a riot of colour and medievalism as perceived through Victorian eyes; it included stained glass windows, and a large double-faced clock, thought to be one of only five around the globe. The chamber is decorated in a rich, almost Ruskinesque style, with carvings by a local sculptor William Brassington. Included in the carvings are representations of indigenous New Zealand species.

This high-profile commission may seem surprising, bearing in mind Mountfort's history of design in New Zealand. However, the smaller buildings he and Luck had erected the previous year had impressed the city administrators and there was a dearth of available architects. The resultant acclaim of the building's architecture marked the beginning of Mountfort's successful career.

Mountfort's Gothic architecture

The Gothic revival style of architecture began to gain in popularity from the late 18th century as a romantic backlash against the more classical and formal styles which had predominated the previous two centuries. At the age of 16, Mountfort acquired two books written by the Gothic revivalist Augustus Pugin: The True Principles of Christian or Pointed Architecture and An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture. From this time onwards, Mountfort was a disciple of Pugin's strong Anglo-Catholic architectural values. These values were further cemented in 1846, at the age of 21, Mountfort became a pupil of Richard Cromwell Carpenter.

Carpenter was, like Mountfort, a devout Anglo-Catholic and subscribed to the theories of Tractarianism, and thus to the Oxford and Cambridge Movements. These conservative theological movements taught that true spirituality and concentration in prayer was influenced by the physical surroundings, and that the medieval church had been more spiritual than that of the early 19th century. As a result of this theology, medieval architecture was declared to be of greater spiritual value than the classical Palladian-based styles of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Augustus Pugin even pronounced that medieval architecture was the only form suitable for a church and that Palladianism was almost heretical. Such theory was not confined to architects, and continued well into the 20th century. This school of thought led intellectuals such as the English poet Ezra Pound, author of The Cantos, to prefer Romanesque buildings to Baroque on the grounds that the latter represented an abandonment of the world of intellectual clarity and light for a set of values that centred around hell and the increasing dominance of society by bankers, a breed to be despised.

Whatever the philosophy behind the Gothic revival, in London the 19th-century rulers of the British Empire felt that Gothic architecture was suitable for the colonies because of its then strong Anglican connotations, representing hard work, morality and conversion of native peoples. The irony of this was that many of Mountfort's churches were for Roman Catholics, as so many of the new immigrants were of Irish origin. To the many middle-class English empire builders, Gothic represented a nostalgic reminder of the parishes left behind in Britain with their true medieval architecture; these were the patrons who chose the architects and designs.

Mountfort's early Gothic work in New Zealand was of the more severe Anglican variety as practised by Carpenter, with tall lancet windows and many gables. As his career progressed, and he had proved himself to the employing authorities, his designs developed into a more European form, with towers, turrets and high ornamental roof lines in the French manner, a style which was in no way peculiar to Mountfort but was endorsed by such architects as Alfred Waterhouse in Britain. On the other hand, the French chateaux style was always more popular in the colonies than in Britain, where such monumental buildings as the Natural History Museum and St Pancras Station were subject to popular criticism. In the United States, however, it was adopted with huge enthusiasm, with families such as the Vanderbilts lining 5th Avenue in New York City with many Gothic chateaux and palaces.

Mountfort's skill as an architect lay in adapting these flamboyant styles to suit the limited materials available in New Zealand. While wooden churches are plentiful in certain parts of the USA, they are generally of a simple classic design, whereas Mountfort's wooden churches in New Zealand are as much ornate Gothic fantasies as those he designed in stone. Perhaps the flamboyance of his work can be explained in a statement of principles he and his partner Luck wrote when bidding to win the commission to design Government House, Auckland in 1857:

...Accordingly, we see in Nature's buildings, the mountains and hills; not regularity of outline but diversity; buttresses, walls and turrets as unlike each other as possible, yet producing a graduation of effect not to be approached by any work, moulded to regularity of outline. The simple study of an oak or an elm tree would suffice to confute the regularity theory.
This seems to be the principle of design that Mountfort practised throughout his life.

Provincial Architect

enlarged several times until it was renamed a cathedral. It was eventually replaced in 1901 by the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, a more permanent stone building by the architect Frank Petre. Mountfort often worked in wood, a material he in no way regarded as an impediment to the Gothic style. It is in this way that many of his buildings have given New Zealand its unique Gothic style. Between 1869 and 1882 he designed the Canterbury Museum and subsequently Canterbury College and its clock tower in 1877.

Construction on the buildings for the Canterbury College, which later became the University of Canterbury, began with the construction of the clock tower block. This edifice, which opened in 1877, was the first purpose built university in New Zealand. The College was completed in two subsequent stages in Mountfort's usual Gothic style. The completed complex was very much, as intended, an architectural rival to the expansions of the Oxbridge Colleges simultaneously being built in England. Built around stone courtyards, the high Victorian collegiate design is apparent. Gothic motifs are evident in every facade, including the diagonally rising great staircase window inspired by the medieval chateau at Blois. The completed composition of Canterbury College is very reminiscent of Pugin's convent of "Our Lady of Mercy" in Mountfort's home town of Birmingham, completed circa 1843, a design that Mountfort would probably have been familiar with as a boy. It is through the College buildings, and Mountfort's other works, that Canterbury is unique in New Zealand for its many civic and public buildings in the Gothic style.

George Gilbert Scott, the architect of Christchurch Cathedral, and an empathiser of Mountfort's teacher and mentor Carpenter, wished Mountfort to be the clerk of works and supervising architect of the new cathedral project. This proposal was originally vetoed by the Cathedral Commission. Nevertheless, following delays in the building work attributed to financial problems, the position of supervising architect was finally given to Mountfort in 1873. Mountfort was responsible for several alterations to the absentee main architect's design, most obviously the tower and the west porch. He also designed the font, the Harper Memorial, and the north porch. The cathedral was however not finally completed until 1904, six years after Mountfort's death. The cathedral is very much in the European decorated Gothic style with an attached campanile tower beside the body of the cathedral, rather than towering directly above it in the more English tradition. In 1872 Mountfort became a founding member of the Canterbury Association of Architects, a body which was responsible for all subsequent development of the new city. Mountfort was now at the pinnacle of his career.

By the 1880s, Mountfort was hailed as New Zealand's premier ecclesiastical architect, with over forty churches to his credit. In 1888, he designed St John's Cathedral in Napier. This brick construction was demolished in the disastrous 1931 earthquake that destroyed much of Napier. Between 1886 and 1897, Mountfort worked on one of his largest churches, the wooden St Mary's, the cathedral church of Auckland. Covering 9000 square feet (800 m²), St Mary's is the largest wooden Gothic church in the world. The custodians of this white-painted many-gabled church today claim it to be one of the most beautiful buildings in New Zealand. In 1982 the entire church, complete with its stained glass windows, was transported to a new site, across the road from its former position where a new cathedral was to be built. St Mary's church was consecrated in 1898, one of Mountfort's final grand works.
Outside of his career, Mountfort was keenly interested in the arts and a talented artist, although his artistic work appears to have been confined to art pertaining to architecture, his first love. He was a devout member of the Church of England and a member of many Anglican church councils and diocese committees. Mountfort's later years were blighted by professional jealousies, as his position as the province's first architect was assailed by new and younger men influenced by new orders of architecture. Benjamin Mountfort died in 1898, aged 73. He was buried in the cemetery of Holy Trinity, Avonside, the church which he had extended in 1876.

Evaluation of Mountfort's work

available in Europe were conspicuous by their absence. When available they were often of inferior quality, as Mountfort discovered with the unseasoned wood in his first disastrous project. His first buildings in his new homeland were often too tall, or steeply pitched, failing to take account of the non-European climate and landscape. However, he soon adapted, and developed his skill in working with crude and unrefined materials.

Christchurch and its surrounding areas are unique in New Zealand for their particular style of Gothic architecture, something that can be directly attributed to Benjamin Mountfort. While Mountfort did accept small private domestic commissions, he is today better known for the designs executed for public, civic bodies, and the church. His monumental Gothic stone civic buildings in Christchurch, which would not be out of place in Oxford or Cambridge, are an amazing achievement over adversity of materials. His hallmark wooden Gothic churches today epitomise the 19th-century province of Canterbury. They are accepted, and indeed appear as part of the landscape. In this way, Benjamin Mountfort's achievement was to make his favoured style of architecture synonymous with the identity of the province of Canterbury. Following his death, one of his seven children, Cyril, continued to work in his father's Gothic style well into the 20th century. Cyril Mountfort was responsible for the church of "St. Luke's in the City" which was an unexecuted design of his father's. In this way, and through the daily public use of his many buildings, Mountfort's legacy lives on. He ranks today with his contemporary R A Lawson as one of New Zealand's greatest 19th century architects.

GEORGE FELLOWES PRYNNE

George Halford Fellowes Prynne was born on April 2, 1853 at Wyndham Square, Plymouth, Devon. He died on May 7, 1927.

He was the designer of many parish churches in England, mostly in the southeast and southwest, and almost always on a grand scale of high-church Gothic revival. He also did much restoration work, and in all is said to have been involved in over 200 buildings.

Prynne was the second son of the Reverend George Rundle Prynne and Emily Fellowes. He studied at St. Mary's College, Harlow. He went on to Chardstock College, and thence to Eastman's Royal Naval academy at Southsea. He was student at the Royal Academy in 1876 and 77-78.
He was particularly noted for his screen work. Examples of his screens can be found at the following churches.

AUGUSTUS WELBY NORTHMORE PUGIN

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (March 1, 1812-September 14, 1852) was an English-born architect, designer and theorist of design now best remembered for his work on churches and on the Houses of Parliament. He was the son of a French draughtsman, Augustus Charles Pugin, who trained him to draw Gothic buildings for use as illustrations in his books. This was the key to his work as a leader of the Gothic revival movement in architecture. Pugin became an advocate of Gothic architecture, which he believed to be the true Christian form of architecture. He attacked the influence of 'pagan' Classical architecture in his book "Contrasts", in which he set up medieval society as an ideal, in contrast to modern secular culture. A fine example of his work in this regard is the church of St Giles in Cheadle, Staffordshire.

After the burning of the Palace of Westminster in 1834, Pugin was employed by Sir Charles Barry to work on the new Parliament buildings in London. He converted to Roman Catholicism, but also designed and refurbished Anglican as well as Roman Catholic churches throughout the country and abroad. His views, as expressed in works such as True Principles of Christian Architecture (1841) were highly influential.

Other works include the interior of St Chad's Cathedral and Oscott College, both in Birmingham.
Pugin produced a "mediæval court" at the Great Exhibition of 1851, but died suddenly after a mental collapse.

Slightly less grand than the above - are the railway cottages at Windermere Station in Cumbria. Believed to date from 1849, and probably some of the first houses to be built in Windermere, the terrace of cottages was built for railway executives. One of the fireplaces is a copy of one of his in the Palace of Westminster. He was the father of E.W. Pugin and Peter Paul Pugin, who continued their father's architectural firm as Pugin and Pugin, including several buildings in Australasia.

Early years

Augustus Northmore Welby Pugin was the son of an émigré French architect who came to England to escape the Revolution. His father, Augustin Pugin (originally de Pugin), a French Protestant of good family, worked in the fashionable "gothick" taste of the late eighteenth century. In England he got work as designer and illustrator of books on Gothic architecture and decoration compiled by the architect John Nash. He also kept a number of pupils whom he trained, together with his son, in architectural drawing. Every summer this little school went on trips to sketch Gothic remains here and in France. In this way the younger Pugin accumulated a wealth of detailed knowledge about the Gothic style from an early age. At his father's death in 1832 Pugin was able to carry on the illustrated series that his father had begun.

The young Pugin received his elementary education as a day-boy at Christ's Hospital, better known as the Blue-coat School. Pugin had shown a precocious talent for design and at the age of 15 went to work for the London furniture-makers Morel & Seddon, designing furniture in "gothick" style for Windsor Castle. At the same time he was involved, as a freelance designer, in making drawings of furniture and metalwork for other London firms. At 17 Pugin set up his own small business, supplying furniture and ornamental carved work for houses throughout the United Kingdom. After an initial success the business failed in 1831. During this period Pugin was also designing for Covent Garden Theatre, notably the staging for Sir Walter Scott's "Kenilworth" adapted as a ballet.

In 1833 he was working with Sir Charles Barry on designs for King Edward's School, Birmingham. This collaboration was followed in 1835-6 by detailed designs for Barry's entries in the competition to build the new Houses of Parliament. 1835 was a major turning point in Pugin's career. His book "Gothic Furniture in the Style of the fifteenth Century" was published, showing a new understanding of medieval techniques of construction. In the same year he built his first house, St. Marie's Grange, Salisbury, and most importantly, converted to Catholicism. While still a delicate youth he became intensely fond of the sea, had a smack of his own, did some small trading in carrying woodcarvings from Flanders, and was shipwrecked off Leith in 1830. This love of the sea was strong in him to the end of his life.

Marriage and conversion

In 1831 he married Ann Garnett, and shortly afterwards was imprisoned for non-payment of rent. He then opened a shop in Hart Street, Covent Garden, for the supply of architects' drawings and architectural accessories. The venture, however, did not succeed. His wife died in childbirth 27 May 1832. In 1833 he married Louisa Burton who bore him six children, among whom were the two who successively carried on his business, the eldest, Edward (1834-1875), (E.W. Pugin) and the youngest, Peter Paul (1851-1904). Both received from the pope the decoration of the Order of St. Sylvester. After his second marriage he took up his residence at Salisbury, and in 1834 embraced the Catholic faith, his wife following his example in 1839. Of his conversion he tells us that the study of ancient ecclesiastical architecture was the primary cause of the change in his sentiments, by inducing him to pursue a course of study, terminating in complete conversion. He never swerved in his fidelity to the Church, notwithstanding the bitter trials he experienced. In 1835 he bought a small plot of ground at Laverstock, near Salisbury, on which he built for himself a quaint fifteenth-century-style house, St. Marie's Grange.

Pugin the man

Pugin was somewhat below the middle stature and rather thick-set, with long dark hair and grey eyes that seemed to take in everything. He usually wore a sailor's jacket, loose pilot trousers, a low-crowned hat, a black silk handkerchief thrown negligently round his neck, and shapeless footwear carelessly tied. His form and attire suggested the seaman rather than a man of art. A voluble talker both at work and at table, he possessed a fund of anecdote and a great power of dramatic presentation; and when in good health overflowed with energy and good humour. And if sometimes his language was vigorous or personal, he was generous and never vindictive. Inured to industry from childhood, as a man he would work from sunrise to midnight with extraordinary ease and rapidity. His short thick hands, his stumpy tapering fingers, with the aid of a short pencil, a paid of compasses and a carpenter's rule, performed their delicate work even under such unfavourable circumstances as sailing his lugger off the South Coast. Most of his architectural work he entrusted to an enthusiastic builder whom he had known as a workingman at Beverley. He trained the workmen he employed, and was in turn idolized by them. In his home at Ramsgate he lived with the regularity and abstemiousness of a monk, and the intellectual eagerness of a student. His benevolence made him everywhere the father of the poor.
Architecture did not take up his entire attention at The Grange; from the tower of the house Pugin would watch for ships aground off the Goodwin Sands. He would put out in his wrecker, The Caroline, to rescue the ships and cargo. The salvage money he gained from these rescues brought him a tidy supplement to his income from architecture.

Scarisbrick Hall

By 1836 Pugin had formulated his ideas on architecture, and in that year he published "Contrasts", which was virtually his manifesto as a Catholic, Gothic, architect. In it he set out to prove that "the degraded state of the arts in this country is purely owing to the absence of Catholic feeling", and that the Gothic style of architecture was the only one appropriate for a Christian country to adopt. Classical architecture, he argued, was irredeemably pagan and unsuited to express christian social values. "Contrasts" brought Pugin's ideas to a wide audience, and as the new champion of Catholic architecture he was rapidly taken up by Catholic patrons including Charles Scarisbrick. In 1836 he designed the roofed stone garden seat at the north side of Scarisbrick Hall, and also the fireplace in the Great Hall. On 24 April 1837 he noted in his diary "Began Mr. Scarisbrick's house."

Pugin began work on Thomas Rickman's existing west wing, to which he added the library bay window, the garden porch and north west turret, as well as external and internal decoration. Also in 1837 he designed the south front of the Hall; although this was further embellished when built.
The problems of planning the building were considerable, as it was the client's wish to preserve the old part of the Hall, and any new work had to take this into account. Pugin's solution was to provide a north-south and east-west corridor connecting the old and new parts of the Hall on both ground and first floors. The problem of lighting these corridors was solved with masterly ingenuity; Pugin put skylights over the east-west corridor and a glazed turret over the point where the corridors crossed. He then made the upper corridor floor half the width of the one beneath and introduced superbly carved bracket supports between which light could fall into the lower corridor. True to his own code, he had made an awkward problem into a feature of the building.

In 1838 Pugin proceeded to design the north elevation and this was followed by the Clock Tower in 1839. This has since been replaced with a more spectacular tower by E.W. Pugin (his son), but the original appears in the carved view of the Hall on the main staircase at Scarisbrick. It apparently had a steeply pitched roof over the clock stage, and was the proto-type for the clock-tower of the Houses of Parliament.

Drawings of 1840 show Pugin working on the windows of the Great Hall, and designing the series of attractive and humorous carvings that ornament the bosses on its exterior. This vast room was planned as a Banqueting Hall, and so the bosses all show scenes concerned with eating and drinking. In the same year Pugin made designs for the main staircase and staircase roof. The previous lack of this apparently vital feature would not have disturbed Charles Scarisbrick's comfort, as there are two spiral staircases leading from the Oak Room and the north Library in the West Wing to his bedroom suite above.

In 1841 Pugin was engaged in designing the leaded windows of the Library. There are a range of very attractive geometric patterns in the leading of casements at Scarisbrick. The original effect must have been rich, as they were finished with gilding.

After this there comes a gap in the dated drawings. Pugin's work was in demand from other clients, and although he continued to work at Scarisbrick until at least 1845, the first impetus was gone and Charles Scarisbrick's generosity seems to have been wearing thin. From 1844 onwards Pugin was involved in the tremendous task of designing the interior decoration and furniture for the new Houses of Parliament. He was also keeping up his own busy architectural practice and finding time to write more books. Once asked why he kept no clerk to help him, Pugin replied: "Clerk, my dear sir, clerk, I never employ one. I should kill him in a week." Instead, Pugin wore himself out, and died in 1852.

In such a short life it is remarkable that Pugin had managed to influence the course of architecture and design so strongly. Through his writings he could justly claim that he had "revolutionised the taste of England." At Scarisbrick Hall he had been given his first real opportunity to put his ideas into practice, and the result must have justified Charles Scarisbrick's expectations completely.

St. Mary's College, Oscott

In 1837 he made the acquaintance of the authorities of St. Mary's College, Oscott, where his fame as a writer had preceded him. He found there men in sympathy with his ideas about art and religion. The president, Rev. Henry Weedall, was so impressed by him, that he accepted his services for the completion of the new chapel and for the decorations of the new college, which was opened in 1838. He designed the apse with its effective groinings, the stained glass of the chancel windows, the decorated ceiling, the stone pulpit, and the splendid Gothic vestments. He constructed the reredos of old wood-carvings brought from the Continent, he placed the Limoges enamels on the front of the super-altar, he provided the seventeenth-century confessional, altar rails, and stalls, the carved pulpit (from St. Gertrude's, Louvain), the finest in England, as well as the ambries and chests of the sacristy (see "The Oscotian", July, 1905). He built both lodges and added the turret called "Pugin's night-cap" to the tower. Above all he inspired superiors and students with an ardent enthusiasm for his ideals in Gothic art, liturgy, and the sacred chant. Tradition points out the room in which on Saturday afternoons he used to instruct the workmen from Hardman's, Birmingham, in the spirit and technic of their craft. The president appointed him professor of ecclesiastical antiquities (1838-44). While at the "Old College" he gave his lectures in what is now the orphans' dining-room, and at the new college in a room which still bears in the inscription "Architectura". This association with one of the leading Catholic colleges in England afforded him valuable opportunities for the advancement of his views.

Palace of Westminster

Much discussion has arisen concerning the claims of Pugin to the credit of having designed the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. The old Palace of Westminster had been destroyed by fire in 1834; plans for the new buildings were invited, and those of Charles Barry (afterwards Sir Charles) received the approval of the Commissioners from among some eighty-four competitors. The first stone of the new erection was laid in 1840 and Queen Victoria formally opened the two houses in 1852. At the outset Barry called in Pugin (1836-37) to complete his half-drawn plans, and he further entrusted to him the working plans and the entire decoration (1837-52). Pugin's own statement on the subject is decisive: Barry's great work, he said, was immeasurably superior to any that I could at the time have produced, and had it been otherwise, the commissioners would have killed me in a twelve-month (i.e. by their opposition and interference).

Writings

The influence he wielded must be ascribed as much to his vigorous writings and exquisite designs as to any particular edifice which he erected. His Contrasts (1836) placed him at once ahead of the pioneers of the day. His "Glossary" (1844), so brilliant a revival in form and colour, produced nothing short of a revolution in church decoration. Scarcely less important were his designs for Furniture (1835), for Iron and Brass Work (1836), and for Gold and Silver-Smiths (1836) to which should be added his Ancient Timber Houses of the XVth and XVIth Centuries (1836), and his latest architectural work on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts (1851).

Besides the above elaborately illustrated productions, many other explanatory and apologetic writings, especially his lectures delivered at Oscott (see Catholic Magazine, 1838, April and foll.) gave powerful expression to the message he had to deliver. As closely allied with his idea of the restoration of constructive and decorative art, he brought out a pamphlet on the chant: An Earnest Appeal for the Revival of the Ancient Plain Song (1850). It is worthy of mention that some of his earliest drawing appears in the volumes published by his father (Examples of Gothic Architecture, 1821, 226 plates; Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, 1828, 80 plates; Gothic Ornaments, England and France, 1831, 91 plates).

'Architectural genius'

In knowledge of medieval architecture and in his insight into its spirit and form, he stood above all his contemporaries. As a draughtsman he was without a rival. The success of his career is to be sought not so much in the buildings he erected, which, being mostly for the Catholic body, were nearly always shorn of their chief splendour by the poverty of his patrons. He invented now new forms of design, though he freely used the old; his instinct led him to Art as such, but to the Gothic embodiment of Art, which seemed to him the only true form of Christian architecture. He lacked the patience and breadth of the truly great mind, yet he may justly claim to rank as the architectural genius of the century. His unquestioned merit is the restoration of architecture in England and the revival of the forms of medieval England, which since his day have covered the land. Queen Victoria granted his widow a pension of 100 pounds a year, and a committee of all parties founded the Pugin Travelling Scholarship (controlled by the Royal Institute of British Architects) as the most appropriate memorial of his work and a partial realization of the project which he had brought forward in his "Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England" (1843),

Pugin and the Earl of Shrewsbury

Pugin had a longterm professional relationship with John Talbot, the sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury. It was an interesting combination of minds for both architect and patron were Roman Catholic converts: Pugin, a wealthy gentleman architect from the upper middle class, and Talbot, the richest noble in the land. It was, to all intents and purposes, a business partnership made in heaven for the furtherance of God's kingdom here on earth.

Pugin's God-given genius fused with the Catholic fervour and finance of the Talbots peppered Staffordshire with churches, convents and schools of medieval splendour and magnificence. Pugin, the medieval dreamer and set designer of Victorian Gothic found in John Talbot not only a friend but also a collaborator. The building programme was certainly led by Talbot as patron, with Pugin as his master-craftsman. Indeed, it has overtones of the rapport between Edward III and Henry Yevele, born in Staffordshire, in the fourteenth century and of Henry VII and his master builder, John Wastell of Bury St Edmunds, in the fifteenth century.

The list of buildings erected by the Talbot-Pugin partnership in Staffordshire during the twelve years between 1836 and 1848 is formidable: St Mary's, Uttoxeter; the Hospital of St John, Alton Castle and Alton Towers; St Giles' Church, School and Presbytery, Cheadle; St Joseph's Convent, also in Cheadle; St Wilfrid's, Cotton; St Mary's, Brewood. Fourteen buildings in all.

Pugin and Australia

The first Catholic bishop of New South Wales, Australia, John Bede Polding, met Pugin and was present when St Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham and St Giles Church, Cheadle were officially opened. Polding persuaded Pugin to design a series of churches for him. Although a number of churches do not survive, in particular none in Sydney, St Francis Xavier's in Berrima, New South Wales is regarded as a fine example of a Pugin church. Pugin's legacy in Australia, is particularly of the idea of what a church should look like:
Pugin's notion was that Gothic was Christian and Christian was Gothic, ... It became the way people built churches and perceived churches should be. Even today if you ask someone what a church should look like, they'll describe a Gothic building with pointed windows and arches. Right across Australia, from outback towns with tiny churches made out of corrugated iron with a little pointed door and pointed windows, to our very greatest cathedrals, you have buildings which are directly related to Pugin's ideas.

After his death A.W.Pugin's two sons; E.W. Pugin and Peter Paul Pugin, continued operating their father's architectural firm under the name Pugin and Pugin. This work includes most of the "Pugin" buildings in Australia and New Zealand.

Later years

During this period he did much of his best work in writing, teaching, and structural design. Although at different times he had visited France and the Netherlands either alone, or in the company of the Earl of Shrewsbury, he did not visit the great cities of Italy until 1847. The ecclesiastical buildings of Rome sorely disappointed him; but he had his compensation in the gift from Pius IX of a splendid gold medal as a token of approval, which gratified Pugin more than any event in his life. His second wife having died in 1844, he married in 1848 Jane, daughter of Thomas Knill of Typtree Hall, Herefordshire, by whom he had two children. In the meantime he had removed from Laverstock, and after a temporary residence at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea (1841), he took up his residence at Ramsgate, living first with his aunt, Miss Selina Welby, who made him her heir, and then in the house called St. Augustine's Grange[2], which, together with a church, he had built for himself. Of these he said that they were the only buildings in which his designs had not been curtailed by financial conditions.

Under a presentiment of approaching death, of which he had an unusual fear, he went into retreat in 1851, and prepared himself by prayer and self-denial for the end. At the close of the year his mind became affected and early in 1852 he was placed in the asylum commonly called Bedlam, in St. George's Fields, Lambeth. At the urgent request of his wife and in opposition to the wishes of the rest of his friends, he was removed from the asylum, first to the Grove, Hammersmith, where after six weeks' care his condition had improved to such an extent that it was possible for him to return to Ramsgate; but two days after he reached home he had a fatal stroke.

A.W.N. Pugin died, at the age of 40, on 14 September 1852 as a result, not of insanity, but probably of the effects of mercury poisoning. (cf. Rosemary Hill)
Pugin's legacy extends far beyond his own architectural designs. He was responsible for popularizing a style and philosophy of architecture that reached into every corner of Victorian life. He influence writers like John Ruskin, and designers like William Morris. His ideas were expressed in private and public architecture and art throughout Great Britain and beyond.

GEORGE GILBERT SCOTT

Sir George Gilbert Scott (July 13, 1811 - March 27, 1878) was an English architect of the Victorian Age, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches, cathedrals and workhouses.
Born in Gawcott, Buckinghamshire, Scott was the son of a clergyman. He studied architecture as a pupil of James Edmeston and from 1832 to 1834, worked as an assistant to Henry Roberts. He also worked as an assistant for his friend Sampson Kempthorne.

In about 1835, Scott took on William Bonython Moffatt as his assistant and later (1838-1845) as partner. Over the next 10 years Scott and Moffatt designed over 40 workhouses.
Meanwhile, he was inspired by Augustus Pugin to join the Gothic revival of the Victorian era, his first notable work in this style being the Martyrs' Memorial on St Giles in Oxford (1841). Later, Scott went beyond copying mediaeval English gothic for his Victorian Gothic or Gothic Revival buildings, and began to introduce features from other styles and European countries as evidenced in his glorious Midland red-brick constriction, the 'Midland Grand Hotel' at London's St Pancras Station, from which approach Scott believed a new style might emerge.

Scott was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1859. Knighted in 1872, he died in 1878 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
His sons George Gilbert Scott Junior and John Oldrid Scott and grandson, Giles Gilbert Scott, were also prominent architects.

GEORGE EDMUND STREET

George Edmund Street (20 June 1824 - 18 December 1881), English architect, was born at Woodford in Essex. He was the third son of Thomas Street, solicitor, by his second wife, Mary Anne Millington. George went to school at Mitcham in about 1830, and later to the Camberwell collegiate school, which he left in 1839. For a few months he was in his father's business in Philpot Lane, but on his father's death he went to live with his mother and sister at Exeter. There his thoughts first turned to architecture, and in 1841 his mother obtained a place for him as pupil in the office of Mr Owen Carter at Winchester. Afterwards he worked for five years as an improver with Sir George Gilbert Scott in London.
At an early age Street became deeply interested in the principles of Gothic architecture, and devoted an unsparing amount of time and labor to studying and sketching the finest examples of medieval buildings in England and on the Continent. His first commission was for the designing of Biscovey Church, Cornwall. In 1849 he took an office of his own. He was a draughtsman of a very high order; his sketches are masterpieces of spirit and brilliant touch. In 1855 he published a very careful and well illustrated work on The Brick and Marble Architecture of Northern Italy, and in 1865 a book on The Gothic Architecture of Spain, with very beautiful drawings by his own hand. In 1856/7 Philip Webb was Street's senior clerk and the young William Morris one of his apprentices. These two designers worked together on Red House (London) that became an iconic memorial to William Morris's design principles and includes work by many of his now-famous friends.

Street's personal taste led him in most cases to select for his design the 13th century Gothic of England or France, his knowledge of which was very great, especially in the skillful use of rich mouldings. By far the majority of the buildings erected by him were for ecclesiastical uses, the chief being the convent of East Grinstead, the theological college at Cuddesden and a very large number of churches, such as St Philip and St James's at Oxford, St John's at Torquay, All Saints at Clifton, St Saviour's at Eastbourne, St Margaret's at Liverpool and St Mary Magdalene, Paddington. His largest works were the nave of Bristol Cathedral, the choir of the cathedral of Christ Church in Dublin, and, above all, the new Royal Courts of Justice in London. The competition for this was prolonged and much diversity of opinion was expressed. Thus, the judges wanted Street to make the exterior arrangements and Charles Barry the interior, while a special committee of lawyers recommended the designs of Alfred Waterhouse. In June 1868, however, Street was appointed sole architect; but the building was not complete at the time of his death in December 1881.

Street was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1866, and a fellow in 1871; at the time of his death he was professor of architecture to the Royal Academy, where he had delivered a very interesting course of lectures on the development of medieval architecture. He was also president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He was a member of the Royal Academy of Vienna, and in 1878, in reward for drawings sent to the Paris Exhibition, he was made a knight of the Legion of Honour. Street was twice married, first on 17 June 1852 to Mariquita, second daughter of Robert Proctor, who died in 1874, and secondly on 11 January 1876 to Jessie, second daughter of William Holland, who died in the same year. The architect's own death, on 18 December 1881, was hastened by overwork and professional worries connected with the erection of the law courts. He was buried on 29 December 1881 in the nave of Westminster Abbey.

WILLIAM STRICKLAND

William Strickland (1788 - April 6, 1854) was a noted architect in 19th century Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is noted as one of the founders of the Gothic revival movement when in 1823 he built Saint Stephen's Church in Philadelphia. Other notable architectural works are the Second Bank of the United States (Philadelphia) and the restoration of the tower of Independence Hall (Philadelphia). He was primarily a Greek Revival architect, using the plates of The Antiquities of Athens for his inspiration, but stylistically he was a revivalist, using Gothic, Egyptian, Saracenic and Italianate. Strickland was also a civil engineer and one of the first to advocate the use of steam locomotives on railways. In his youth he was a landscape painter, illustrator for periodicals, theatrical scene painter, engraver, and pioneer aquatintist. He later moved to Nashville, Tennessee where his Egyptian-influenced design of the First Presbyterian Church (now the Downtown Presbyterian Church) was controversial but today is widely recognized as a masterpiece. He is buried within the walls of his final, arguably greatest, work, the Tennessee State Capitol.

Strickland's design for the Second Bank of the U.S. in Philadelphia (1819-1824) beat out the design of Strickland's teacher, Benjamin Latrobe. Although Strickland was still copying classical prototypes at this point, the Second Bank is an ambitious copy of the greatest greek design: The Parthenon of Athens. The competition had called for "chaste" Greek style: Strickland's elegant Greek temple design is a fitting result.

Comparison of the Second Bank of the U.S. with the later Merchant's Exchange (1836), also in Philadelphia, reveals the growth of Strickland's talent and confidence as an architect. With the Merchant Exchange, Strickland still had a classical example in mind (the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates), but created a unique building, specifically styled to fit the siting. The Merchant's Exchange was to be placed in a slightly awkward location, at the intersection of two major thoroughfares, in between the waterfront and the business district. The elegant curved façade reflects the carriage and foot traffic that would have been circulating in front of the building. This elevation, which faces toward the waterfront, is unique, Greek Revival, but modern, while the more formal elevation can be found on the opposite side of the building, facing the rest of Philadelphia. Strickland's maturity as an architect is demonstrated in this building, showing that America's architects were truly innovating, rather than copying old European classics.

EUGENE EMMANUEL VIOLLET-LE-DUC

Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (January 27, 1814 - September 17, 1879) was a French architect and theorist, famous for his restorations of medieval buildings. Born in Paris, he was as central a figure in the Gothic Revival in France as he was in the public discourse on "honesty" in architecture, which eventually transcended all revival styles, to inform the moving spirit of Modernism. Sir John Summerson considered that "there have been two supremely eminent theorists in the history of European architecture-Leon Battista Alberti and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc" (Summerson 1948).

Early years

Viollet-le-Duc's father was a civil servant in Paris who collected books; his mother's Friday salons drew Stendhal and Sainte-Beuve. Her brother, Eugène Délécluze, "a painter in the mornings, a scholar in the evenings" (Summerson), was largely in charge of the young man's education. Viollet-le-Duc showed a lively intellect: republican, anti-clerical, rebellious, he built a barricade in the July Revolution of 1830 and refused to enter the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

As an Architectural Restorer

In the early 1830s, the beginnings of a movement for the restoration of medieval buildings appeared in France. Viollet-le-Duc, returning in 1835 from a study trip to Italy, was ordered by Prosper Merimée to restore the Romanesque abbey of Vézelay. This work marked the beginning of a long series of restorations; Viollet-le-Duc's restorations at Notre Dame de Paris brought him into national attention.
Viollet-le-Duc applied the lessons he had derived from Gothic architecture, seeing beneath the atmospheric allure that drew his British contemporaries to especially what he conceived of its rational structural systems, to modern building materials such as cast iron. He practiced as archaeologically precise (for his time) a style of restoration as he could manage, but his own designs were remarkably innovative. His approach to both medieval and modern architecture was severely rational, in keeping with his own unsentimental appreciation of the Gothic achievement.
At the same time, in the cultural atmosphere of the Second Empire theory necessarily became diluted in practice, and messages were mixed: Viollet-le-Duc provided a Gothic reliquary for the relic of the Crown of Thorns at Notre-Dame in 1862, and yet Napoleon III also commissioned designs for a luxuriously appointed railway carriage from Viollet-le-Duc, in 14th-century Gothic style (Exhibition 1965).

Among his restorations were:
Churches :
Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay
Notre-Dame de Paris
Saint Denis Basilica, near Paris
Saint-Louis, in Poissy, France
Semur
Saint-Nazaire, in Carcassonne, France
Saint-Sernin, in Toulouse, France
Notre-Dame de Lausanne, Switzerland
Town Halls :
Saint-Antonin
Narbonne

Castles :
Pierrefonds
Fortified city of Carcassonne
Château de Coucy
Restoration of the Château of Pierrefonds, reinterpreted by Viollet-le-Duc for Napoleon III, was interrupted by the departure of the Emperor in 1870.

Legacy

Some of his restorations, such as that of the castle of Pierrefonds, were highly controversial because they did not aim so much at accurately recreating a historical situation as much as at creating a "perfect building" of medieval style. Modern conservation practice finds Viollet-le-Duc's restorations too free, too personal, too interpretive, but many of the monuments he restored would have otherwise been lost.

The famous Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí was strongly influenced by the Gothic architecture revival of Viollet-le-Duc.
An exhibition, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1814-1879 was presented in Paris, 1965.

Publications

Throughout his career Viollet-le-Duc made notes and drawings, not only for the buildings he was working on, but also on Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance buildings that were to be soon demolished. His notes were helpful in his published works. His study of medieval and Renaissance periods was not limited to architecture, but extended to furniture, clothing, musical instruments, armament and so forth.

All this work was published, first in serial, and then as full-scale books, as:
Dictionary of French Architecture from 11th to 16th Century (1854-1868) (Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVe siècle) - Original (French) language edition, including numerous illustrations.

Dictionary of French Furnishings (1858-1870) (Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l'époque Carolingienne à la Renaissance.)

Entretiens sur l'architecture (in 2 volumes, 1858-72), in which Viollet-le-Duc systematized his approach to architecture and architectural education, in a system radically opposed to that of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which he had avoided in his youth and despised. In Henry Van Brunt's translation, the "Discourses on Architecture" was published in 1875, making it available to an American audience little more than a decade after its initial publication in France.
Military career and influence

Viollet-le-Duc had a second career in the military, primarily in the defence of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1). He was so influenced by the conflict that during his later years he was moved to describe the idealised defence of France through the analogy of the military history of Le Roche-Pont, an imaginary castle, in his work Histoire d'une Forteresse (Annals of a Fortress, twice translated into English). Accessible and well researched, it bridges the line between novel and historical document.
Annals of a Fortress strongly influenced French military defensive thinking. Le-Duc's critique of the effect of artillery (applying his practical knowledge from the 1870-1 war) is so complete that it accurately describes the principles applied to the defence of France up to World War II. The physical results of his theories are seen in the fortification of Verdun prior to The First World War and the Maginot Line prior to WWII. In more depth his theories are reflected by the French military theory of "Deliberate Advance", where the artillery and a strong shield of fortresses in the rear of an army are key.

WILLIAM WARDELL

William Wilkinson Wardell (3 March 1824 - 19 November 1899) was an architect , notable not only for his work in Australia, the country to which he emigrated in 1858, but also for having s successful career as an ecclesiastical architect in England before his departure. In Australia he designed many public buildings. Most notably St Patrick's Cathedral, in Melbourne, Government House, and St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney. He worked in both the Gothic and classical styles. Wardell not only constructed major works in the public sector he also maintained a large private practice building houses and business premises for private individuals. He was Director-General of public works in Melbourne from 1861 until 1878. As an architect he is often compared with his friend and English counterpart Pugin.

Early life in London

A a young man he studied under the Gothic architect Augustus Pugin, Pugin became his friend and mentor, and was to inspire him not only in architecture but also in his religious convictions. Mixed in the artistic and literary circles of London he fell in with the philosophies of the Oxford and Cambridge movement, which taught amongst other things that Gothic architecture, as symbolized by the great medieval cathedrals of England was the only form of architecture, not only worthy of God, but provided fostered a spirituality that mad it easier to communicate with God. In 1843 Wardell made the then conventionally unusual decision to convert from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, adopting the motto "Inveni Quod Quaesivi"( "I have found that which I sought"). This would have been a very difficult decision to make at the time, while Catholics were not actively persecuted in Britain at the time, there was still open discrimination against the faith in certain political and business quarters. The leader of the Oxford movement John Henry Newman did not himself make the leap of faith until 1845.
Wardell's conversion to the Roman catholic faith was the result of a period of deep internal reflection. This affiliation to a more high church ritual was manifested in his architectural interests which concentrated on the more Gothic designs of England's medieval architecture. For the remainder of his life he saw architecture as a means of praising God. He always had a room in his home set aside as a chapel for personal devotion which he visited several times during the course of a day [3]. Dominating this room was an ancient carved wooden French cross, now belonging to the Melbourne Diocesan Historical Commission, who also own several other mementos of his persona devotion. Wardell also wrote, in particular two prayers devoted to the Virgin Mary, who he seems to have regarded as his especial saint. It is known that he frequently prayed for help and guidance when working on plans of church buildings.

On 7 October 1847 Wardell married Lucy Ann Butler, the daughter of William henry Butler, a wine merchant and one time Mayor of Oxford. The couple married at St Mary's Catholic Church, Moorfields and are known to have had at leat two two sons and one daughter.
By the time of his marriage aged 23, he was already a successful architect. Between 1846 and 1858 he designed over 30 churches in England, at the rate of over two a year this a a phenomenal output. As this was an era of massive church restoration (Nikolaus Pevsner has said many churches were "over-restored" during this time) it is possible that this high figure may include churches Wardell only redesigned or restored. Whatever the true number of churches he designed in England, this was a period not only of church restoration but also building of many new Roman Catholic Churches. Wardell and John newman were by no means the only converts to Catholicism, a large number of notable intellectuals too changed their faith, this coupled with the greater freedom Catholics obtained by the Catholic Emancipation Act which restored the hierarchy and removed some of the prohibitions on Catholics which had prevailed since the time of the reformation led to the Catholic Church having a revival in Britain. Thus the newly converted Pugin and his protegè Wardell were well placed to receive the numerous commissions which came flooding in.

By 1858, aged 35 Wardell was in poor health, and felt that the warmer climate of Australia would be more beneficial to his health. Obtaining the position of "Government Architect" to the city of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, Wardell and his family emigrated.

Of Wardell's prolific work in London, several notable churches, these include
St Birinus, Bridge End, Dorchester-on-Thames which was begun in 1846, and completed by 1849. This church, in Oxfordshire was one of the first Roman Catholic churches built following the passing of the 1839 Catholic Emancipation Act. The small and simple building is an almost exact replica of a 14th century Gothic chapel. It is constructed of Littlemore stone with a Caen stone porch. The interior has rectangular nave leading in the traditional fashion through a rood screen to a smaller and lower ceilinged chancel. The nave has a vaulted ceiling supported by wooden strapwork. Lit by stain glass windows, the whole structure hardly differs from the design of Anglican churches constructed in the same period. The expected paraphernalia of the more ritualistic Catholic worship is absent, side chapels and numerous secondary altars are conspicuous by their absence. The only contemporary jarring feature not found in an English country church is the set of late Byzantine style gilt chandeliers.
Another church from this period was Our Lady Star of the Sea, Greenwich, a Gothic church begun in 1856 and completed circa 1851, is surmounted by a tower completed by an ornate spire which in turn is complemented by the smaller spire of the adjacent stair turret. The church has remarkable architectural similarities to Wardell's later and largest work St Patrick's cathedral in Melbourne.Our Lady of Victories, Clapham completed between 1849-1851, Our Immaculate Lady of Victories (also known as St Mary's) situated in Clapham Park Road, Clapham, London SW4 was built between 1848 and 1851, the same year that Wardell completed Holy Trinity, Hammersmith.

Melbourne

Melbourne in the early 1850s was a rough a primitive place with potholed roads. Robbery was commonplace, and the poverty caused by the soaring inflation, and streets that were in 1854 described as open sewers ensured that disease was rife. It was into this environment came men seeking fortunes digging for gold. Within ten years the gold rush had transformed Melbourne from a provincial outpost of the British Empire to a wealthy and rapidly expanding city. Between 1853 and 1854 Melbourne doubled in size, however many of its new and expanding population lived in tented villages within the city. This need for building, coupled with available funding drew aspiring young architects from around the world among them John James Clark, Peter Kerr and in William Wilkinson Wardell.

As the newly arrived and appointed Government Architect Wardell immediately began work on St Patrick's Cathedral, a task which was to occupy him for much of his life. In 1867 the Wardell Family moved into a large new house known as Ardoch, at 226 Dandenong Road, St Kilda at the time one of the smartest and most expensive residential area of Melbourne. The 13 roomed two storied house in an Italianate style was built for £225 in 1864. The wardell family purchased it in 1867 and moved from their previous home in Powlett Street . East Melbourne. In 1859 Wardell had designed both the Catholic churches dedicated to St Mary in St. Kilda where he personally worshipped. The first in 1859 and it's larger replacement in 1897.

In Melbourne Wardell was not only the state employed Government Architect, but also had a flourishing private practice as well, building houses, shops, and business premises for all who could afford him. He did nor work in any one exclusive style, and could design in any architectural form his patron's required - Palladian, Neoclassical plus the various forms of Gothic, including notably at the ANZ Bank the floral Venetian Gothic.

In 1877 Sir Graham Berry became the premier of Victoria. His mission, considered radically left wing at the time, was to redistribute the grazing land of Victoria; and introduce a bill providing for the payment of members of the Assembly, which would enable working class candidates could to be be elected. When his aims were rejected by the council, he embarked on a public campaign of "coercion". "We coerce madmen," he said, "We put them into lunatic asylums, and never was anything more the act of madmen than the rejection of the Appropriation Bill.". On 8 January 1878 known after "Black Wednesday" his "coercing" began using the reasoning that without his bill civil servants could not be paid Berry began to dismiss public servants, starting with police and judges. Wardell's was one of the many heads which fell - dismissed from office he left Melbourne to seek employment in Sydney.
During his time in Melbourne Wardell designed numerous buildings, including 14 parish churches in both the private and public sectors, while St Patrick's Cathedral is the largest and best known other notable buildings include the following below.

St Patrick's Cathedral

This Melbourne Cathedral is the largest Church to have been commenced and brought to near completion, anywhere in the world in the 19th century. Construction of a church on the site had begun in 1850 by Bishop Alipius Goold. Building was delayed by the fror of the Gold rush. Then in 1858 Goold laid the foundation stone for a second, but larger,church on the site. After only eight months of construction, work on the 2nd church ceased. Goold then instructed the newly arrived Wardell to design a cathedral on the site, and just a month later in December 1858 the new plans were accepted and work commenced.

Contrary to common belief Wardell was not however uniquely responsible for the design, he was instructed by his patron, Bishop Goold, to incorporate into the design as much as could be saved of the previous church on the site. Thus he was forced retain the existing floor level, rather than raising it five metres which would have kept it on a level the nearby street rather than below it.
Wardell's overall design was in Gothic Revival style, paying tribute to the mediaeval cathedrals of Europe. The nave being in Early English in style, while the remainder of the building is in the Decorated gothic style, a somewhat later Gothic style.

St Patrick's Cathedral became Wardell's life's work and most notable commission. The original plans which remained unaltered during construction. The nave and its aisles were completed just ten years later. The building was finally consecrated for use in 1897. At the time of his death in 1899, Wardell was still working on designs for the minor altars and fixtures and fittings. The spires which today adorn the building, are not by Wardell, and are felt by some to be out of proportion to the design.
Wardell's ANZ Bank, Collins Street Melbourne is often considered the finest Gothic revival building in Australia. Designed to accommodate to the new English, Scottish and Australian bank. The manager George Verdon was housed in an apartment above the bank. The massive banking hall was supported by iron columns with gilded heraldic motifs. The bank at 386-388 Collins Street was built in 1883 and is of Venetian Gothic Revival style. With loggias and small balconies in a style known as Venetian floral gothic.

Government House

Government House in Melbourne is an example of the period in Wardell's career when he found his "newly discovered love for Italianate, Palladian and Venetian architecture". Designed to be the official residence of the Governor General of Australia in what is commonly described today as the Italianate style, cream coloured Government House- except for its machiolated signorial tower that Wardell crowned with a belvedere- would not be out of place among the unified streets and squares in Thomas Cubitt's Belgravia, London. One of the best-known buildings in this style and the possible inspiration was Queen Victoria's summer residence Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, England. Osborne was built between 1845 and 1851, based loosely on the palazzi of the Italian Renaissance. As the serving Inspector General of the Public Works Department, Wardell was the obvious choice of architect; work commenced in 1871 and lasted for five years.

Wardell's plan included the three-storey principal block containing the state rooms for official entertaining, and the secondary two-story wing to the north intended to contain the private apartments of the vice-regal family [15]. The facade of the principal block or corps de logis is of six bays, the pedimented windows of the first and central floor being larger than those below and above thus indicating the piano nobile. The hipped roof is concealed by a balustraded parapet. The principal block is flanked by two lower asymmetrical secondary wings that contribute picturesque massing, best appreciated from an angled view. The larger of these being divided from the principal block by the belvedere tower. The smaller, the ballroom block, is entered through a columned porte-cochere designed as a single storey prostyle portico. The ballroom is said to have been the largest in the British Empire.

The interior of the house was in contrast to the classical interior. Fireplaces of Carrara and black Belgian marble were inset with Minton tiles in the Victorian style, while the elaborate plaster ceilings have deep recessed panels and moulded cornices at odds with the classicism of the design of the mansion. However, despite is heavy handed interiors the state rooms adequately fulfilled their purpose. Government house was declare open at a ball attended by 1400 people in 1876.

Sydney

Wardell arrived in Sydney in 1878. He designed many buildings the most notable being St Mary's Cathedral. This Cathedral is slightly larger than St Patrick's' Cathedral, and is the largest Roman catholic church in Australia. Wardell designed the cathedral in the Gothic style, work began in 1868 while Wardell was still based in Melbourne. Work continued throughout Wardell's lifetime, the cathedral finally being completed in 1928. In 2000 the spires Wardell had intended, a scheme abandoned due to lack if finance, were finally constructed.

The ASN Co Building (see illustration at top of page) is a large warehouse at 1-5 Hickson Road, The Rocks, Sydney. Designed by Wardell for the Australasian Steam Navigation Co Building in 1884. It had distinctive Flemish gables and a bell tower, which has ensured it has "long been regarded as a significant Sydney landmark".

Architectural Legacy

Wardell died at his home, Upton Grange, North Sydney on the 19th November 1899 of heart failure and pleurisy. He is buried in the Catholic section of Gore Hill cemetery. He did not live long enough to see the final finishing touches to St Patrick's cathedral, and St Mary's cathedral was far from finished. His legacy to Australia has been to give that country two cathedrals which rank among the finest modern examples of gothic. St Patrick's Cathedral is considered one of the few Australian buildings to be of world significance. However, Wardell's work was more than the design of two cathedrals, his work was versatile and skilful in both the Gothic and classical styles and has given both Sydney and Melbourne some of their most distinguished 19th century buildings.

ALFRED WATERHOUSE

Alfred Waterhouse (July 19, 1830 - August 22, 1905) was an English architect, particularly associated with the Victorian Gothic revival. He is perhaps best known for his design for the Natural History Museum in London, although he also built a wide variety of other buildings throughout the country. Financially speaking, Waterhouse was probably the most successful of all Victorian architects. Though expert within Gothic and Renaissance styles, Waterhouse never limited himself to a single architectural style.

Early life

Waterhouse was born on the 19th July 1830 in Aigburth, Liverpool, the son of wealthy mill-owning Quaker parents. He was educated at the Quaker run Grove School in Tottenham near London. He studied architecture under Richard Lane in Manchester, and spent much of his youth travelling in Europe and studying in France, Italy and Germany. Upon his return to England, Alfred set up his own architectural practice in Manchester.

Waterhouse continued to practice in Manchester for 12 years, until moving his practice to London in 1865. Waterhouse's earliest commissions were for domestic buildings, but his success as a designer of public buildings was assured in 1859 when he won the open competition for the Manchester Assize Courts. This work not only showed his ability to plan a complicated building on a large scale, but also marked him out as a champion of the Gothic cause.

London practice

In 1865, Waterhouse was one of the architects selected to compete for the Royal Courts of Justice. The new University Club was undertaken in 1866. In 1868 and nine years after his work on the Manchester Assize Courts, another competition secured for Waterhouse the design of Manchester Town Hall, where he was able to show a firmer and more original handling of the Gothic style. The same year he was involved in rebuilding part of Caius College, Cambridge; this was not his first university work, for he had already worked on Balliol College, Oxford in 1867, and the new buildings of the Cambridge Union Society, in 1866.

At Caius, out of deference to the Renaissance treatment of the older parts of the college, ths Gothic element was intentionally mingled with classic detail, while Balliol and Pembroke College, Cambridge, which followed in 1871, are typical of the style of his mid career with Gothic tradition tempered by individual taste and by adaptation to modern needs. Girton College, Cambridge, a building of simpler type, dates originally from the same period (1870), but has been periodically enlarged by further buildings. Two important domestic works were undertaken in 1870 and 1871 respectively - Eaton Hall in Cheshire for the Duke of Westminster, and Heythrop Hall, Oxfordshire, the latter a restoration of a fairly strict classic type.

Waterhouse received, without competition, the commission to build the Natural History Museum in South Kensington (1873-1881), a design which marks an epoch in the modern use of architectural terracotta and which was to become his best known work. Waterhouse's other works in London included the National Liberal Club (a study in Renaissance composition), University College Hospital, the Surveyors' Institution in London's Great George Street (1896), and the Jenner Institute of Preventive Medicine in Chelsea (1895).

From the late 1860s, Waterhouse lived in the Reading area and was responsible for several significant buildings there. These included his own residences of Foxhill House (1868) and Yattendon Court (1877), together with Reading Town Hall (1875) and Reading School (1870). Foxhill House is still in use by the University of Reading, as are his Whiteknights House (built for his father) and East Thorpe House (built in 1880 for Alfred Palmer).

For the Prudential Assurance Company, Waterhouse designed many offices, including their Holborn Bars head office in Holborn and branch offices in Southampton, Nottingham and Leeds. He also designed offices for the National Provincial Bank in Piccadilly (1892) and in Manchester. The Liverpool Infirmary was Waterhouse's largest hospital; and St. Mary's Hospital in Manchester, the Alexandra Hospital in Rhyl, and extensive additions at the Nottingham General Hospital, also involved him. He was involved in a series of works for the Victoria University, of which he was made LL.D. in 1895.

Other educational buildings designed by Waterhouse include Yorkshire College, Leeds (1878), the Victoria Building for the Liverpool University College (now University of Liverpool) (1885), St Paul's School in Hammersmith (1881); and the Central Technical College in London's Exhibition Road (1881).
Among works not already mentioned are the Cambridge Union building and subsequently a similar building for the Oxford Union; Strangeways Prison; St Margaret's School in Bushey; the Metropole Hotel in Brighton; Hove Town Hall; Knutsford town hall; Alloa Town Hall; St. Elisabeth's church in Reddish; Darlington town clock, covered market hall and Backhouse's Bank (now Barclay's Bank); the Weigh House chapel in Mayfair, Twyford St. Mary's Parish Church (opened 1878) in Hampshire (which shows interestingly similar patterning to the Natural History Museum) and Hutton Hall in Yorkshire.

Recognition

Waterhouse became a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1861, and was President from 1888 to 1891. He obtained a grand prix for architecture at the Paris Exposition of 1867, and a "Rappel" in 1878. In the same year he received the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and was made an associate of the Royal Academy, of which body he became a full member in 1885 and treasurer in 1898. He was also a member of the academies of Vienna (1869), Brussels (1886), Antwerp (1887), Milan (1888) and Berlin (1889), and a corresponding member of the Institut de France (1893). After 1886 he was constantly called upon to act as assessor in architectural competitions, and was a member of the international jury appointed to adjudicate on the designs for the west front of Milan Cathedral in 1887. In 1890 he served as architectural member of the Royal Commission on the proposed enlargement of Westminster Abbey as a place of burial.

Later life

Waterhouse retired from architecture in 1902, having practiced in partnership with his son, Paul Waterhouse, from 1891. He died at Yattendon Court on the 22nd August 1905.

WILLIAM WHITE

William White, F.S.A. (1825 - 1900) was an architect, famous for his part in the 19th Century Gothic revival. A pupil of Sir George Gilbert Scott.
He was the son of a clergyman and great nephew of the writer and naturalist, Gilbert White of Selborne.
His style was close to that of William Butterfield. He built many churches.

WILLIAM PITT

William Pitt (1855-1918) was an architect and politician working in Melbourne, Australia in the later part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Early Life

Pitt's roots were in the suburb of St Kilda, he lived and was educated there for some time and one of his finest contributions and surviving architectural works, the St Kilda Town Hall is one of the landmarks of the area.

Architectural Career

He began his architectural practice in 1879 and he became highly sought after during the land boom in Melbourne, particularly for his theatres.

Although many of his buildings have since been demolished, including one of his earliest and grandest buildings, the Melbourne Coffee Palace (1879) which was once located on Bourke Street between Swanton and Russell. Despite this, many of his buildings remain today.

The distinctive castellated design of the Victoria Brewery (1882) in Collingwood was also one of his early works. The heritage registered building, unused for many years was sympathetically converted into apartments in 2004, and its mansard roof re-instated. His fashionable Gordon House apartments (1884) in Little Bourke Street continued to show the influence of this style.

Pitt's extensive work in gothic revival featured some surviving examples in the Venetian gothic idiom. The Olderfleet (1888) and Rialto Buildings (1889) in Collins Street are on the Victorian Heritage Register. Although only retaining the front 10 metres, they with the neighbouring South Australian Insurance Building and Charles D'Ebro's Winfield Building make up Melbourne's, and one of the world's, finest intact Victorian streetscapes. Also in the Venetian Gothic style are the Old Stock Exchange (1888) and Old Safe Deposit Building (1890).

Pitt was possibly best known for his theatre design, particular the spectacular interior design. Few of Pitt's theatres remain. His greatest, the Princess Theatre (1886) in the Second Empire style, in Spring Street has survived. Unique in its time in having a sliding roof it fell into disrepair and was nearly demolished. The theatre received a lavish renovation in the early 1990s.

The pinnacle of Pitt's career was the Federal Coffee Palace constructed on the south-west corner of King and Collins Streets in 1888. This extraordinary building more than any other epitomised the speculative land boom which was 'Marvellous Melbourne' of the 1880s. A massive and outlandish building with references to numerous architectural styles it grew from the temperance movement of the day which also produced many Coffee Palaces, including the equally large but somewhat more restrained Grand Hotel, now the Windsor Hotel, in Spring Street. The temperence movement fell out of favour in the 1890s and the Federal Coffee Palace became the Federal Hotel. The hotel was ultimately demolished in 1973 in an era when many Victorian buildings were lost in a wave of 'modernisation'.
After the coffee palace boom, Pitt began to specialise in warehouses. His polychromatic design of the 3 storey Denton Hat Mills (1888) in Abbotsford, Victoria began this trend. The buildings were sympathetically converted into apartments in the 1990s. Tower House (1891), a fanciful combination of Tudor, Queen Anne and Mannerist styles was once a landmark on the corners of Spring and Flinders Streets. It was demolished in 1957 and is now the site of Harry Seidler's Shell House.
Partly due to a Cultural cringe, the contribution of Pitt's work to Australian architecture was very late to be recognised.

Politics & Architecture

Pitt continued to work into the twentieth century while also pursuing a political career. He was mayor of the City of Collingwood and also a member of the Victorian legislative council, and was a staunch advocate of the Federation of Australia.

Most notable of his later architecture work was the Empire Works (later Bryant and May factory) (1909) in inner suburban Richmond. At the end of his architectural career he also designed the Victorian Racing Club (1910) on Collins Street which has since been demolished and Sir Charles Hotham Hotel, which survives on the corner of Spencer and Flinders Streets as a backpacker hostel.

GUILBERT AND BETELLE

Guilbert and Betelle was an architecture firm that was a prolific designer of schools and architectural buildings throughout the East Coast of the United States, notable for its adaptation of diverse styles to create a new American "Collegiate Gothic" style of school architecture. The firm was a partnership of Ernest F. Guilbert and James Oscar Betelle.

After Guilbert's death in 1916, Betelle became the owner of the firm. He was architect for hundreds of schools in five different states and a consultant on many more. Two of these schools, Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Connecticut and the Radburn School in Fair Lawn, New Jersey are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Betelle's organization was architect for such buildings as the Essex County Hall of Records, Newark, New Jersey, Hotels Robert Treat and Alexander Hamilton, Chamber of Commerce Building, Essex Club (now the New Jersey Historical Society) and a half dozen banks, also in Newark, New Jersey.

RICHARD NORMAN SHAW

Richard Norman Shaw (Edinburgh May 7, 1831 – London November 17, 1912), was the most influential British architect from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings.

He trained in the London office of William Burn and with George Edmund Street and attended the Royal Academy classes, receiving a thorough grounding in classicism and met William Eden Nesfield, with whom he was briefly in partnership. In 1854 – 1856 he travelled with a Royal Academy scholarship, collecting sketches that were published as Architectural Sketches from the Continent, 1858.

In 1863, after sixteen years of training, he opened a practise, for a short time with Nesfield. In 1872, Shaw was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, and a full member in 1877.

He worked, among others, for the artist, John Callcott Horsley, and the industrialist, Lord Armstrong. He designed large houses such as Cragside and Grim's Dyke, as well as a series of commercial buildings in a wide range of styles.

Shaw was elected to the Royal Academy in 1877, and co-edited the 1892 collection of essays, Architecture, a profession or an Art? He firmly believed it was an art. In later years, Shaw moved to a heavier classical style which influenced the emerging Edwardian Classicism of the early 20th century. Shaw died in London, where he had designed residential buildings in areas such as Pont Street, and public buildings such as Scotland Yard.

Besides the large country houses he is associated with, he also built and restored several churches, the best known of which are St. John's Church, Leeds; St. Margaret's, Ilkley, and All Saints, Leek.

His picturesque early country houses avoided the current Neo-Gothic and the academic styles, reviving vernacular materials like half timber and hanging tiles, with projecting gables and tall massive chimneys with "inglenooks" for warm seating. The result was free and fresh, not slavishly imitating his Jacobean and vernacular models, yet warmly familiar, a parallel to the Arts and Crafts movement. Richard Norman Shaw's houses soon attracted the misnomer the "Queen Anne style". As his powers developed, he dropped some of the mannered detailing, his buildings gained in dignity, and had acquired an air of serenity and a quiet homely charm which were less conspicuous in his earlier works; half timber construction was more sparingly used, and finally disappeared entirely.

His work is characterised by ingenious open planning, the Great Hall or "sitting hall," with a staircase running up the side that became familiar in mass-producing housing of the 1890s.

THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER

The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament, in London, England is where the two Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (the House of Lords and the House of Commons) meet to conduct their business. The Palace lies on the north bank of the River Thames in the London borough of the City of Westminster, close by other government buildings in Whitehall. Coordinates: 51°29'58 N, 0°07'29 W

The oldest part of the Palace still in existence, Westminster Hall, dates from 1097. The palace originally served as a royal residence but no monarch has lived in it since the 16th century. Most of the present structure dates from the 19th century, when the Palace was rebuilt after it was almost entirely destroyed by a fire in 1834. The architect responsible for rebuilding the Palace was Sir Charles Barry with Augustus Welby Pugin. The building is an example of Gothic revival. One of the Palace's most famous features is the clock tower, a tourist attraction that houses the famous bell Big Ben. The latter name is often used, erroneously, for the clock itself, which is actually part of St Stephen's Tower.
The Palace contains over 1,000 rooms, the most important of which are the Chambers of the House of Lords and of the House of Commons. The Palace also includes committee rooms, libraries, lobbies, dining-rooms, bars and gymnasiums. It is the site of important state ceremonies, most notably the State Opening of Parliament. The Palace is very closely associated with the two Houses, as shown by the use of the word "Westminster" to refer to "Parliament". Parliamentary offices overspill into nearby buildings such as Portcullis House, and Norman Shaw Buildings.

History

The Palace of Westminster was strategically important during the Middle Ages, as it was located on the banks of the River Thames. Buildings have occupied the site since at least Saxon times. Known in mediæval times as Thorney Island, the site may have been first used for a royal residence by Canute the Great (reigned 1016 to 1035). The penultimate Saxon monarch of England, St Edward the Confessor, built a royal palace in Thorney Island just west of the City of London at about the same time as he built Westminster Abbey (1045 to 1050). Thorney Island and the surrounding area soon became known as Westminster (a contraction of the words "West Monastery"). After the Norman Conquest (1066) King William I established himself at the Tower of London, but later moved to Westminster. Neither the buildings used by the Saxons nor those used by William I survive. The oldest existing parts of the Palace (Westminster Hall and the Great Hall) date from the reign of William I's successor, King William II.

The Palace of Westminster was the monarch's principal residence in the late Mediaeval period. The predecessor of Parliament, the Curia Regis (Royal Council), met in Westminster Hall (though it followed the King when he moved to other palaces). The Model Parliament, the first official Parliament of England, met in the Palace in 1295. Since then, almost all Parliaments have met in the Palace. However, some Parliaments have met in other locations.

Westminster remained the monarch's chief London residence until a fire destroyed part of the structure in 1529. In 1530 King Henry VIII acquired York Palace from Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, a powerful minister who had lost the King's favour. Renaming it the Palace of Whitehall, Henry VIII used it as his principal residence. Although Westminster officially remained a royal palace, it was used by the two Houses of Parliament and as a law court.

Because it was originally a royal residence, the Palace did not include any purpose-built chambers for the two Houses. Important state ceremonies, including the State Opening of Parliament, were held in the Painted Chamber. The House of Lords usually met in the White Chamber. The House of Commons, however, did not have a chamber of its own; it sometimes held its debates in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. The Commons acquired a permanent home in the Palace-St Stephen's Chapel, a former royal chapel, but only during the reign of Henry VIII's successor, King Edward VI. The Chantries Act 1547 (passed as a part of the Protestant Reformation) dissolved the religious order of the Canons of St Stephen's (among other institutions); thus the Chapel was left for the Commons' use. Alterations were made to St Stephen's Chapel for the convenience of the lower House.
On 16 October 1834, most of the Palace was destroyed by fire. Only Westminster Hall, the Jewel Tower, the crypt of St Stephen's Chapel and the cloisters survived. A Royal Commission was appointed to study the rebuilding of the Palace and decided that it should be rebuilt on the same site, and that its style should be either Gothic or Elizabethan. A heated public debate over the proposed styles ensued. In 1836, after studying 97 rival proposals, the Royal Commission chose Charles Barry's plan for a Gothic style palace. The foundation stone was laid in 1840; the Lords' Chamber was completed in 1847, and the Commons' Chamber in 1852 (at which point Barry received a knighthood). Although most of the work had been carried out by 1860, construction was not finished until a decade afterwards.
The Palace of Westminster continued to function normally until 1940. In 1941, the Commons' Chamber was destroyed by German bombs in the course of the Second World War. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was commissioned as architect for the rebuilding of the Chamber; he chose to preserve the essential features of Sir Charles Barry's design. Work on the Commons' Chamber was completed by 1950.

Exterior

Sir Charles Barry's design for the Palace of Westminster uses the Perpendicular Gothic style, which was popular during the 15th century and returned during the Gothic revival of the 19th century. Barry was himself a classical architect, but he was aided by the Gothic architect Augustus Pugin. Westminster Hall, which was built in the 11th century and survived the fire of 1834, was incorporated in Barry's design. Pugin was displeased with the result of the work, especially with the symmetrical layout designed by Barry; he famously remarked, "All Grecian, sir; Tudor details on a classic body."

Stonework

The stonework of the building was originally Anston, a sand-coloured magnesian limestone quarried in the village of Anston in South Yorkshire. The stone, however, soon began to decay due to pollution. Although such defects were clear as early as 1849, nothing was done for the remainder of the 19th century. During the 1910s, however, it became clear that some of the stonework had to be replaced.
In 1928 it was deemed necessary to use Clipsham Stone, a honey-coloured limestone from Rutland, to replace the decayed Anston. The project began in the 1930s but was halted due to the Second World War, and completed only during the 1950s. By the 1960s pollution had once again begun to take its toll. A stone conservation and restoration programme began in 1981, and ended in 1994.

Towers

Sir Charles Barry's Palace of Westminster includes several towers. The tallest is the 98 m (323 ft) Victoria Tower, a square tower at the south-western end of the Palace. The tower was named after the reigning monarch at the time of the reconstruction of the Palace, Queen Victoria. The tower is home to the House of Lords' Record Office, which, despite its name, has custody of the records of both Houses of Parliament. Atop the Victoria Tower is an iron flagstaff, from which the Royal Standard (if the Sovereign is present in the Palace) or the Union Flag is flown. At the base of the Victoria Tower is the Sovereign's Entrance to the Palace. The monarch uses this entrance whenever entering the Palace of Westminster for the State Opening of Parliament or for any other official ceremony.

Over the middle of the Palace lies the Central Tower. The Central Tower is 91 m (300 ft) tall, making it the shortest of the three principal towers of the Palace. Unlike the other towers, the Central Tower possesses a spire. It stands immediately above the Central Lobby, and is octagonally shaped. Its function was originally as a high-level air intake.
A small tower is positioned at the front of the Palace, between Westminster Hall and Old Palace Yard, and contains the main entrance to the House of Commons at its base, known as St. Stephen's entrance.

At the north-western end of the Palace is the most famous of the towers, St Stephen's Tower, the Clock Tower (often referred to as Big Ben) which is 96 m (316 ft) tall. The Clock Tower houses a large clock known as the Great Clock of Westminster. On each of the four sides of the tower is a large clock face. The tower also houses five bells, which strike the Westminster Chimes every quarter hour. The largest and most famous of the bells is Big Ben (officially, the Great Bell of Westminster), which strikes the hour. This is the third heaviest bell in England, weighing 13 tons 10 cwt 99 lb (about 13.8 t). Although the term "Big Ben" properly refers only to the bell, it is often colloquially applied to the whole tower.

Grounds

There are a number of small gardens surrounding the Palace of Westminster. Victoria Tower Gardens is open as a public park along the side of the river south of the palace. Black Rod's Garden (named after the office of Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod) is closed to the public and is used as a private entrance. Old Palace Yard, in front of the Palace, is paved over and covered in concrete security blocks (see security below). Cromwell Green (also on the frontage, and in 2006 enclosed by hoardings for the construction of a new visitor centre), New Palace Yard (on the north side) and Speaker's Green (directly north of the Palace) are all private and closed to the public. College Green, opposite the House of Lords, is a small triangular green used for television interviews with politicians.
The Palace of Westminster includes approximately 1,100 rooms, 100 staircases, and 3 miles (5 km) of passageways. The building includes four floors; the ground floor includes offices, dining rooms, and bars. The 'first floor' (known as the principal floor) houses the main rooms of the Palace, including the Chambers, the lobbies, and the libraries. The Robing Room, the Royal Gallery, the Prince's Chamber, the Lords' Chamber, the Peers' Lobby, the Central Lobby, the Members' Lobby, and the Commons' Chamber all lie in a straight line on this floor, from south to north, in the order noted. (Westminster Hall lies to a side at the Commons end of the Palace.) The top two floors are used for committee rooms and offices.
Formerly, the Palace was controlled by the Lord Great Chamberlain, as it was (and formally remains) a royal residence. In 1965, however, it was decided that each House should control its own rooms. The Speaker and Lord Chancellor exercise control on behalf of their respective Houses. The Lord Great Chamberlain retains custody of certain ceremonial rooms.

Lords Chamber and Canopy are located at one end of the chamber.
The Chamber of the House of Lords is located in the southern part of the Palace of Westminster. The lavishly decorated room measures 14 by 24 m (45 by 80 ft). The benches in the Chamber, as well as other furnishings in the Lords' side of the Palace, are coloured red. The upper part of the Chamber is decorated by stained glass windows and by six allegorical frescoes representing religion, chivalry and law. The upper part, or the viewing gallery, features a small curtain, around ten inches high. This was constructed in the 1920s to hide the ankles and lower legs of viewing women; fashion was becoming increasingly promiscuous, as they saw it, and the sight of bare legs was deemed unsuitable for Lords.
At one end of the Chamber are the ornate gold Canopy and Throne; although the Sovereign may theoretically occupy the Throne during any sitting, he or she attends only the State Opening of Parliament. Other members of the Royal Family who attend the State Opening use Chairs of State next to the Throne. In front of the Throne is the Woolsack, a backless and armless red cushion stuffed with wool, representing the historical importance of the wool trade. The Woolsack is used by the officer presiding over the House (the Lord Speaker since 2006, but historically the Lord Chancellor or a deputy). The House's mace, which represents royal authority, is placed on the back of the Woolsack. In front of the Woolsack are the Judges' Woolsack (a larger red cushion occupied by the Law Lords during the State Opening) and the Table of the House (at which the clerks sit).

Members of the House occupy red benches on three sides of the Chamber. The benches on the Lord Chancellor's right form the Spiritual Side and those to his left form the Temporal Side. The Lords Spiritual (archbishops and bishops of the established Church of England) all occupy the Spiritual Side. The Lords Temporal (nobles) sit according to party affiliation: members of the Government party sit on the Spiritual Side, whilst those of the Opposition sit on the Temporal Side. Some peers, who have no party affiliation, sit on the benches in the middle of the House opposite the Woolsack; they are accordingly known as cross-benchers.

The Lords' Chamber is the site of important ceremonies, the most important of which is the State Opening of Parliament, which occurs at the beginning of each annual parliamentary session. The Sovereign, seated on the Throne, delivers the Speech from the Throne, outlining the Government's legislative agenda for the forthcoming parliamentary session. The Commons do not enter the Chamber; instead, they watch the proceedings from the Bar of the House, just inside the Chamber. A similar ceremony is held at the end of a parliamentary session; the Sovereign, however, does not normally attend, and is instead represented by a group of Lords Commissioners.

Commons Chamber

The Chamber of the House of Commons, which was opened in 1950 after the Victorian chamber had been destroyed in 1941 (architect: Giles Gilbert Scott) is at the northern end of the Palace of Westminster. The Chamber measures 14 by 21 m (46 by 68 ft). It is far more austere than the grand Lords' Chamber; the benches, as well as other furnishings in the Commons side of the Palace, are coloured green. It is illegal for a member of the public to sit on the green benches. Other parliaments in Commonwealth nations have copied the colour scheme under which the Lower House is associated with green, and the Upper House with red.

At one end of the Chamber is the Speaker's Chair, a present to Parliament from Australia. In front of the Speaker's Chair is the Table of the House, at which the clerks sit, and on which is placed the Commons' ceremonial mace. The dispatch boxes, which front bench MPs often lean on or rest notes on during Questions and speeches, are a gift from New Zealand. There are green benches on either side of the house; members of the Government party occupy benches on the Speaker's right, whilst those of the Opposition occupy benches on the Speaker's left. There are no cross-benches as in the House of Lords. The Chamber is relatively small, and can accommodate only 427 of the 646 Members of Parliament. During Prime Minister's Questions and in major debates Members of Parliament stand at either end of the House.

By tradition, the British Sovereign does not enter the Chamber of the House of Commons. The last monarch to enter the Chamber was King Charles I (in 1642); he sought to arrest five Members of Parliament on charges of high treason. When the King asked the Speaker, William Lenthall, if he had any knowledge of the whereabouts of these individuals, Lenthall famously replied: "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here."
The two red lines on the floor of the House of Commons are, by (probably apocryphal) tradition, two sword lengths and one foot (0.3 m) apart. Protocol dictates that MPs may not cross these lines when speaking. Historically, this was to prevent disputes in the house from devolving into duels.

Westminster Hall

Westminster Hall, the oldest existing part of the Palace of Westminster, was erected in 1097. The roof was originally supported by pillars but, during the reign of King Richard II, it was replaced by a hammerbeam roof designed by Henry Yevele and Hugh Herland. Westminster Hall is one of the largest halls in Europe with an unsupported roof; it measures 21 by 73 m (68 by 240 ft). An Essex legend has it that the oak timber came from woods in Thundersley, Essex.

Westminster Hall has served numerous functions. It was primarily used for judicial purposes, housing three of the most important courts in the land: the Court of King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, and the Court of Chancery. In 1873, these courts were amalgamated into the High Court of Justice, which continued to meet in Westminster Hall until it moved to the Royal Courts of Justice in 1882. In addition to regular courts, Westminster Hall also housed important state trials, including impeachment trials and the trial of King Charles I at the end of the English Civil War.

Westminster Hall has also served ceremonial functions. From the twelfth century to the nineteenth, coronation banquets honouring new monarchs were held here. The last coronation banquet was that of King George IV (1821); his successor, William IV, abandoned the idea because he deemed it too expensive. Westminster Hall has also been used for lyings-in-state during state funerals and ceremonial funerals. Such an honour is usually reserved for the Sovereign and for their consorts; the only non-royals to receive it in the twentieth century were Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts (1914) and Sir Winston Churchill (1965). The most recent lying-in-state was that of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 2002.

In 1999 and 2003, the staff of the Palace were given special permission to return the Hall to its original purpose, by the holding of two Grand Parties there.

The two Houses have presented ceremonial Addresses to the Crown in Westminster Hall on important public occasions. For example, Addresses have been presented at Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee (1977) and Golden Jubilee (2002), the 300th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution (1988), and the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War (1995).

Under reforms made in 1999, the House of Commons uses a specially converted room next to Westminster Hall (not the main hall) as an additional debating chamber. (Usually, however, the room is spoken of as a part of Westminster Hall.) The room is shaped like an elongated horseshoe; it stands in contrast with the main Chamber, in which the benches are placed opposite each other. This pattern is meant to reflect the non-partisan nature of the debates held in Westminster Hall. Westminster Hall sittings occur thrice each week; important or controversial matters are not usually discussed.

Other rooms

There are several other important rooms that lie on the first floor of the Palace. At the extreme southern end of the Palace is the Robing Room, the room in which the Sovereign prepares for the State Opening of Parliament by donning official robes and wearing the Imperial State Crown. Paintings by William Dyce in the Robing Room depict scenes from the legend of King Arthur. Immediately next to the Robing Room is the Royal Gallery, which is sometimes used by foreign dignitaries who wish to address both Houses. The walls are decorated by two enormous paintings by Daniel Maclise: "The Death of Nelson" (depicting Lord Nelson's demise at the Battle of Trafalgar) and "The Meeting of Wellington and Blücher" (showing the Duke of Wellington meeting Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo).

To the immediate south of the Lords Chamber is the Prince's Chamber, a small ante-room used by Members of the Lords. The Prince's Chamber is decorated with paintings of members of the Tudor dynasty. To the immediate north of the Lord's Chamber is the Peers' Lobby, where Lords informally discuss or negotiate matters during sittings of the House.
The centrepiece of the Palace of Westminster is the octagonal Central Lobby, which lies immediately beyond the Peers' Lobby. The lobby, which lies immediately below the Central Tower, is adorned with statues of statesmen and with mosaics representing the United Kingdom's constituent nations' patron saints: St George for England, St Andrew for Scotland, St David for Wales, and St Patrick for Ireland (these predate the secession of the Republic). Constituents may meet their Members of Parliament in the Central Lobby. Beyond the Central Lobby, next to the Commons Chamber, lies the Members' Lobby, in which Members of Parliament hold discussions or negotiations. The Members' Lobby contains statues of several former Prime Ministers, including David Lloyd George, Sir Winston Churchill, and Clement Attlee.

There are two suites of libraries on the Principal Floor, overlooking the river, for the House of Lords and House of Commons Library.

The Palace of Westminster also includes state apartments for the presiding officers of the two Houses. The official residence of the Speaker stands at the northern end of the Palace, whilst the Lord Chancellor's apartments are at the southern end. Each day, the Speaker and Lord Chancellor take part in formal processions from their apartments to their respective Chambers.

THE ROYAL COURTS OF JUSTICE

The Royal Courts of Justice, commonly called the Law Courts, is a building in London that houses the Court of Appeal and the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. Courts within the building are open to the public although there may be some restrictions depending upon the nature of the cases being held.

The building is a large grey stone edifice in the Victorian Gothic style and was designed by George Edmund Street, a solicitor turned architect, and built in the 1870s. The Royal Courts of Justice was opened by Queen Victoria in December 1882 and became the permanent home of the Supreme Court. It is on The Strand, in the City of Westminster, near the border with the City of London and the London Borough of Camden. It is surrounded by the four Inns of Court. The nearest tube stations are Chancery Lane and Temple.

Those who do not have legal representation may receive some assistance within the court building. The Citizens Advice Bureau has a small office in the main entrance hall where lawyers provide free advice. There is usually a queue for this service. There is also a Personal Support Unit where litigants in person can get emotional support and practical information about what happens in court. The main criminal court (Crown Court), housed separately, is the Central Criminal Court, popularly known as the Old Bailey.

History and Architecture

The eleven architects competing for the contract for the Law Courts each submitted alternative designs with the view of the possible placing of the building on the Thames Embankment. The present site was chosen only after much debate.

In 1868 it was finally decided that George Edmund Street, R.A. was to be appointed the sole architect for the Royal Courts of Justice and it was he who designed the whole building from foundation to varied carvings and spires. Building was started in 1873 by Messrs. Bull & Sons of Southampton.

There was a serious strike of masons at an early stage which threatened to extend to the other trades and caused a temporary stoppage of the works. In consequence, foreign workmen were brought in – mostly Germans. This aroused bitter hostility on the part of the men on strike and the newcomers had to be housed and fed in the building. However, these disputes were eventually settled and the building took eight years to complete and was officially opened by Queen Victoria on the 4th December, 1882. Sadly, Street died before the building was opened.

Parliament paid £1,453.000 for the 6 acre site upon which 450 houses had to be demolished. The building was paid for by cash accumulated in court from the estates of the intestate to the sum of £700,000. Oak work and fittings in the court cost a further £70,000 and with decoration and furnishing the total cost for the building came to under a million pound.

The dimensions of the building (in round figures) are: 470 feet from east to west; 460 feet from north to south; 245 feet from the Strand level to the tip of the fleche.

Entering through the main gates in the Strand one passes under two elaborately carved porches fitted with iron gates. The carving over the outer porch consists of heads of the most eminent Judges and Lawyers. Over the highest point of the upper arch is a figure of the Saviour; to the left and right at a lower level are figures of Solomon and Alfred; that of Moses is at the northern front of the building. Also at the northern front, over the Judges entrance are a stone cat and dog representing fighting litigants in court.

On either side are gateways leading to different Courts and Jury and Witness Rooms from which separate staircases are provided for them to reach their boxes in Court. During the 1960’s, jury rooms in the basement area were converted to courtrooms. At either end of the hall are handsome marble galleries from which the entire Main Hall can be viewed.

The walls and ceilings (of the older, original Courts) are panelled in oak which in many cases is elaborately carved. In Court 4, the Lord Chief Justice’s court, there is an elaborately carved wooden Royal Coat of Arms. Each court has an interior unique to itself; they were each designed by different architects.

There are, in addition to the Waiting Rooms, several Arbitration and Consultation Chambers together with Robing Rooms for the member of the bar.

Extensions to the building

The first extension was the West Green building for which plans were drawn in 1910 and this was to house extra divorce courts. They were the first to have modern air conditioning and tape recoding in their original design.

The next new building was the Queen’s Building opened in 1968 providing a further twelve courts. This building also contains cells in the basement.

With an ever increasing workload the eleven storey Thomas More Building was built to house the Bankruptcy and Companies Courts and yet more offices. A grand view can be had from the top looking over to St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Central Criminal Courts in the City of London.

Finally, it was necessary to build an additional twelve courts for the Chancery Division named the Thomas More Courts, which opened in January 1990. all this has meant there is little room left for further extension on the site should it be necessary in the future. However, an extensive refurbishment of the East Block took place during 1994-95 which provided 14 extra courts for the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal and 2 extra large courts which are unassigned and will be used for cases where there are several parties involved or there are an unusually large amount of documents and books.

It should also be remembered that there are further courts at St. Dunstan’s House, which come under the wing of the Law Courts and are within short walking distance.

VESTMENTS

Vestments are liturgical garments and articles associated primarily with the Christian religions, especially the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican Churches. Many other Protestant groups also make use of vestments, but this was a point of controversy in the Protestant Reformation and sometimes since - notably during the Ritualist controversies in England in the 19th century.
For other garments worn by clergy, see also Clerical clothing.

Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant vestments

For the Eucharist, each vestment symbolizes a spiritual dimension of the priesthood, with roots in the very origins of the Church. In some measure these vestments harken to the Roman roots of the See of Peter.

Use of the following vestments varies. Some are used by all Western Christians in liturgical traditions. Many are used only in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, and there is much variation within each of those churches.
Used by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, and some Protestants

Surplice

A decorative white tunic worn over the cassock.

Stole

A long, narrow strip of cloth draped around the neck, a vestment of distinction, a symbol of ordination. Deacons wear it draped across the left shoulder diagonally across the body to the right hip. Corresponds to the Orthodox orarion and epitrachelion (see below).

Alb

The common garment of all ministers at the eucharist, worn over street clothes or a cassock. Most closely corresponds to the Orthodox sticharion (see below). Symbolizes baptismal garmet. See also Cassock-alb.
Used by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, and some Methodists

Chasuble

The outermost sacramental garment of priests and bishops, often quite decorated. Corresponds to the Orthodox phelonion (see below). See also chasuble-alb.

Dalmatic

The outermost garment of deacons.

Amice

a cloth around the neck used to cover the collar of street attire.

Cincture

or Girdle. Corresponds to the Orthodox zone.
Used by Roman Catholics and some Anglicans and Lutherans
Tunicle

The outermost garment of subdeacons.

Cope

A circular cape reaching to the ankle, used by bishops, priests and deacons.

Maniple

A liturgical handkerchief bound about the wrist. According to some authorities, this corresponds to the Orthodox epigonation (see below). Modern usage of the maniple in either church is rare. It is only used in the Roman Catholic Church when celebrating Mass according to the Tridentine Rite and some Anglo-Catholic parishes.

Humeral veil

Long cloth rectangle draped around the shoulders and used to cover the hands when carrying a monstrance.

Rochet

Surplice with narrower sleeves.

Zucchetto

Skull cap, similar to the yarmulke

Mitre

Worn by Bishops and abbots. Despite the having the same name, this does not really correspond with the Eastern mitre (see below), which has a distinct history and which was adopted much later.

Biretta

May be worn by clergy of all ranks except the Pope; color signifies rank.
Used only by Roman Catholics

Pallium

A narrow band of lamb's wool decorated with six black crosses, worn about the neck with short pendants front and back, worn by the Pope and bestowed by him on Metropolitans and Archbishops. Corresponds to the Orthodox omophorion (see below).

Rationale

An episcopal humeral worn over the chasuble. It is only used by the Bishops of Eichstätt, Paderborn, Toul, and Kraków.

Fanon

A double-layered mozzetta, now only occasionally worn by the Pope during solemn
Pontifical High Mass.

Papal tiara

Formerly worn by the Pope at his coronation; it has fallen out of use but may be revived at any time when the reigning Pontiff of Rome wishes. This is strictly speaking not a vestment but an item of regalia since it was never worn within liturgical services with the exception of the blessing Urbi et Orbi.
Used only by Anglicans

Tippet

(or Preaching Scarf). Black scarf worn by bishop, priests and deacons at choir offices and other non-sacramental services.

Chimere

Red or black outer garment of bishops.

Hood

Academic hood is sometimes worn by Anglican clergy at choir offices. It is also sometimes worn by Methodists and Reformed clergy with an Academic Gown ("Geneva Gown"), though this is fairly rare.

Apron

A short cassock reaching just above the knee, worn by archdeacons (for whom it is black) and bishops (for whom it is purple). Now largely obsolete.

Gaiters

Worn by archdeacons and bishops with the apron. Black, buttoned up the sides, and worn to just below the knee.

THURIBLE

A thurible is a metal censer suspended from chains, in which incense is burned during Mass. It is used in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Old Catholic and other churches. In Catholic and Anglican churches, the altar server who carries the thurible is called the thurifer.
The workings of a thurible are quite simple. Heated charcoal is inside the actual metal censer. Incense, sometimes of many different varieties is placed upon the charcoal by the priest. This may be done several times during the service as the incense burns quite quickly. Once the incense has been placed on the charcoal the thurible is then closed and handed to the priest or deacon for censing.

Information from Wikipedia