What Is Italianate Architecture? Its History and Signature Style Elements

Table Of Content

• Italianate Style: Renaissance Architecture in the New World
• Floor Plans
• Picturesque Italianate Architecture in the U.S.
• Category:Italianate architecture in California
• Italianate Architecture and its Origins
• About This 1800’s Historic House For Sale In Johnson City Tennessee
• Sycamore Homestead For Sale In Hendersonville Tennessee

In recent years, increased attention has been called to the preservation of this impressive collection, with large-scale renovation efforts beginning to repair urban blight. Cincinnati's neighbouring cities of Newport and Covington, Kentucky also contain an impressive collection of Italianate architecture. However, the style was superseded in popularity in the late 1870s by the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. The Italianate style was first developed in Britain in about 1802 by John Nash, with the construction of Cronkhill in Shropshire.

Italianate Style: Renaissance Architecture in the New World

The information on this website is for informational purposes only; it is deemed accurate but not guaranteed. Many will have a crown that is typically in the shape of an inverted “U,” but they can also be pedimented. The Bennett Fenelon House in Fort Worth, Texas, is one of the few remaining Italianate examples in the city. The P.M. Craigmiles House in Cleveland, Tennessee, has a tower, one of the many variations possible with the style.

Floor Plans

Floors of narrow softwood boards were meant to be carpeted wall to wall. Later in this period, hardwood floors were laid in patterns including alternating stripes of dark and light. Stone or marble squares, real or painted, were preferred for halls, as were encaustic tiles in terra cotta, buff, and black.

Picturesque Italianate Architecture in the U.S.

The French-inspired Second Empire, like houses in the Italianate style, often feature a high, square tower. Beaux Arts buildings are grand and elaborate, often embracing Italianate ideas along with Classical. Even Neo-Mediterranean builders of the 20th century re-visited Italianate themes. Victorian architecture encompasses a variety of popular styles, but ask yourself how picturesque each is. Critical to the proliferation of Italianate style was the popularization of architectural and landscaping pattern books, like Cottage Residences by Andrew Jackson Downing.

British architect John Nash is thought to have built the first Italianate villa in England, Cronkhill in Shropshire in 1802, but Italianate architecture had its heyday from 1840 to 1885. This Victorian-era style was a British interpretation of the architectural and natural splendors of Florence and the Italian countryside that captured the imagination of visiting architects and landscape designers. These porches could run the width of the front of the house, or just to one side of the front door, or be limited to the home’s entry. Like windows and doors, these porches and coverings offered opportunities for embellishment, including decorative columns, railings, and bracketed eaves. A New Yorker like Downing, Alexander Jackson Davis started as a lithographer and architectural illustrator before he focused his efforts as an architect and designer of buildings.

Washington homes in this architectural style generally date from 1840 to 1885 with the majority built in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The expense and craftsmanship lavished on the exteriors offer testament to the prosperity and optimism of the era. The 600 block of East Capitol Street NE also has good examples of Italianate style architecture. The historical roots of Italianate styles are in Italian Renaissance architecture. Some of the first Italian villas were designed by Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio in the 16th century. Palladio reinvented Classical architecture, melding the designs of a Roman temple into residential architecture.

More Italianate Houses

After major renovations, the house was converted into a bed and breakfast in New York. The house features 12-foot ceilings on the raised first floor, complete with plaster moldings. From Italianate styles to more modern takes on traditional designs, our portfolio is full of stunning transformations that will inspire your next project. One of the finest examples of late Victorian Italianate architecture is owned by the National Park Service. The John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, California lays claim to the 17-room John Muir Mansion, built in 1882, and inherited by the famous American naturalist. Porches are rarely taller than one story and will nearly always be located on the ground floor of the house, though there are exceptions.

This Historic Northeast Ohio Italianate Home Known as Shady Bend Manor Just Hit the Market for $376500 - Cleveland Scene

This Historic Northeast Ohio Italianate Home Known as Shady Bend Manor Just Hit the Market for $376500.

Posted: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Furthermore, the overhanging eaves depict the true Italianate fashion of this beautiful historic home. The buildings are more colorful and asymmetrical compared to the Gothic revival architectural style. Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio built some of the first Italianate buildings. He combined the designs of Roman buildings and came up with his unique style.

Sycamore Homestead For Sale In Hendersonville Tennessee

The ornamentation was typically wood and occasionally the brick homes had elaborate, durable cast iron window and door hoods. The high square towers made the style a natural choice for upscale homes of the newly rich. However the brackets and other architecture details, made affordable by new methods for machine production, were easily applied to simple cottages. Advances in technology made the production of decorative cast-iron ornament easier and cheaper, so it shows up frequently on balconies and porches, as well as in fences and roof cresting, whether in rounded Italian designs or in Gothic or Classical ones. Villas always had the added feature of at least one square, multi-storied tower and, for the most part, decidedly asymmetrical massing.

These architectural details were highly dimensional, not subtly painted on or etched into the structure, but projected from the house. On a more domestic scale, the suburbs of cities like Dunedin and Wellington spread out with modest but handsome suburban villas with Italianate details, such as low-pitched roofs, tall windows, corner quoins, and stone detailing, all rendered in wood. No.2 Treasury Gardens (1874).[29] This dignified, but not overly exuberant style for civil service offices contrasted with the grand and more formal statements of the classical styles used for Parliament buildings. The Fort Mason Officers’ Club (Building 1), located on Franklin Street at Fort Mason, was originally built as the post’s commanding officers’ residence in 1877.

Italianate architecture dominated the housing market in the United States for a few decades in the 1800s. Part of its pervasiveness was because the style's detailed trim could be applied to housing of many shapes and sizes, from modest single-family homes to row houses, large commercial buildings, and even grand estates. In fact, Italianate style inspired the remodeling of Highclere Castle—the real-life setting of the fictional Downton Abbey—by architect Charles Barry in the 1830s and 1840s; his drawing still exists with the Royal Institute of British Architects. As in Australia, the use of Italianate for public service offices took hold but using local materials like timber to create the illusion of stone. At the time it was built in 1856, the official residence of the Colonial Governor in Auckland was criticized for the dishonesty of making wood look like stone. The 1875 Old Government Buildings, Wellington are entirely constructed with local kauri timber, which has excellent properties for construction.