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Origins of Italianate Architecture A GEOGRAPHERS’ VIEW OF THE NEW ORLEANS AREA A sweeping romantic movement ORIGINS OF brought a fanciful architectural style to 19th-century ITALIANATE New Orleans Richard Campanella [email protected] stroll through New Orleans in the 1850s A would have revealed a subtle but signifi cant change in architecture. The austere Greek Revival style, which started to replace Cre- ole aesthetics in the 1820s and fl ourished during the 1830s and 1840s, began to give way to a more ornate and luxurious look. Known as Italianate and later Victorian Ital- ianate, this fashion would predominate in New Orleans for most of the latter half of the 19th century. A number of factors brought forth the appeal of Italianate. One overarching driver was the rise of the Romanticism movement, itself a reaction to the lofty ideals of the Enlightenment and the expanding domains of science and industry. Romanticism responded by celebrating emotionality, pas- sion, the specialness of the individual and the beauty of nature. NOLA.COM THE TIMES PICAYUNE THE 2016 , 10 JUNE , The Luling Mansion, pictured circa 1910, is By the end of the 19th century, late Victorian architectural styles, such as Eastlake and Queen FRIDAY an example of high Italianate style. Photogra- Anne, absorbed Italianate’s penchant for elaborate detailing, and builders milled brackets and quoins en masse to spruce up shotgun houses. Chris Granger / [email protected] H6 Unlike Enlightenment thinkers, who found inspiration in Classical antiquity and thus took to Greek and Roman architec- ture, Romanticists fancied the glory of the Renaissance and the poignancy of medieval ruins, and embraced the panache of Italian buildings and gardens. A second factor was an offshoot of Romanticism known as “Picturesque.” This movement developed as budding scholars from England and elsewhere, taking advan- tage of improved roads and passenger ship service, increasingly spent time in the Tus- cany and Romagna regions of Italy as part of their academic “grand tour.” They returned with paintings of lovely Italian landscapes. People found these bucolic scenes to be enchanting, and their properties came to be known as pittoresco in Italian (“like a painting”) — hence, pic- Above: John Notman’s 1839 Riverside Villa turesque in English. in New Jersey is known as the first major In her 1975 dissertation, architectural Italianate design in the United States. historian Joan G. Caldwell described the Library of Congress Picturesque aesthetic as bearing a certain “roughness, asymmetry and irregularity” Left: Examples of Italianate architecture at falling somewhere between the beauti- 1006 Washington Avenue in New Orleans. ful and the sublime. To English eyes, Pic- Chris Granger / [email protected] turesque exuded Italy’s glorious past, and gardeners started incorporating the look Below: The Robb Mansion, built 1854 on into parks, installing scenic stone bridges, Washington Avenue, is pictured here in 1906 lagoons and shrubbery to make them look when it housed Sophie Newcomb College. like lovely paintings. It was razed in 1954. Library of Congress Artists did the same with their art, and architects with their designs. In 1802, archi- tect John Nash, according to Caldwell, “pro- duced the first true villa in the Italian style” in England, at an estate named Cronkhill near Shrewsbury. Nash’s design featured an asymmetrical rounded tower with an octagonal room and a loggia (arcade gallery) topped with a balustrade, all finished in TIMES PICAYUNE THE white stucco, as if lifted from the outskirts of Rome. Nash would later design the ham- let of Blaise, near Bristol, based on Pictur- esque philosophies. To this day it looks like a painting. The Napoleonic Wars slowed new con- struction. But afterwards, with pent-up demand and an English upper class ready to embrace what Caldwell described as “sheer American architects, ever aware of their and the genteel aristocracy of the found- NOLA.COM aesthetic enjoyment,” Italianate gained European peers, made their own pilgrim- ing fathers increasingly ceded power to the popularity as the “aesthetic of luxury.” ages to England and Italy and returned so-called “Jacksonian Man,” that “hard- Campaniles or bell towers, loggia, bowed doubly inspired. Caldwell credits Philadel- working ambitious person,” according to bays, arcades, bracketed eaves, decorative phia architect John Notman with introduc- historian Richard Hofstadter, “for whom moldings and segmented arches appeared ing Italianate to the United States with his enterprise was a kind of religion.” FRIDAY throughout England. Pattern books made 1839 design for a villa named Riverside in In New Orleans, opportunities abounded their reproduction efficient and inexpen- Burlington, N.J.. Two years later, the land- for the Jacksonian Man — for empowered sive, and the style spread. scape designer Andrew Jackson Downing white males, that is. It was the largest city , (It was during this era, incidentally, that published his “Treatise on the Theory and in the South, where vast sums of money JUNE Highclere Castle of Downton Abby fame Practice of Landscape Gardening,” which changed hands, and fortunes were won and was radically renovated from its original edified Americans on both Italianate and lost regularly. 10 Classical form into the Renaissance Revival Picturesque philosophies. A new American upper class formed, and , behemoth it is today. Its architect, Charles Italianate arrived in America at the right its members initially put their ample wealth 2016 Barry, specialized in Italianate and incorpo- time. This was the Age of Jackson, and the into, among other things, capacious town- rated its motifs into the redesign, which he nation was changing. Americans were mov- houses and mansions usually of the Greek H7 described as Anglo-Italian.) ing west; individualism became a creed; or Neoclassical style. By the booming 1850s, Greek Revival came to feel a bit stodgy and dated. The nouveau riche wanted that trendy new Italian look, like their peers elsewhere, and designers were eager to deliver. Above: Italianate segment arches frame the windows at 1235-37 St. Andrew St. Left: Italianate came to be a dominate style in the Garden District and other affluent neighborhoods. Photos by Chris Granger / [email protected] But by the booming 1850s, Greek Revival Garden District its name, and it’s no coinci- had previously been considered luxuri- came to feel a bit stodgy and dated. The dence that Italianate came to be a dominate ous. New late Victorian architectural styles, nouveau riche wanted that trendy new Ital- style in this and other affluent neighbor- such as Eastlake and Queen Anne, absorbed ian look, like their peers elsewhere, and hoods. Italianate’s penchant for elaborate detail- designers were eager to deliver. Among the We have since lost both the Hennen and ing, and builders of “catalog houses” milled style’s local champions were architects Wil- Robb houses, but a comparable specimen brackets and quoins en masse to spruce up liam and James Freret, James Gallier Jr., survives in the form of the Luling Mansion the thousands of prosaic shotgun houses Albert Diettel and most of all, Henry How- near the Fairgrounds. Built as the Louisiana being erected for working-class families. ard. Jockey Club in 1865 originally with expan- Italianate by this time became Victorian An early local example of a “magnificent sive manicured gardens, it embodied Ital- Italianate, and along with parallel styles Italian villa,” as the Daily Picayune put it, ianate and Picturesque aesthetics, and to such as Renaissance Revival, it remained was built on Prytania Street near Jackson this day stuns the eye. popular into the early 1900s. Avenue in 1850 for local esquire Duncan These and a few other grand Itali- Then came World War I in Europe, and Hennen. Costing $22,000, the mansion fea- anate villas, however, were the excep- suddenly all of the above came to seem NOLA.COM tured a gallery and veranda amid an abun- tion. Because local architects were mostly gaudy and decadent. Modernism would dance of marble. designing city houses on standard urban increasingly challenge the rationale behind Two years later and a few blocks away, lots, they saw little reason to abide by the Victorian and Italianate, not to mention the the eccentric globe-trotting millionaire asymmetry and irregularity typical of the Picturesque Movement, Romanticism and James Robb had erected an Italian pala- Italian order, much less the gardens and Neoclassicism. After the Second World War, zzo on Washington Avenue between Camp statuary. Instead, they designed standard they were openly disdained in some circles. and Chestnut streets. Surrounded by lav- house types already familiar to New Orlea- Yet the architectural vessels of these aes- ish landscaping suggesting Picturesque nians, including townhouses, center-hall thetic philosophies remain in the modern influences, the mansion sat “two stories cottages and shotgun houses, and applied New Orleans cityscape by the thousands, THE TIMES PICAYUNE THE high, eighty feet square, [on a] gently ele- Italianate detailing upon them. and they continue to inspire us in ways that vated terrace,” wrote the Daily Picayune, This included segmented-arch doorways were likely unforeseen by their philoso- and “had about it an air of quiet beauty, and windows, heavy molding and an abun- phers. 2016 , refined taste and substantial comfort... No dance of paired volute-shaped brackets lin- Richard Campanella, a geographer with 10 expense was spared(;) its fresco painting ing roof eaves and galleries. the Tulane School of Architecture and a was particularly superb, (as are the) mar- Italianate was thus mostly manifested Monroe Fellow with the New Orleans Center JUNE ble steps with massive railings (and) spa- in New Orleans as an ornamental overlay for the Gulf South, is the author of “Bourbon , cious hall... .” Inside were Robb’s “large and to standard structural types rather than a Street: A History,” “Bienville’s Dilemma,” choice collection of oil paintings, water col- change in their essential configurations.
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