NeoRomanesque / Romanesque Revival Architecture

Neuschwanstein, Bavaria , Leo von Klenze & Christian Jank, 1868	Ludwigskirche, Munich, 1829. Friedrich von Gartner	Leeds Corn Exchange, Cuthbert Brodrick  1860

Union Station at Providence, Rhode Island	Central Market, Lancaster, PA, 1889 James H. Warner	Nazaret Kirke Copenhagen, Denmark

The Royce Hall, at UCLA, inspired by The Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, Italy	Neo-Romanesque details in a neo-Renaisssance structure:New York State Capitol, Albany, New York	Iglesia Metodista Unida de Sur Tres , Brooklyn, NY

Royal Museum, Chambers Street, Edinburgh, Scotland	Temple Emanu-El, New York	Boys’ High School, Brooklyn, NY

Federal Archive Building, New York	Richardsonian Romanesque: Bexar County Courthouse, San Antonio, Texas	St. Saviour’s Anglican Church, Sydney, Australia.

Former John Taylor Warehouse, Sydney, Australia.	Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, Australia.	Shelbourne Hotel, Sydney, Australia.

In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte established a new Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. The publications of J.-N. L Durand, its professor of architecture, introduced architects in many European countries to the author’s ideas about the need for a rational expression of masonry construction. Durand based his essentially utilitarian brand of architecture on those historical styles which used semicircular arched openings of moderate size set in substantial, plain stone walling: Florentine Renaissance, Byzantine, Early Christian, and Romanesque. Durand’s doctrines were especially influential in Germany, where the round-arched idiom, known as the Rundbogenstil, was used in Munich in the 1820s by such eminent architects as Leo von Klenze and Friedrich von Gartner. In Britain there were a few minor forays into the Romanesque style for churches in the 1840s, even as the Gothic Revival grew from a trickle to a torrent, and Cuthbert Brodrick’s impressive Corn Exchange of 1860—63 in Leeds has Rundbogenstil façades of rugged stonework. The United States also provides us with occasional examples of a freely interpreted Romanesque style, such as the Union Station at Providence, Rhode Island, begun in 1848 to the design of Thomas A. Teift.

Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed in the late 19th century inspired by the 11th and 12th century Romanesque style of architecture. Popular features of these revival buildings are round arches, semi-circular arches on windows, and belt courses. Unlike the classical Romanesque style, however, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to feature more simplified arches and windows than their historic counterparts. The style was quite popular for courthouses and university campuses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, perhaps the best-known of these being the University of California, Los Angeles. The style was widely used for churches, and occasionally for synagogues such as the Congregation Emanu-El of New York on Fifth Avenue built in 1929. By far the most prominent and influential American architect working in a free “Romanesque” manner is Henry Hobson Richardson. In the United States the style derived from examples set by him are termed “Richardsonian Romanesque“.