The Victorian Era

Victorian Architectural Styles

Article · Architecture & Design · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

❦

Victorian architecture is not a single style but a long succession of revivals and innovations played out across the United Kingdom, the British Empire, and the wider world between 1837 and 1901. The Gothic Revival, the Italianate, the Scottish Baronial, the Queen Anne, the Second Empire, the Stick Style, the Romanesque Revival, the Moorish Revival, the Egyptian Revival, the Byzantine Revival, the Renaissance Revival, and the Jacobean Revival all flourished side by side, and the same decade would often see a Gothic church, a Classical bank, and a Moorish synagogue rising within a few streets of each other. The history of these styles is examined in Victorian Architecture and Interior Design, and the broader context of the period is set out in The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.

The Gothic Revival

The Gothic Revival was the most influential of the Victorian architectural styles, and it shaped the building of the period from the early 1840s to the early 1880s. It drew on the medieval Gothic of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, and it was promoted above all by A. W. N. Pugin, George Gilbert Scott, William Butterfield, G. E. Street, and William Burges. The movement was grounded in the writings of Pugin — Contrasts (1836) and The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841) — and in the writings of John Ruskin, particularly The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851–53).

The Gothic Revival passed through three distinct phases. The first, sometimes called Early Gothic or Puginian Gothic, ran from about 1840 to 1860 and was dominated by Pugin’s own work and by the Ecclesiological movement: correct, archaeologically detailed, and often built in coloured brick. The second, High Victorian Gothic, ran from about 1860 to 1875 and was the age of polychromy, structural polychromy, and the muscular, structurally honest buildings of Butterfield, Street, and Burges. The third, Late Gothic or Aesthetic Gothic, ran from about 1875 to the early 1880s and was the phase of J. D. Sedding, G. F. Bodley, and the generation that reconciled Gothic with Renaissance planning. The history of the style is examined in What is Gothic Revival architecture?.

The Italianate

The Italianate was the most popular style of the mid-Victorian period, and it shaped domestic architecture from the 1840s to the 1870s. Based on the Italian Renaissance villa, it was promoted by Charles Barry, William Burn, Anthony Salvin, and Edward Blore, and it produced the long, low, stuccoed villa with its hipped roof, wide bracketed eaves, symmetrical façade, and central portico that became the dominant house type of the period.

The Italianate was used for country houses — Cliveden and Trentham Hall, both rebuilt by Barry for the Dukes of Sutherland, are notable examples — for suburban villas, for seaside hotels, for the buildings of the new spas, and for a great many commercial and institutional blocks. Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, designed by Prince Albert and Thomas Cubitt in the 1840s, is the most famous Italianate palace of the period. The history of the style is examined in How to identify Italianate Victorian homes?.

The Scottish Baronial

The Scottish Baronial was the characteristic domestic style of Victorian Scotland, and it shaped the country houses and castles of the period from the 1850s to the early 1900s. Based on the Scottish tower house of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, it was promoted by William Burn, David Bryce, and Edward Blore, and it produced a recognisably Scottish type: asymmetrical in plan, with grouped masses, crow-stepped gables, turrets, bartizans, battlements, and a generally martial and romantic character.

The great houses of the revival include Balmoral Castle, rebuilt for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert by William Smith of Aberdeen and Robert Matheson between 1853 and 1856; Dunrobin Castle, remodelled by Robert Stodart Lorimer for the Duke of Sutherland in the 1880s; and Floors Castle and Abbotsford, both associated with the Borders tradition. The style remained popular for shooting and fishing lodges well into the Edwardian period.

The Queen Anne

The Queen Anne was the dominant domestic style of the late Victorian period, and it shaped the houses of the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. It was a free interpretation of late seventeenth-century English architecture, and it was promoted by Richard Norman Shaw, Ernest George, Philip Webb, and J. J. Stevenson. The Queen Anne house, with its red brick, white-painted woodwork, tile-hung gables, sash windows, prominent chimneys, dormers, bay windows, and asymmetrical plan, became the model for the suburban semi, the terraced street, and the country vicarage of the period.

The style is named for the free, picturesque quality of its evocations of the reign of Queen Anne, rather than for any strict archaeological copying. Shaw’s houses at Bedford Park in Chiswick (1875–86) and his New Zealand Chambers on the Strand (1873) set the tone, and the style spread through the suburbs of London, the cathedral cities, and the home counties. The history of the style is examined in What defines Queen Anne style architecture?.

The Other Revivals

The other revivals of the Victorian period were many and varied. The Second Empire, modelled on the architecture of the reign of Napoleon III, was popular in the 1860s and 1870s, and it is recognisable by its mansard roof and its urban, institutional character; the French railway termini of the period, and many of the great Parisian apartment blocks, are its prototypes. The Romanesque Revival, drawing on the round-arched architecture of the tenth to twelfth centuries, was popular for churches, museums, and warehouses; Alfred Waterhouse’s Natural History Museum of 1873–81 is its most famous English example.

The Moorish Revival was used for synagogues, seaside pavilions, and a few exotic country houses, with its horseshoe arches and geometric ornament. The Egyptian Revival was used for cemeteries, monuments, and a handful of extraordinary civic buildings, with its battered walls, lotus columns, and cavetto cornices. The Byzantine Revival produced the great Catholic and Anglican cathedrals of the period, including Pugin’s work at Oscott and Pugin and Pugin’s church of St Giles, Cheadle. The Renaissance Revival was the language of banks, clubs, embassies, and municipal buildings throughout the period, and it produced some of the grandest streetscapes of the late Victorian city.

The Stylistic Debates

The Victorian period was marked by a series of long-running stylistic debates that shaped the architecture of the age. The most famous was the Gothic versus Classical debate: should the national style of Victorian Britain be Gothic, as Pugin, Ruskin, and the Ecclesiological Society argued, or Classical, as the Government, the Royal Academy, and the established architects preferred? The Gothic was eventually adopted for the Houses of Parliament, the law courts, the universities, the schools, and most of the churches, while the Classical survived for the museums, the galleries, the banks, the clubs, the embassies, and the official residences.

The polychrome debate, conducted in the 1850s and 1860s, asked whether the exterior of Gothic buildings should be painted in bright colours, as Pugin, Butterfield, and the Ecclesiologists argued, or left in plain stone, as Ruskin, Scott, and the conservationists eventually insisted. The restoration debate, conducted in the 1870s and 1880s, asked whether medieval buildings should be restored, as Scott, Street, and the Gothic architects urged, or conserved, as William Morris and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, founded in 1877, insisted. The conservationist position eventually prevailed, and the modern discipline of architectural conservation is its direct descendant.

The Legacy

Victorian architecture is the architecture of the modern British city. The terraces, the semis, the Gothic churches, the Italianate banks, the red-brick warehouses, the iron-framed railway sheds, and the muscular town halls of the period still shape the streets of London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and a hundred other British towns. They were carried further still across the British Empire — to Bombay, to Melbourne, to Cape Town, to Hong Kong — and the imperial context of the style is examined in British Empire in the Victorian Era. The buildings of the period are examined in Famous Victorian Buildings and Landmarks.