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8
Adaptive Historicism in Architecture
Horace Walpole - Strawberry Hill
Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill (1749–77) at Twickenham, although steeped in the stylistic vocabulary of the late Middle Ages, remains an eighteenth-century tribute to a long tradition that never really ceased to play a role in English architecture, especially in the design of churches and colleges. One of the earliest examples of the so-called Gothic Revival, Strawberry Hill was not based on any specific medieval residential prototype, although some of its most arresting details were derived from historical structures in England and France, as well as seventeenth-century drawings of Old St. Paul's Cathedral. At one point, Walpole even acknowledged a predilection for "Chinese" asymmetry, and engaged the services of architect Robert Adam to construct a distinctive round tower at the southwest corner of the house (appendix 1, no. 4).
Nevertheless, the overall design represents a clear attempt to adapt the Gothic style to an existing eighteenth-century structure by various additions and accretions, including many extraordinary interior details (appendix 1, no. 5).1
Thomas Jefferson - University of Virginia
Thomas Jefferson's "academical village"—the University of Virginia (1804–17) in Charlottesville—represents a fusion of Palladian classicism, revived by Lord Burlington and his circle, and the contemporary English landscape garden, which developed in the eighteenth century in naturalistic contrast to the grandiose formalism of André Le Nôtre (appendix 1, no. 6).
The overall plan was derived in part from the seventeenth-century Château de Marly, which Jefferson had visited while in France. Ten pavilions providing space for faculty housing and lectures were joined by colonnades arranged in two arm-like rows stretching from the central Rotunda. Individually the pavilions allude to specific Classical and neoclassical models (appendix 1, no. 7).2
Cass Gilbert - Woolworth Building
Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building (1913) in New York was conceived as a "Temple of Commerce" representing the marriage of the Gothic cathedral and the contemporary skyscraper. The building rose to a dazzling height of 792 feet, and represented a traditionalist phase of modernism that anticipated the postmodern style revivals of the late twentieth century (appendix 1, nos. 8a and 8b).
