The Victorian era saw rapid technological advancements and socio-economic changes due to the Industrial Revolution. Architects struggled to find an appropriate style for this time of transition, debating between Neo-Classical and Neo-Gothic styles. New building materials like iron, glass, and concrete emerged, allowing for new construction techniques. While functionality was important, architecture lacked innovation and drew from historic styles like Renaissance and Baroque for inspiration during this period of uncertainty.

1. 19THCENTURY
ARCHITECTURE
The Architecture of the Victorian Age

2. Outline
 Socio-Economic Background
 Technological Advancements
 Battles of Architecture in the Industrial
Revolution
The Neo-Classical
The Neo Gothic
 Other Styles
 Applications of New Technology
 The Next Step

3. An Age of Uncertainty
By the opening of the 19th C the confidence apparent in the
architecture of the age of elegance in the preceding century
had evaporated.
The agitation brought about by the French Revolution of 1789
had never fully subsided, and a different kind of society
began to take place.
There was another revolution every bit as influential as the
French, the Industrial Revolution which was cradled in
Britain, from roughly 1750-1850 although it was not seen as
a revolution but only new ways of making things.

4. A time of rapid change in UK and in Europe
The Industrial Revolution
Began in England, (1750-1920)
Time of major changes in
 Agriculture
 Manufacturing
 Mining
 Transport
 Technology
These had a profound effect on the
socio-economic and cultural
conditions, starting in the United
Kingdom, then subsequently
spreading throughout Europe, North
America, and eventually the world.
It marked a major turning point in
human history, almost every aspect
of daily life was eventually
influenced in some way.
The Stockton and Darlington Railway

5. The Industrial Revolution
 Inventions
It began with textiles.
 Finance
 Trading opportunities
 A change in the way goods were produced from
human labor to machine.
 The three basics were present- coal (energy),
iron and other metals, population of workers.

6. Factors for the Progress of the Industrial
Revolution
 Development and growth of new socio- economic classes:
working class, bourgeoisie, wealthy industrial class.
Population change
The urban population dramatically increased, towns and cities
multiplied in number and size, a new urban society emerged.
The demand for new buildings was greater that ever before.
 Brought a flood of new building materials
Iron was mined efficiently.
The formula for concrete was rediscovered 1756 by John
Smeaton.
 To the fashionable architects the central problem was to
discover a style appropriate to this time of change.

7. The Invention of Machines
 The invention of
machines to do
the work of hand
tools The Spinning Jenny
invented by James
Hargreaves
 The use of
steam, and later
of other kinds of
power, in place of
the muscles of
human beings The 1698 Savery
and of animals Engine – the world's first
commercially useful
steam engine built
by Thomas Savery

8. The adoption of the factory system.

10. New Materials
 After the Baroque slowly faded away, the 18th century
architecture considered primarily of revivals of
previous periods.
 Building materials were made out of only a few
manmade materials along with those available in
nature: timber, stone, lime.
 Mortar and concrete
 Iron
 Brick
 Glass
 Portland Cement – strong, durable, fire resistant type
of cement developed in 1824.

11. But in the 1800’s, there was a great amount of production
in Iron. These made architects and engineers design
buildings made out of iron. There are 3 types of iron:
cast, wrought, and steel.

12. Characteristics, 19th C Architecture
 Curtain walls were used
 Steel skeletons were covered with
masonry
 Large skylights were popular
 Lacked in imagination and style
 Main focus was functionality

13. Glass Making
A new method of
producing glass,
known as the
cylinder process,
was developed in
Europe during the
early 19th century.
In 1832, this process
was used by
the Chance
Brothers to create
sheet glass. They
became the leading
producers of
window and plate TheCrystal Palace held the Great Exhibition of
glass. 1851

14. Iron making
In the Iron
industry, coke was
finally applied to all
stages of iron smelting,
replacing charcoal. This
had been achieved
much earlier
for lead and copper as
well as for
producing pig iron in
a blast furnace, but the
second stage in the
production of bar
iron depended on the
use of potting and Nasmyth’s steam hammer of 1840 at work in 1871
stamping.

15. The Architecture of the Industrial Age
Architecture and the art turned into the past. Architects searched
for their own style but they searched for it in the previous styles
returning to the style of Bramante, Palladio and Michelangelo .
 Neo-Classical
 Neo-Gothic
 Renaissance
 Baroque
 Romantic
 Chinese
 Saracenic
But Neo-Classical and Neo-Gothic were the main
contenders in the Battle of the Styles of the 19th C.

16. The Architects of the Victorian Period
The Neo-Classicists
 Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841)
 Sir John Sloane (1753-1837)
 Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1766-1820)
 Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
The Gothic Revival
 Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852)
 Richard Upjohn (1802-78)
 Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879)

17. The Neo-Classicists

18. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Schauspielhaus, Berlin, 1818-21.
The entire structure is raised on a high base and is dominated by
an Ionic portico with receding planes to either side articulated by
plain pilasters and precise, shallow mouldings that appear to
have been stretched tightly over an internal skeleton.

19. John Soane (1753-1837), Bank of England, London
The leading exponent of Neo-Classicism in England at this time
was Sir John Soane, an idiosyncratic architect whose work also
has Romantic qualities.

20. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Roman Catholic Cathedral,
Baltimore, 1805-18.
Latrobe presented both Gothic and Neo-Classical designs of this
church to his client. The classical proposal was selected but did
not include the towers.

21. Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1770.
For his own house Jefferson turned the familiar Palladian five-part
organization backward in order to focus the complex on spectacular
mountain views. This view from the front shows that Jefferson
disguised the two-storey elevation to appear as only one story.

22. The William Brown Library and Museum (now the World Museum
Liverpool), designed by Thomas Allom (1804-1872), UK

23. The Neo-Gothic

24. Gothic Revival (also called “Neo-Gothic”)
 Neo-Gothic buildings have many of these features:
- Strong vertical lines and a sense of great height
- Pointed windows with decorative tracery
- Gargoyles and other carvings
- Pinnacles
• The first Gothic Revival homes
- Stone and Bricks
- American Version: Lumber and Factory Made Trims

25. The Trinity
Church in New
York, USA

26. Charles Barry and A.W.N. Pugin, Houses of
Parliament, London, 1836-51.
The
government
had decided
that the new
building
should be in
the style
thought to
represent
England at its
best –
Elizabethan or
Jacobean,
which occured
during Late
Gothic.

27. House of Parliament,
London, 1836-1867

28. Richard Upjohn (1802-78), Trinity Church, New
York City, 1839-46.
Upjohn’s first
major commission
was for Trinity
Church in New
York City, which
was designed for a
growing and
wealthy
congregation. The
Trinity Church has
been dwarfed by
skyscrapers, which
once included the
now destroyed
World Trade
Center. However,
in 1846 the church
was a prominent
landmark.

29. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
French architect and theorist
Famous for interpretive
“restorations” of
medieval buildings
Gothic Revival Architect
Notre Dame de Paris

30. Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc
The leading proponent of the
Gothic Revival in France was
Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-
Duc (1814-1879), an architect
who shared Pugin’s
enthusiasm for medieval
works.
He saw the system of the rib
vault, pointed arch, and flying
buttress as analogous to 19th C
iron framing, and he aspired to
a modern architecture based
on engineering
accomplishments that would
have the integrity of form and
detail found in medieval works.

31. Tower Bridge, London
Horace Jones and John Wolfe Barry, 1840

32. All Saints
Sir Charles Barry
Stand,
Manchester, 1860

33. A Merry Mix of Styles
Neo-Renaissance, Italian Renaissance,
French Renaissance, Neo-Romanesque
offered the architect and client other
choices.

34. Richard Morris Hunt, Biltmore, Asheville, North
Carolina, 1890-95.
The first
American to
attend the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts
was Richard
Morris Hunt
(1827-95) who
entered the
school in 1846.
Newly rich
industrial
magnates
wanted houses
that imitated the
ancestral
mansions of
European
nobility, and of
all American
architects Hunt
was best able to
provide the
designs desired.

35. Richard Morris Hunt, The Breakers, Newport,
Rhode Island, 1892-95.
Richard Morris
Hunt was the
first American
to attend the
Ecole des
Beaux-Arts in
Paris. The
knowledge he
gained there of
academic
planning and
monumental
design made
him the
architect of
choice among
the late 19th C
American elite.

36. Interiors, The Breakers, Newport,
Rhode Island, 1892-95.

37. McKim, Mead and White, Villard Houses
New York City, 1882-85.
The firm of McKim, Mead and White established the model for
the large-scale American architectural practice. They based this
residential structure on Roman palazzi such as the Palazzo
Farnese.

38. The New West End Synagogue
by George Audsley (1838-
1925)
in St Petersburgh Place,
London was in the Neo-
Romanesque.

39. Westminster Cathedral
by John Francis Bentley London, Neo-Romanesque.

40. Italian Renaissance, Sir Charles Barry
London Reform Club
Travelers’ Club 1829-1832 1837- 1841

41. Italian Renaissance
Gottfried Semper
Semper Oper, Dresden, Germany
1838-1841

42. Neo-Renaissance
Art Gallery of the Zwinger
1847-1854
Gottfried Semper

43. Grand Opera, Paris, 1860-1874
Jean Louis Charles Garnier

44. Paris Opera House
Externally as well as internally the stylistic elements derive from the Italian
Cinquecento and from the France of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, from
Renaissance and from Baroque.
Polychromy is widely used to heighten the impact yet further. The façade is
massive and heavily decorated and gilded, and really monumental.

45. Grand Opera, Paris, 1860-1874
The great stair hall is perhaps Garnier’s greatest triumph.
There is a tension in every form. The flights of the stairs fly easily and with
perfect fluency through the stair hall. With its related corridors and foyers
the stair provides the best of all possible ceremonial approaches to the
auditorium.

48. Palais de Justice (Law Courts),
Details
Brussels, 1866-1883
Joseph Poelaert

49. Palais de Justice (Law Courts), Brussels, 1866-1883
Joseph Poelaert

50. Palais de Justice (Law Courts),
Interiors
Brussels, 1866-1883

51. Neo-Renaissance
Schwerin Castle, Hungary, 1851 Friedrich
August Stüler (1800-1865)

52. Neo-Renaissance
National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm,
1846-1866
Friedrich August Stüler

53. National Museum of Fine Arts,
Stockholm, 1846-1866
Interiors
Friedrich August Stüler

54. Romanesque
Crane Library, Quincy, Massachusetts , 1880
Henry Hobson Richardson

55. Romanesque
Crane Library, Quincy, Massachusetts , 1880
Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-86)

56. St. Pancras Parish Church, London, 1819-21
Greek Revival

57. The White City
World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago,
Illinois, 1893

58. Richard Morris Hunt, Administration Building, World’s
Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, 1893.
Hunt’s Administration Building stands at the head of the Court of
Honor and its lagoon. The “White City” captivated the American
public. Using widespread exterior electric lighting for the first time, it
started a movement that produced proposals for new civic cores in
cities nationwide.

59. The White City, Chicago’s World Fair
held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate
the 400th anniversary of Christopher
Columbus arrival in the New World in
1492
The City Beautiful
Movement was a reform
movement in North
American architecture and
urban planning that
flourished in the 1890s and
1900s with the intent of
using beautification and
monumental grandeur in
cities.
Advocates of the movement
believed that such
beautification could thus
promote a harmonious social
order that would increase
the quality of life.

60. Daniel Burnham, Architect and Urban Planner
City planning projects :
Cleveland
San Francisco
Washington DC
Manila
Baguio
Designed the Chicago’s World Fair.
Proponent of the ‘City Beautiful’ movement.
Burnham only stayed for six weeks in the
Philippines. He later hired the services of
William Parsons, a New York architect who
stayed in the country for eight years.

61. IRON AND STEEL STRUCTURES of the 19th
CENTURY

62. Architectural Applications of Iron and Steel
Construction
 Iron and steel were not admired for their architectural
qualities in the 19th C: prevailing Neo-Classical and
Romantic attitudes looked to past ages buildings had
always been of load-bearing masonry construction.
 Everything that architects and their clients admired and felt
comfortable with could be constructed by using traditional
materials and methods.
 Architects were slow to exploit the possibilities of iron and
steel, which were first used in industrial utilitarian
buildings, such as textile mills, warehouses, and
greenhouses.

63. Progress in iron fabrication
 18th C industrial production of cast and
wrought iron so increased its availability that
iron replaced wood in the frame of any building
where heavy loads or the danger of fire was of
concern.
 Cast iron was favoured for columns, while the
superior tensile qualities of wrought iron made
it the recommended material for beams.
 In the 19th C iron began to be used instead of
wood in the fabrication of truss bridges built for
roads and railroads that crossed rivers or
valleys.

64. Iron
 Linear two-dimensional fragile-looking material
 Elegant linearity is its most rational form
Solid, Block-like, Closed type Building Greenhouses
Covered Markets
Halls
Exhibition Pavilions
Passages
Open, Linear, Articulated frame Utility Buildings

65. Decimus Burton and Richard Turner
Palm House, Kew Gardens, London, 1845-47.
Iron was most
elegantly
employed in
landscape
gardening.
Victorian
England,
prosperous
from the wealth
of its empire,
had a
fascination with
the tropical
plants that were
brought back
from India,
Africa, and the
Far East.

66. 19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel
PALM HOUSE, Royal Botanical Garden, Kew, London, 1845-1848
Wrought Iron

67. Applications of Iron Steel
PALM HOUSE, Royal Botanical Garden, Kew, London, 1845-1848

68. Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace, 1851.
Joseph Paxton
designed a
building with
prefabricated
parts that
could be
mass-
produced and
erected
rapidly. It
stood in stark
contrast to
traditional,
massive stone
construction.

69. Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace, 1851.
Once the
exhibition
opened, the
building was
visited by about
one-quarter of
the population
of England and
was universally
acclaimed for
its vast, airy
interior space.
Journalists
dubbed it the
Crystal Palace,
a name it had
retained.

70. 19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel
CRYSTAL PALACE – Hyde Park, London, 1850-1851
Joseph Paxton

71. Henri Labrouste, Bibliotheque Ste.
Genevieve, Paris, 1842-50.
Henri Labrouste (1801-1875) made a fine architectural use of cast iron in the
Bibliotheque Ste.-Genevieve in Paris. On the exterior the building presents a
correct Neo-Classical facade recalling Italian Renaissance palace and church
designs; but on the interior at the 2nd floor level one finds for that time an
unprecedentedly great reading room which extends the width and length of the
building, covered by light semicircular cast iron arches.

72. Henri Labrouste, Bibliotheque Ste.
Genevieve, Paris, 1842-50

73. Henri Labrouste, Bibliotheque Ste.
Genevieve, Paris, 1842-50

74. THE CRYSTAL PALACE

75. 19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel
Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve

76. 19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel
Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve

77. 19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel
Bibliotheque Nacionale 1857-1867

78. 19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel
Bibliotheque Nacionale 1857-1867

79. 19th Century: Applications of Iron
Steel
Gustave Eiffel
1823-1932

80. 19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel
EIFFEL TOWER, PARIS, 1884-1887
320 metres
(1,050 ft) tall
First real example
of frame
building
technique
Remains the
largest iron
construction in
the world

81. 19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel
EIFFEL TOWER, PARIS, 1884-1887

82. 19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel
STATUE OF LIBERTY
Stands 151-ft (46m)
One of the earliest
examples of curtain
wall construction in which
the exterior of the
structure is not load
bearing, but is instead
supported by an
interior framework.
He included two
interior spiral
staircases, to make it
easier for visitors to
reach the observation
point in the crown.

83. Gustave Eiffel, Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1889.
The most famous French designer
using iron in the second half of
the 19th C was Gustav Eiffel
(1832-1923). This engineer
gained fame for his graceful
bridge designs and then used his
experience with iron construction
to build the world’s tallest tower,
the 1010 ft high Eiffel Tower,
erected for the Paris International
Exposition of 1889. Not until the
completion of the Chrysler
Building in New York was Eiffel’s
tower exceeded in height, and it
remains the largest iron
construction in the world, for steel
was rapidly becoming the
preferred material for metal
framing.

84. Gustave Eiffel, Auguste Bartholdi and Richard Morris
Hunt, Statue of Liberty, New York City, 1883-86.
In New York harbor stands
another of Eiffel’s engineering
projects, the internal skeleton
for the 151 ft Statue of Liberty
(1883-86). Miss Liberty’s
copper skin is supported by
iron straps attached to a steel
framework that Eiffel designed
to withstand the considerable
wind loads of the harbour. At
the time of its construction, the
Statue of Liberty had the most
advanced diagonally braced
frame to be found in any
structure in the U.S.

85.  420mL & 115m
W
 Destroyed in
1910
Charles Dutert
1845-1906
19th Century: Applications of Iron Steel
GALERIE DES MACHINES, 1887-1889

87. J.A. And W.A. Roebling, Brooklyn Bridge, New
York City, 1869-83.
In seeking to expand the market for iron and improve the desirable
qualities of the material, 19th c ironmongers experimented with new
methods for manufacturing steel, which is an alloy of low-carbon iron
and trace amounts of other metals. The Brooklyn Bridge used steel
cables.

88. The Early Skyscrapers
William Le Baron Jenney
(1832-1907), the
designer of the Home
Insurance Building
(1884-85), is generally
credited with the early
development of the
skyscraper although the
Home Life Insurance
Building is not entirely
metal-framed as the
first floor contains
sections of masonry
bearing wall.

89. The Early Skyscrapers
Daniel Burnham and John Welborn Daniel Burnham and John Welborn
Root, Monadnock Building, Chicago, Root, Reliance Building, Chicago, 1894-
1890-91 95.

90. The Arts and Crafts Movement
Two issues – social values
and the artistic quality of
manufactured products –
were at the heart of the
Arts and Crafts
Movement, which
flourished from about
1850-1900 in Britain and
in the U.S. Originating in
Victorian England,its ideas
spread to Europe. John
Ruskin (1819-1900), a
prolific critic of art and
society, may be regarded
as the originator of the
Arts and Crafts ideals. In
Ruskin’s view, the
Industrial Revolution was
a grievous error exerting
a corrupting influence on
society.
Right: Philip Webb, Red
House, Bexleyheath, Kent,
1859-60.

91. FIN