Richardsonian Romanesque
May 29, 2009 by blogtopia
Filed under Architectural style
Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after architect Henry Hobson Richardson, whose masterpiece is Trinity Church, Boston (1872–77). Vestiges of the style first appeared in Richardson’s Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane in Buffalo, New York, designed in 1870.
This very free, revival style incorporates 11th and 12th century southern French, Spanish and Italian Romanesque characteristics. It emphasizes clear, strong picturesque massing, round-headed "Romanesque" arches, often springing from clusters of short squat columns, recessed entrances, richly varied rustication, boldly blank stretches of walling contrasting with bands of windows, and cylindrical towers with conical caps embedded in the walling.
The style epitomizes work by the generation of architects practicing in the 1880s— before the influx of Beaux-Arts styles— such as J. Cleaveland Cady of Cady, Bird and See in New York City, whose American Museum of Natural History’s original 77th Street range epitomizes "Richardsonian Romanesque." Some of the practitioners who most faithfully followed Richardson’s proportion, massing and detailing had worked in his office.
These include Wadsworth Longfellow and Frank Alden (Longfellow, Alden & Harlow of Boston & Pittsburgh); George Shepley and Charles Coolidge (Richardson’s former employees, and his successor firm, Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge of Boston); and Herbert Burdett (Marling & Burdett of Buffalo). The style influenced the Chicago school of architecture and architects Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. In Finland, Eliel Saarinen was influenced by Richardson.
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