Gothic Revival Architecture - Vernacular Adaptations

Vernacular Adaptations

Carpenter Gothic houses and small churches became common in North America and other places in the late 19th century. These structures adapted Gothic elements such as pointed arches, steep gables, and towers to traditional American light-frame construction. The invention of the scroll saw and mass-produced wood moldings allowed a few of these structures to mimic the florid fenestration of the High Gothic. But, in most cases, Carpenter Gothic buildings were relatively unadorned, retaining only the basic elements of pointed-arch windows and steep gables. Probably the best-known example of Carpenter Gothic is a house in Eldon, Iowa, that Grant Wood used for the background of his famous painting American Gothic.

Benjamin Mountfort of Canterbury, New Zealand imported the Gothic Revival style to New Zealand, and designed Gothic Revival churches in both wood and stone. Frederick Thatcher in New Zealand designed wooden churches in the Gothic Revival style, e.g. Old St. Paul's, Wellington. St Mary of the Angels, Wellington by Frederick de Jersey Clere is in the French Gothic style, and was the first Gothic design church built in ferro-concrete.

Other Gothic Revival churches were built in Australia, in particular in Melbourne and Sydney, see Category:Gothic Revival architecture in Australia.

In 19th-century northwestern Bulgaria, the informal Slavine Architectural School introduced Gothic Revival elements into its vernacular ecclesiastical and residential Bulgarian National Revival architecture. These included geometric decorations based on the triangle on apses, domes and external narthexes, as well as sharp-pointed window and door arches. The largest project of the Slavine School is the Lopushna Monastery cathedral (1850–1853), though later churches like those in Zhivovtsi (1858), Mitrovtsi (1871), Targovishte (1870–1872), Gavril Genovo (1873), Gorna Kovachitsa (1885) and Bistrilitsa (1887–1890) display more prominent vernacular Gothic Revival features.