Romanesque Revival Architecture - Examples in The United States

Examples in The United States

The Church of the Pilgrims—now the Maronite Cathedral of Our Lady of Lebanon—in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, New York designed by Richard Upjohn and built 1844-46 is generally considered the first work of Romanesque Revival architecture in the United States. It was soon followed by a more prominent design for the Smithsonian Institution Building in Washington, D.C. designed by James Renwick, Jr. and built 1847-51. Renwick allegedly submitted two proposals to the design competition, one Gothic and the other Romanesque in the style. The Smithsonian chose the latter, which was based on designs from German architecture books.

Several concurrent forces contributed to the popularizing of the Romanesque Revival in the United States. The first was an influx of German Immigrants in the 1840s, who brought the style of the Rundbogenstil with them. Second, a series of works on the style were published concurrently with the earliest built examples. The first of these, Hints on Public Architecture, written by social reformer Robert Dale Owen in 1847-48, was prepared for the Building Committee of the Smithsonian Institution and prominently featured illustrations of Renwick's Smithsonian Institution Building. Owen argued that Greek Revival architecture—then the prevailing style in the United states for everything from churches to banks to private residences—was unsuitable as a national American style. He maintained that the Greek temples upon which the style was based had neither the windows, chimneys, nor stairs required by modern buildings, and that the low pitched temple roofs and tall colonnades were ill-adapted to cold northern climates. To Owen, most Greek Revival buildings thus lacked architectural truth, because they attempted to hide nineteenth century necessities behind classical temple facades. In its place, he offered that the Romanesque style was ideal for a more flexible and economic American architecture. Soon after, the Congregational church published A Book of Plans for Churches and Parsonages in 1853, containing eighteen designs by ten architects, including Upjohn, Renwick, Henry Austin, and Gervase Wheeler, most in the Romanesque Revival style. Richard Salter Storrs, and other clergy on the book's committee were members or frequent preachers of Upjohn's Church of the Pilgrims.