Palazzo style architecture
Encyclopedia
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...
. The term refers to the general shape, proportion and a cluster of characteristics, rather than a specific design; hence it is applied to buildings spanning a period of nearly two hundred years, regardless of date, provided they are a symmetrical, corniced, basemented and with neat rows of windows. "Palazzo style" buildings of the 19th century are sometimes referred to as being of Italianate architecture
Italianate architecture
The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. In the Italianate style, the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture, which had served as inspiration for both Palladianism and...
but this term is also applied to a much more ornate style, particularly of residences and public buildings.
While early Palazzo style buildings followed the forms and scale of the Italian originals closely, by the late 19th century, the style was more loosely adapted and applied to commercial buildings many times larger than the originals. The architects of these buildings sometimes drew their details from sources other than the Italian Renaissance, such as Romanesque
Romanesque architecture
Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...
and occasionally Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
. In the 20th century, the style was superficially applied, like the Gothic revival style, to multi-storey buildings. In the late 20th and 21st century some Postmodern
Postmodern architecture
Postmodern architecture began as an international style the first examples of which are generally cited as being from the 1950s, but did not become a movement until the late 1970s and continues to influence present-day architecture...
architects have again drawn on the palazzo style for city buildings.
Origins
Renaissance architecture
Renaissance architecture is the architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 17th centuries in different regions of Europe, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. Stylistically, Renaissance...
. Italian palazzi, as against villas which were set in the countryside, were part of the architecture of cities, being built as town houses, the ground floor often serving as commercial premises. Early palazzi exist from the Romanesque
Romanesque architecture
Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...
and Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
periods, but the definitive style dates from a period beginning in the 15th century, when many noble families had becomme rich on trade. Famous examples include the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi built by Michelozzo
Michelozzo
thumb|250px|[[Palazzo Medici]] in Florence.Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi was an Italian architect and sculptor.-Biography:...
in Florence, the Palazzo Farnese built by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger
Antonio da Sangallo the Younger
thumb|250px|The church of Santa Maria di Loreto near the [[Trajan's Market]] in [[Rome]], considered Sangallo's masterwork.thumb|250px|View of St. Patrick's Well in [[Orvieto]]....
and completed by Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
in Rome, and the Ca' Vendramin Calergi
Ca' Vendramin Calergi
Ca' Vendramin Calergi is a palace on the Grand Canal in the sestiere of Cannaregio in Venice, northern Italy. Other names by which it is known include: Palazzo Vendramin Calergi, Palazzo Loredan Vendramin Calergi, and Palazzo Loredan Griman Calergi Vendramin. The architecturally distinguished...
by Mauro Codussi
Mauro Codussi
Mauro Codussi was an Italian architect of the early-Renaissance, active mostly in Venice. The name can also be spelt Coducci. He was one of the first to bring the classical syle of the early renaissance to Venice to replace the prevalent Gothic style.Born near Bergamo about 1440, he is first...
and Ca'Grande by Jacopo Sansovino
Jacopo Sansovino
Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino was an Italian sculptor and architect, known best for his works around the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Andrea Palladio, in the Preface to his Quattro Libri was of the opinion that Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana was the best building erected since Antiquity...
on the Grand Canal in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
.
Early 19th century
The earliest true Renaissance Revival "Palazzo style" buildings in Europe were built by the German architect Leo von KlenzeLeo von Klenze
Leo von Klenze was a German neoclassicist architect, painter and writer...
who usually worked in the Greek Neo-Classical style. The Palais Leuchtenberg, (1816) is probably the first of several such buildings on the new Ludwigstrasse and has a rusticated half-basement and quoins, three storeys of windows with those of the second floor being pedimented, a large cornice and a shallow columned portico around the main door. The walls are stoccoed and painted like the Palazzo Farnese.
In England, the earliest 19th century application of the Palazzo style was to a number of London gentlemen's clubs. It was then applied to residences, both as town and, less commonly, country houses and to banks and commercial premises. In the late 19th century, the Palazzo style was adapted and ecpanded to serve as a major architectural form for department stores and warehouses. In England, the Palazzo style was at its purist in the second quarter of the 19th century. It was in competition with the Classical Revival style, which incorporated large pediment
Pediment
A pediment is a classical architectural element consisting of the triangular section found above the horizontal structure , typically supported by columns. The gable end of the pediment is surrounded by the cornice moulding...
s, colonnade
Colonnade
In classical architecture, a colonnade denotes a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building....
s and giant order
Giant order
In Classical architecture, a giant order is an order whose columns or pilasters span two stories...
s, lending a grandeur to public buildings as seen at the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
(1840s), and the more romantic Italianate and French Empire styles in which much domestic architecture was built.
Early examples are the London clubs, The Athenaeum Club
Athenaeum Club, London
The Athenaeum Club, usually just referred to as the Athenaeum, is a notable London club with its Clubhouse located at 107 Pall Mall, London, England, at the corner of Waterloo Place....
by Decimus Burton
Decimus Burton
Decimus Burton was a prolific English architect and garden designer, He is particularly associated with projects in the classical style in London parks, including buildings at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and London Zoo, and with the layout and architecture of the seaside towns of Fleetwood and...
(1824) and The United Service Club
United Service Club
The United Service Club was a London gentlemen's club, now dissolved, which was established in 1815 and was disbanded in 1978. Its clubhouse was at 116 Pall Mall, on the corner of Waterloo Place....
by John Nash
John Nash (architect)
John Nash was a British architect responsible for much of the layout of Regency London.-Biography:Born in Lambeth, London, the son of a Welsh millwright, Nash trained with the architect Sir Robert Taylor. He established his own practice in 1777, but his career was initially unsuccessful and...
and Decimus Burton (1828) on Waterloo Place and Pall Mall
Pall Mall, London
Pall Mall is a street in the City of Westminster, London, and parallel to The Mall, from St. James's Street across Waterloo Place to the Haymarket; while Pall Mall East continues into Trafalgar Square. The street is a major thoroughfare in the St James's area of London, and a section of the...
. In 1829 Barry initiated Renaissance Revival architecture in England with his Palazzo style design for The Travellers' Club, Pall Mall. While Burton and Nash's designs draw on English Renaissance models such as Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is the first significant British architect of the modern period, and the first to bring Italianate Renaissance architecture to England...
' Banqueting House, Whitehall
Banqueting House, Whitehall
The Banqueting House, Whitehall, London, is the grandest and best known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting house, and the only remaining component of the Palace of Whitehall...
and the Queen's House
Queen's House
The Queen's House, Greenwich, is a former royal residence built between 1614-1617 in Greenwich, then a few miles downriver from London, and now a district of the city. Its architect was Inigo Jones, for whom it was a crucial early commission, for Anne of Denmark, the queen of King James I of England...
, Greenwich
Greenwich
Greenwich is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich.Greenwich is best known for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time...
, Barry's designs are conscientiously archaeological in reproducing the proportions and forms of their Italian Renaissance models. They are Florentine
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
in style, rather than Palladian
Palladian architecture
Palladian architecture is a European style of architecture derived from the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio . The term "Palladian" normally refers to buildings in a style inspired by Palladio's own work; that which is recognised as Palladian architecture today is an evolution of...
. Barry built a second palazzo on Pall Mall, The Reform Club, (1830s) as well as The Athenaeum
Manchester Art Gallery
Manchester Art Gallery is a publicly-owned art gallery in Manchester, England. It was formerly known as Manchester City Art Gallery.The gallery was opened in 1824 and today occupies three buildings, the oldest of which - designed by Sir Charles Barry - is Grade I listed and was originally home to...
, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. Barry's other major essays in this style are the townhouse Bridgewater House
Bridgewater House, Westminster
Bridgewater House is at 14 Cleveland Row, Westminster, London, England. It is a Grade I listed building.The earliest known house on the site was Berkshire House built in about 1626-27 for Thomas Howard, second son of the Earl of Suffolk and Master of the Horse to Charles I of England when he was...
, London, (1847–57) and the countryhouse Cliveden
Cliveden
Cliveden is an Italianate mansion and estate at Taplow, Buckinghamshire, England. Set on banks above the River Thames, its grounds slope down to the river. The site has been home to an Earl, two Dukes, a Prince of Wales and the Viscounts Astor....
in Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, (1849–51).
After Charles Barry, the Palazzo style was adopted for different purposes, particularly banking. The Belfast Bank had its premises remodelled by Sir Charles Lanyon
Charles Lanyon
Sir Charles Lanyon DL, JP was an English architect of the 19th century. His work is most closely associated with Belfast, Northern Ireland.-Biography:Lanyon was born in Eastbourne, Sussex in 1813...
in 1845. No. 15 Kensington Palace Gardens (1854) by James Thomas Knowles
James Thomas Knowles
James Thomas Knowles was a British architect with an extensive practice in building upper-class houses in the Italianate manner more familiar in the work of Sir Charles Barry. His designs submitted in the competition for the new Houses of Parliament lost to Barry's design...
freely adapts features of the palazzo.
1850s to 1900
Edmund Blacket
Edmund Thomas Blacket was an Australian architect, best known for his designs for the University of Sydney, St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney and St...
. Blacket arrived in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, Australia, just a few years before the discovery of gold in NSW and Victoria in 1851. Within the next decade he built the head premises of six different banking companies in Sydney, as well as branches in country towns. In Sydney, these rare examples of Blacket's early Palazzo style architecture, all constructed from the local yellow Sydney sandstone
Sydney sandstone
Sydney sandstone is the common name for Sydney Basin Hawkesbury Sandstone, historically known as Yellowblock, is a sedimentary rock named after the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, where this sandstone is particularly common....
were all demolished in the period from 1965–80, to make way for taller buildings.
From the 1850s, a number of buildings were designed that expand the palazzo style with its rustications, rows of windows, and large cornice, over very long buildings such as Grosvenor Terrace in Glasgow (1855) by J. T. Rochead and Watt's Warehouse (Britannia House), Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, (1856) by Travis and Magnall, a "virtuoso performance" in palazzo design. From the 1870s, many city buildings were designed to resemble Venetian
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
rather than Florentine palazzi, and were more ornately decorated, often having arcaded loggia at street level, like James Barnet
James Barnet
James Johnstone Barnet was the Colonial Architect for New South Wales from 1862 - 1890.-Life and career:Barnet was born at Almericlose, Arbroath, Scotland. The son of a builder, he was educated at the local high school...
's General Post Office Building in Sydney, (1866 and 1880s).
Henry Hobson Richardson
Henry Hobson Richardson was a prominent American architect who designed buildings in Albany, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and other cities. The style he popularized is named for him: Richardsonian Romanesque...
designed a number of buildings using the palazzo form but remarkable for employing the Italian Romanesque
Romanesque Revival architecture
Romanesque Revival is a style of building employed beginning in the mid 19th century inspired by the 11th and 12th century Romanesque architecture...
rather than Renaissance style. The largest and best known of such works was Marshall Field's Wholesale Store
Marshall Field's Wholesale Store
Marshall Field's Wholesale Store, Chicago, Illinois, sometimes referred to as the Marshall Field's Warehouse Store, was a landmark seven-story designed by Henry Hobson Richardson...
in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, (1885, demolished 1930) which, with its large windows set into arcades demonstrates the direction that commercial architecture was to take, in the replacement of structural outer walls with screen walls protecting an inner structural core. Only one of Richardson's palazzo style commercial buildings remains intact, the Hayden Building
Hayden Building
The Hayden Building is a historic building at 681-683 Washington Street in Boston, Massachusetts.The building was built in 1875 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Designed to act as commercial retail space, this four story brownstone building shows little of the...
in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
.
The American architect Louis Sullivan
Louis Sullivan
Louis Henri Sullivan was an American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism" He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an...
pioneered steel-frame construction, meaning that both the floors and outer walls of a building were supported by an internal steel frame, rather than the structure of the walls. This technological development permitted the construction of much taller habitable buildings than was previously possible. Sullivan's Prudential Building in Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
and the Wainwright Building
Wainwright Building
The Wainwright Building is a 10-story red brick office building at 709 Chestnut Street in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. The Wainwright Building is among the first skyscrapers in the world. It was designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan in the Palazzo style and built between 1890 and 1891...
in St. Louis demonstrate the application of the palazzo style to tall structures which maintain the Renaissance features of a cornice and differentiated basement but which have its cliff-like walls composed mainly of glass, the rows of windows separated by vertical bands which also define corners of the building, giving a similar effect to quoins.
Early 20th century
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
details. The architects Starrett and van Vleck built several typical examples such as Gimbel Brothers Department Store), (now Heinz 57
Heinz 57
Heinz 57 is a shortened, popular form of the "57 Varieties" slogan ofPittsburgh's H. J. Heinz Company. In its early days, the company wanted to advertise the great number of choices of canned and bottled foods it offered for sale. Although the company had more than 60 products in 1892, the number...
Center Sixth Avenue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1914 and Garfinckel's
Garfinckel's
Garfinckel's was a prominent department store chain based in Washington, D.C., that catered to a clientele of wealthy consumers. It declared Chapter 11, in June 1990, and ceased operations in 1990.-History:...
Department Store, (now Hamilton Square) in Downtown Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
in 1929. The latter building is eight storeys high, and has a pronounced course which juts like a cornice above the third level, a device that gives the lower parts of the building a more traditional palazzo scale than the less decorated levels that rise above it.
The style was also applied to much taller buildings such as The Equitable Building
Equitable Building (Manhattan)
The Equitable Building is a 38-story office building in New York City, located at 120 Broadway in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. A landmark engineering achievement as a skyscraper, it was designed by Ernest R. Graham and completed in 1915...
(1915), designed by Ernest R. Graham
Ernest R. Graham (architect)
Ernest Robert Graham was an American architect from Chicago. He was the co-founder of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White. He designed the National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Equitable Building in in New York City...
, a 38-story office building in Lower Manhattan which is a landmark engineering achievement as a skyscraper.
The 1930s saw the construction of a number of government buildings in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
for the Third Reich, designed by Ernst Sagebiel
Ernst Sagebiel
Ernst Sagebiel was a German architect.- Life :Sagebiel was a sculptor's son, and after his Abitur in 1912, he began his studies in architecture in Braunschweig...
in a stripped Palazzo style that maintains the basement and cornice but is almost devoid of decorative detail, relying for effect on the overall proportion and balance of the simple rectangular components. The Reich Aviation Ministry (now the Finance Ministry), built in 1935-36 is a notable example.
With the development of Moderne architecture
Moderne architecture
Moderne architecture, also sometimes referred to as "Style Moderne" or simply "Moderne", a general United States landmarks term for styles of architecture that were popular from 1925 through the 1940s. It has expression in styles traditionally classified as Art Deco, Streamline Moderne, and WPA...
the palazzo style became less common.
Post Modern revival
Post-modern architecture has seen some revival in the Palazzo style, in greatly simplified and eclectic forms. The Italian architect Aldo RossiAldo Rossi
Aldo Rossi was an Italian architect and designer who accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in four distinct areas: theory, drawing, architecture and product design.-Early life:...
has designed a number of Palazzo style buildings, including Hotel Il Palazzo in Fukuoka
Fukuoka
Fukuoka most often refers to the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture.It can also refer to:-Locations:* Fukuoka, Gifu, a town in Gifu Prefecture, Japan* Fukuoka, Toyama, a town in Toyama Prefecture, Japan...
, Japan, (1898) which combines elements of a typical palazzo facade, including projecting cornice, with the intense red found in Japanese traditional architecture, and the green of patinated bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
. In 1996 Rossi designed a building complex on a large corner block in the Schützenquartier, Berlin, and previously occupied by a section of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
. Rossi's study of the architecture of the city led him to construct a single building with the appearance of multiple structures, of varying widths, designs and colours, many of which have elements of palazzo architecture.
Characteristics
The characteristic appearance of a palazzo style building is that it draws on the appearance of an Italian palazzo or town house such as those found in FlorenceFlorence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and along the Grand Canal in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
. The style is usually Renaissance revival but may be Romanesque or, more rarely, Italian Gothic.
The facade is cliff-like, without any large projecting portico or pediment. There are several storeys with regular rows of windows which are generally differentiated between levels, and sometimes have pediments that are alternately triangular and segmental. The facade is symmetrical and usually has some emphasis around its a centrally placed portal. The basement or ground floor is generally differentiated in the treatment of its masonry, and is often rusticated. The corners of early 19th century examples generally have quoins or, in 20th century buildings, there is often some emphasis that gives visual strength to the corners. Except in some Postmodern examples, there is always emphasis on the cornice
Cornice
Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.The function of the projecting...
which may be very large and overhang the street. All public faces of the building are treated in a similar manner, the main difference being in the decoration of doors.
See also
- Renaissance architectureRenaissance architectureRenaissance architecture is the architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 17th centuries in different regions of Europe, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. Stylistically, Renaissance...
- Renaissance revival
- Gothic revival architectureGothic Revival architectureThe Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
- Romanesque revival architectureRomanesque Revival architectureRomanesque Revival is a style of building employed beginning in the mid 19th century inspired by the 11th and 12th century Romanesque architecture...
- Richardson Romanesque