Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

One of the most common slams at the New Urbanism is that the attempt to revive traditional forms of town-making and building necessarily result in Disneyland. The thinking behind this, by the way, isn't that it sometimes can result in Disneyland. It's that it always and everywhere must result in Disneyland. This comes from a comletely kooky set of assemptions and beliefs, about "being true to materials" and dreamy ideas about "the spirit of the age." All of which combine, as we know, to necessitate that archtiects today work with a lot of goofy curves, zigzags, and translusecney.

Yet if it's true that we can no longer build and create in traditional styles, then it certainly must be true that people in other eras likewise were under an inescapable obligation to be true to their materials, and to obey the spirit of their age too. (Either that, or something in the nature of life itself changed circa 1930,

A couple of illustrations.

First up, the Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament.

Dig the bell tower, olove those spires and ribs. It's all so dignified ... so very Gothic and medieval. Seat of law since time immemorial, etc, Latin must be spoken here, no? Can't get more authentic than that.

Claude Monet made a number of famous paintings of the Houses of Parliament, in which the buildings looks like time-immemorial incrustations, as essential to London as, say, Notre Dame is to Paris.

In fact, the complex was designed around 1840 (by Charles Barry, with decoration by Augustus Pugin) and was built between 1840 and 1870.

The old Palace of Westminster had been mostly stroyed in a fire in 1834. The competition for the design stipulated that the new building should be built in a Gothic or Elizabethan style, as a way of asserting continuity with the past. Charles Barry was a successful architect known mostly for bringing Italian-Renaissance styles to London and to country houses. Augustus Pugin, responsible for much of the detailing, was a brilliant eccentric, th eauthor of "The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture," who was a fanatic about medieval and Gothic styles. The mid 1800s were, in fact, a time of great enthusiasm for the Gothic. In Monet's first painting above, the buildings were brand-spanking new. In the later paintings, there were a mere couple of decades old. Remember: in 1850, Britain was full in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. These buildings date from that time.

Here's another illustration. Santa Barbara County Courthouse. Santa Barbara is an old mission town. The area was first settled by Europeans in the 1600s; a mission was established there in the 1700s. The Santa Barbara Courthouse is known for its murals, its tilework its hand-painted ceilings, its sunken garden, and an 80 foot clocktower that offers a 360 degree view of the city and its surroundings. It's often said to be one of the most beautiful government buildings in the country.

"Historic" though it may look, the Santa Barbara County Courthouse is in fact a completely modern building. Much of Santa Barbara, including its courthouse, was wiped in in a 1925 earthquake. The new courthouse was designed by San Francisco architect William Mooser III in the then-popular Spanish Revival Style, and was dedicated in 1929. Paintings were supplied by Allan Gilbert Cram, and by a Hollywood set designer named Dan Sayre Groesbeck, and much of the beautiful interior decorative painting was done by John Smeraldi.

Ted Marcus has a nice page on the Courthouse here.
http://www.tedsimages.com/text/sbcourt.htm

This is a wonderful -- and wonderfully arted -- book about "Red-Tile Style," by Arroll Gellner (with photos by Douglas Keister), about America's long spell with Spanish Revival. Began in the late 1800s as an extension of the related Mission Revivial,, lasted into the 1930s, and got going again after World War II. It produced giants, many of whom you'll never learn about in typical archtiecure histories, including another architect known for his gorgeous work in Santa Barbara, George Washington Smith. In fact, it continues today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670030503/qid=1133848432/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-5626707-1844100?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

http://www.architect.com/Publish/GWS.html

So remind me again why it is that architects and builders today can't and plan build in historic-revival styles?

Larger point: The history of architecture as I was taught it was the history of innovations and innovators, all of it leading inevitably to what it had always struggled to be and become: Modernism. This tale never made a bit of sense to me. In fact, I never really "got" the history of Western architecture until I finally began to understand it as a history of revivals, with the occasional innovation being folded into the ongoing revival-upon-revival thang. Revivals were the standard thing. What modernism represents is a chopping-off of all relaitonship with the past, except possibly the modernist past.

Best,

Michael