23 Facts About Gothic revival

The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly serious and learned admirers of the neo-Gothic revival styles sought to revive medieval Gothic revival architecture, intending to complement or even supersede the neoclassical styles prevalent at the time.

Architecture, in the form of the Gothic Revival, became one of the main weapons in the high church's armoury.

The Gothic Revival was paralleled and supported by "medievalism", which had its roots in antiquarian concerns with survivals and curiosities.

Gothic Revival took on political connotations; with the "rational" and "radical" Neoclassical style being seen as associated with republicanism and liberalism, the more spiritual and traditional Gothic Revival became associated with monarchism and conservatism, which was reflected by the choice of styles for the rebuilt government centres of the British parliament's Palace of Westminster in London, the Canadian Parliament Buildings in Ottawa and the Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest.

However, Gothic revival architecture did not die out completely in the 16th century but instead lingered in on-going cathedral-building projects; at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and in the construction of churches in increasingly isolated rural districts of England, France, Germany, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and in Spain.

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Likewise, Gothic revival architecture survived in an urban setting during the later 17th century, as shown in Oxford and Cambridge, where some additions and repairs to Gothic revival buildings were considered to be more in keeping with the style of the original structures than contemporary Baroque.

Only when new materials, like steel and glass along with concern for function in everyday working life and saving space in the cities, meaning the need to build up instead of out, began to take hold did the Gothic Revival start to disappear from popular building requests.

French neo-Gothic revival had its roots in the French medieval Gothic revival architecture, where it was created in the 12th century.

Gothic revival architecture was sometimes known during the medieval period as the "Opus Francigenum",.

French Gothic Revival was set on sounder intellectual footings by a pioneer, Arcisse de Caumont, who founded the Societe des Antiquaires de Normandie at a time when antiquaire still meant a connoisseur of antiquities, and who published his great work on architecture in French Normandy in 1830.

Hugo intended his book to awaken a concern for the surviving Gothic revival architecture left in Europe, however, rather than to initiate a craze for neo-Gothic revival in contemporary life.

When France's first prominent neo-Gothic revival church was built, the Basilica of Saint-Clotilde, Paris, begun in 1846 and consecrated in 1857, the architect chosen was of German extraction, Franz Christian Gau,; the design was significantly modified by Gau's assistant, Theodore Ballu, in the later stages, to produce the pair of fleches that crown the west end.

The English boldly coined the term "Early English" for "Gothic revival", a term that implied Gothic revival architecture was an English creation.

Gothic revival believed in restoring buildings to a state of completion that they would not have known even when they were first built, theories he applied to his restorations of the walled city of Carcassonne, and to Notre-Dame and Sainte Chapelle in Paris.

Gothic revival strongly opposed illusion, however: reacting against the casing of a cast iron pillar in stone, he wrote; "il faut que la pierre paraisse bien etre de la pierre; le fer, du fer; le bois, du bois".

The term "Collegiate Gothic revival" originated from American architect Alexander Jackson Davis's handwritten description of his own "English Collegiate Gothic revival Mansion" of 1853 for the Harrals of Bridgeport.

But, in most cases, Carpenter Gothic revival buildings were relatively unadorned, retaining only the basic elements of pointed-arch windows and steep gables.

Gothic revival oversaw the construction of some fifty such buildings between 1848 and his death in 1872.

Gothic revival style dictated the use of structural members in compression, leading to tall, buttressed buildings with interior columns of load-bearing masonry and tall, narrow windows.

But, over the first half of the century, Neo-Gothic revival was supplanted by Modernism, although some modernist architects saw the Gothic revival tradition of architectural form entirely in terms of the "honest expression" of the technology of the day, and saw themselves as heirs to that tradition, with their use of rectangular frames and exposed iron girders.

In spite of this, the Gothic Revival continued to exert its influence, simply because many of its more massive projects were still being built well into the second half of the 20th century, such as Giles Gilbert Scott's Liverpool Cathedral and the Washington National Cathedral.

Besides architecture, the Gothic Revival manifested in furniture, metalworks, ceramics and other decorative arts during the 19th century.

Hitchcock devoted substantial chapters to the Gothic Revival, noting that, while “there is no more typical nineteenth-century product than a Victorian Gothic church”, the success of the Victorian Gothic saw its practitioners design mansions, castles, colleges, and parliaments.