Victorian Style Houses History

The architecture of Georgia developed from fundamental Greek style to huge steel-frame skyscraper. Between them architects and builders employed a variety of styles including Victorian. While Georgia was still suffering through the devastation of war, Reconstruction, as well as economic downturns.

Georgian and Victorian styles do often go together in historical perspective.

Postwar times were marked by a rise in wealth as a result of urbanization, industrialization, and an increase in production of cotton.

Victorian style doors

In the Victorian period, doors were usually paneled and made using intricate carvings. They were covered with the frame of the door that had an impressive architrave to compliment the door. The door was often carved, painted, or grained to appear more expensive.

Check Victorian style front doors

Greek Revival

In 1850, the most important architectural style that was prevalent in Georgia along with in the United States. Important commissions like the one in The Governor’s Mansion in Milledgeville (1838) by Charles B. Cluskey contributed to the development of a passion for Greek revival across Georgia that lasted through the 1850s. Characterized by grand columned porticos, low-pitched roofs often with triangular pediments, entablatures, and rectangular/symmetrical construction. Greek revival became common throughout Georgia.

Savannah was the architectural center in the state. Savannah’s wealthy merchants and businessmen invested their money in cotton and constructed new structures designed for residential and commercial use. Which were slightly modified Greek revival stylethat was adapted to the city’s small lots.

With low or flat rooftops windows that were symmetrical in their placement with elevated entrances, and porticos of one story with square columns . The modern structures were generally created by newly arrived architects like John Norris of New York. John Norris. Greek Renaissance structures are the U.S. Custom House, commercial structures like Bay Street, and row houses, such as The Gordon Block and Mary Marshall Row.

Victorian architects

Greek revival It was but, it was not just restricted to Savannah during the 1850s. It was in 1856 that Charles Sholl and Calvin Fay came together to construct an officially-run state institution (Powell The building) located in Milledgeville with a three-story, portico with a soaring design that was constructed with The Greek Ionic order.

Local builders also took part in the popular art style. In the southwest portion of Georgia, the architect/designer John Wind built the impressive Greek revival structures of Cedar Grove Plantation and the Thomas County Courthouse.

The vast Cotton Belt region of central Georgia was soon covered in massive colonnaded homes like those built by John Thomas Grant in Athens. The city today situated inside Georgia’s President’s House in the University of Georgia and Austin Leyden in the rapidly expanding railway central in Atlanta.

Despite the dominant nature of Greek revival as a fashion beautiful or romantic structures built with Gothic style or Italianate styles began popping in the decade of prosperity of 1850. Decorated Gothic design were featured within Milledgeville’s State Capitol in Milledgeville in the 1820s. But they did not reflect the wide use of arches featuring pointed arches , as along with asymmetrical floor designs crenelations.

Buttresses or crenelations steeply sloped roofs, gables and trellised verandas that are the main features of the style during the 1850s. One of the most striking examples which exemplifies the Gothic style is the Green-Meldrim House.

Gothic Revival style

Not suitable for the harsh conditions Southern Europe Yet, Gothic or Victorian revival was used extensively in church architecture during and after during the Victorian period. This was because of the belief that the passion of Christianity in the Middle Ages. It gave the rise of the Gothic style, must be copied. First Gothic Revival churches to be constructed within Georgia include St. John’s Episcopal in Savannah constructed around 1850 built by New York architect Calvin Otis.

More reminiscent of the appearance of an English country church rather than a grand church, St. John’s has distinctive arches with punctuated, buttresses, and massive Hammerbeam trusses which line the interior. The church was built in the Civil War (1861-65). The majority of religious organisations employed an increasing number of well-known architects to design Gothic Revival churches.

Atlanta is a great illustration of the continuing popularity of the Gothic revival style during the final years of the Victorian period. William H. Parkins created his Roman Catholic Church (later Shrine) of the Immaculate Conception in a simplified Gothic revival style in 1869. Edmund G. Lind established the Central Presbyterian Church in 1885.

Italianate style

The Italianate style was more efficient over its rival that is that of the Gothic revival style, due because it was more simple to construct and maintain. It was built on Italian Renaissance buildings. This style contains several rectangular blocks, which were usually grouped together in asymmetrical patterns. Low pitched roofs typically had large eaves, that could be supported using brackets and often covered with cupolas or lamps.

Other decorative elements included arches that had segments or circular window hoods with round shapes classical designs and one-story porches. Italianate homes are often elaborate, as is the case with the lavish Hay House (1855-59) within Macon as well as John Norris’ Mercer House that are in Savannah.

Another notable illustration of this style is in Georgia. Georgia and includes Josue Hurt’s Dinglewood (1855) situated in Columbus and Woodlands situated in northwest Georgia.

Georgian style

The building was built during the late 1850s, under the supervision by Sir Godfrey Barnsley, the latter is an Asymmetrical Italian residence constructed from blocks connected to an upper tower. It is an amazing example of the most modern design of architecture of the time. The grounds, which are now Barnsley Gardens, are open to visitors.

The construction of no importance was not an issue in the early 1860s. In the early 1860s, Civil War and the resulting in the hardships that followed the Reconstruction period made it difficult for high-end architectural.

Railroads were rebuilt and expanded as cotton production began to return to levels before war in 1882. The wealth generated by cotton and new production facilities for textiles provided the funds needed to build numerous new structures during the time after the downturn in economics in 1873.

Victorian age between 1860s and 1870s

The 1860s and 1870s Italianate and the identical Second Empire style with its distinctive mansard roof were widely used in all sorts of structures throughout the state. Constructed with simple, symmetrical blocks each style of construction is ideal for the modern urban settings of postwar. Those can be extended in the future without a lot of difficulty. The ornamentation can be simple window hoods, or more elaborate balustrades, quoins, or voussoirs featuring turned columns.

Public buildings, like Savannah’s police barracks built in the 1870s (architect J. H. Boggs) Atlanta’s 1869-1870 Kimball House Hotel (William H. Parkins) and the 1874 Moore College Building in Athens (Leon Charbonnier). Both. Charbonnier) were Italianate structures which had the distinction of with mansard roofs. The most extravagant design is that of the Southern Mutual Insurance Company Building situated in Athens.

It was a curved structure with receding and extending bays in the massive block that made up the structure. This was with massive quoins window molds. With a mansard roof, which was puncture by massive dormers and was supported by the braced cornice.

The 1880s were the beginning of the end, but the Italianate and Second Empire styles were out of date. Modern concepts, techniques and architects developed new styles of architecture , like Queen Anne, Romanesque, and Neoclassical.

Economics of Victorian era

The economic boom of the 1870s up to 1893 enabled and sometimes required to build new buildings using the latest designs or employing the latest technology. Such as steel-frame and fireproof constructions that had hydraulic elevators.

The 1890s saw the first tall buildings were built in Atlanta (the Equitable Building by John Wellborn Root and Daniel Burnham from Chicago) and the city of Savannah (1895 Citizens Bank by G. L. Norrman in the Chicago style of Louis Sullivan). It wasn’t until the year 1895 that steel-frame skyscrapers began to pop up in Georgia.Queen Anne

The general trend for architects was to flourish during this period. The most well-known style they can be described as Queen Anne, and striking examples remain visible throughout the nation.

The style was distinguished by wide designs that had the central area being that was huge and extensive porches. Exteriors that was a reflection of the different dimensions and configurations of rooms inside. Ideal for the south-facing climate Queen Anne residences tended to be constructed using a broad variety of materials. Usually with intricate arrangements of spindle work, shingles as well as bricks and masonry blends. As well as the addition of terra-cotta tones.

The most lavish homes would include towers, turrets and belvederes (open observation spaces built on top of the tower) and port cocheres. The gazebos built on the corners of porches, as well as various bay windows and decorative chimney stacks.