Richardsonian Romanesque Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of American architecture named after architect Henry Hobson Richardson, whose masterpiece is Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston, Massachusetts.This very free revival style incorporates 11th Century southern French and Spanish Romanesque characteristics. It emphasizes clear strong picturesque massing, round-headed "Romanesque" arches, often springing from clusters of short squat columns, recessed entrances, richly varied rustication, boldly blank stretches of walling contrasting with bands of windows, and cylindrical towers with conical caps embedded in the walling.
The style epitomizes work by the generation of architects practicising in the 1880s— before the influx of Beaux-Arts styles— such as J. Cleaveland Cady of Cady, Bird and See in New York City, whose American Museum of Natural History's original 77th Street range epitomizes "Richardsonian Romanesque." The style influenced the Chicago school of architecture and architects Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. In Finland, Eliel Saarinen was influenced by Richardson.
Research is currently ongoing to try and document the westward movement of the artisans and craftsmen, mostly immigrant Italians and Irish, who built in the Richardsonian Romanesque tradition. The style began in the East, in and around Boston and while it was losing favor there it was gaining popularity further west. Thus the stone carvers and masons appear to have surfed the style west until it died out in the early years of the twentieth Century.
For pictures of H.H. Richardson’s own designs and some of the details, see Henry Hobson Richardson.
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