American Renaissance
The American Renaissance was the wave of classical art and architecture that swept the United States from the 1876 Centennial to the First World War, as a booming nation gave itself the monumental face of an old civilization. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, architects like Richard Morris Hunt and the firm of McKim, Mead & White built libraries, museums, and train stations in marble and travertine; Augustus Saint-Gaudens supplied allegorical sculpture; painters covered interiors with murals and mosaics conceived as unified ensembles. The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago - the 'White City' - was the movement's spectacular showcase and fed the City Beautiful movement. The ambition was cultural as much as architectural: to prove that America could join the European tradition on equal terms.
Defining characteristics
- Classical vocabularies - columns, domes, loggias, symmetrical massing - at monumental scale
- Beaux-Arts planning: axial approaches, grand staircases, ordered and lavish ornament
- Murals, mosaics, and sculpture integrated with architecture as one ensemble
- Polished stone, marble, and gilding conveying civic wealth and permanence
- Idealized allegorical figures and classical detail borrowed from Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance
Key figures
- Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) — First American Beaux-Arts architect; set the standard for civic and Gilded Age building
- Charles Follen McKim (1847-1909) — Of McKim, Mead & White; designed the Boston Public Library and led the Fine Arts Federation
- Stanford White (1853-1906) — Architect of exuberant public and private palaces in the classical mode
- Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) — Sculptor of the era's memorials and allegorical figures
- Daniel Burnham (1846-1912) — Director of works of the Columbian Exposition and author of the City Beautiful plan
Example works
- World's Columbian Exposition (the White City) — Daniel Burnham and McKim, Mead & White (1893)
- Boston Public Library, McKim Building — McKim, Mead & White (1895)
Sources
- American Renaissance - Wikipedia encyclopedia