archie
Sign in Get the app

04 · Classical & Gothic Revivals

High Victorian Gothic

c. 1855–1885

Pointed arches and steep roofs on walls banded in contrasting red brick and light or dark stone, with heavy towers.

Look for

Pointed arch Tracery window Bell tower Steep gable
Keble College, Oxford, Oxford, England: an example of High Victorian Gothic architecture
Keble College, Oxford, Oxford, England. Photo: Godot13, CC BY-SA 4.0
St Pancras London Hotel, London, England
St Pancras London Hotel London, England · Colin, CC BY-SA 3.0
Manchester Town Hall, Manchester, England
Manchester Town Hall Manchester, England · Mark Andrew., CC BY 2.0
Memorial Hall (Harvard University), Cambridge, Massachusetts
Memorial Hall (Harvard University) Cambridge, Massachusetts · Daderot., CC BY-SA 3.0
Jefferson Market Library, New York, New York
Jefferson Market Library New York, New York · User:Aude; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:58, 14 January 2013 (UTC), CC BY-SA 2.5

what it is

High Victorian Gothic is the polychrome (many-colored) phase of the Gothic Revival, built from about 1855 to 1885. Walls are laid in bands and patterns of contrasting brick and stone, so the color is built into the wall and not painted on. Windows and doors have pointed arches, and roofs are steep and often covered in slates laid in patterns. Buildings are large, usually with a tall tower.

Keble College in Oxford, begun in 1868 to designs by William Butterfield, is faced in red brick banded with blue and white. Alfred Waterhouse's Manchester Town Hall (1868-1877) has a 280-foot clock tower. George Gilbert Scott's Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras in London opened in 1873, and in the United States Harvard's Memorial Hall (1870-1877) has a roof of patterned slate. Earlier Gothic Revival buildings were often faced in a single material, while High Victorian Gothic walls are patterned in two or three colors.

how to spot one

Pointed arch An arch whose two curved sides meet at a point, called the apex. It is the standard arch of Gothic and Gothic Revival buildings and pushes outward less than a round arch. Tracery window A window divided by vertical stone bars called mullions, which branch at the top into curved stonework called tracery. It supports large areas of glass in Gothic churches and Gothic Revival buildings. Bell tower A tall tower that holds bells or a clock, rising from or beside a church or public building. The open stage near the top where the bells hang is the belfry, and a freestanding bell tower is called a campanile. Steep gable The triangular upper part of an end wall, framed by the two slopes of a steep roof. Steep gables are common on Gothic Revival, Tudor Revival and Queen Anne houses.

Also look for

Lancet windowBelt courseTurretRoof finial

history

The style is sometimes called Ruskinian Gothic after the critic John Ruskin, whose writing, notably The Stones of Venice (1851-1853), influenced it. William Butterfield's All Saints, Margaret Street in London, begun in 1850 and consecrated in 1859, is described as the first example of structural polychromy in London: red brick banded with black brick, with stone accents. Ruskin praised it after visiting. Butterfield, Scott, G. E. Street and Alfred Waterhouse became its best-known British architects.

The style reached the United States in the early 1860s through architects such as Frederick Clarke Withers and Jacob Wrey Mould, and by 1870 it was used across the country for civic and religious buildings, including the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford (1872-1878). In Britain, Waterhouse's Victoria Building at Liverpool University gave the term "red brick university" its origin. The Gothic Revival as a whole had peaked by the 1870s and fell out of fashion in the 1880s and early 1890s. Withers's Jefferson Market Courthouse in New York (1874-1877) was saved from demolition and converted to a public library in 1961.

where to find it

Oxford, Manchester and London in England, and Cambridge, New York and Hartford in the United States, including Keble College, Manchester Town Hall and Harvard's Memorial Hall.

easy to confuse with

Palace of Westminster, an example of Gothic Revival Gothic Revival Medieval drama revived: pointed arches, steep gables, patterned stone window bars, and strong vertical lines. Doge's Palace, an example of Venetian Gothic Venetian Gothic Gothic gone lacy: pointed arches with an S-curved tip, four-leaf clover cutouts, and arcaded facades in pink and white. Trinity Church, an example of Romanesque Revival Romanesque Revival Round arches revived in heavy rough-cut stone: squat columns, cave-like entrances, and deep-set windows. Harkness Tower, an example of Collegiate Gothic Collegiate Gothic Stone quadrangles with pointed-arch gateways, Tudor arches, tall towers, oriel windows and mullioned windows on university campuses.