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06 · Arts & Crafts to Art Deco

National Romanticism

c. 1890–1920

Rough granite or brick walls, steep roofs, towers and carved animal or plant ornament, with medieval and folk forms.

Look for

Rustication Steep gable Carved stone relief Bell tower
Helsinki Central Station, Helsinki, Finland: an example of National Romanticism architecture
Helsinki Central Station, Helsinki, Finland. Photo: Anne Pietarinen, CC BY 4.0
Stockholm City Hall, Stockholm, Sweden
Stockholm City Hall Stockholm, Sweden · Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 3.0
Tampere Cathedral, Tampere, Finland
Tampere Cathedral Tampere, Finland · Mikko Paananen, CC BY-SA 3.0
National Museum of Finland, Helsinki, Finland
National Museum of Finland Helsinki, Finland · No machine-readable author provided. Thermos assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5
Kiruna Church, Kiruna, Sweden
Kiruna Church Kiruna, Sweden · Rünno, Public domain

what it is

National Romantic buildings of about 1890-1920 in Finland, Sweden and neighboring countries have heavy walls of rough local material: red granite on Helsinki Central Station, red brick on Stockholm City Hall, wood shingles on Kiruna Church. Other common features are steep roofs, towers and carved animal and plant ornament. The forms are taken from medieval churches and castles and from local building traditions.

Helsinki Central Station, by Eliel Saarinen, has a clock tower and lantern-bearing statues by Emil Wikström beside its entrance. Stockholm City Hall, by Ragnar Östberg (1911-1923), has a 106-meter tower topped by the Three Crowns. Lars Sonck designed Tampere Cathedral (1902-1907) and Gustaf Wickman designed Kiruna Church (1909-1912). Art Nouveau used curving lines in iron, glass and plant-shaped ornament, while National Romanticism used massed stone, brick or timber, steep roofs and medieval shapes. Finnish architects often combined the two, as in the National Museum of Finland in Helsinki (1905-1910), which has a medieval-style exterior and an Art Nouveau interior.

how to spot one

Rustication Wall surfaces cut with deep grooves so each block reads as heavy and distinct. It is commonly used on lower floors to suggest strength. 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. Carved stone relief Figures or patterns carved into stone so they project from a flat background, called low relief when shallow and high relief when deep. It appears on ancient temples and Gothic churches. 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.

Also look for

Round archDeep-set windowTurretShingle siding

history

National Romanticism began in the 1890s in Finland and Sweden, where architects turned from imported historical styles to medieval buildings and local timber and stone traditions. In Finland, then part of the Russian Empire, it was linked to the Kalevala, the national epic, and to resistance to Russification policy from 1894. The firm Gesellius, Lindgren, Saarinen designed the Finnish pavilion at the 1900 Paris World's Fair, which combined Finnish wooden architecture, British Gothic Revival and Jugendstil, the German term for Art Nouveau. Swedish architects added ideas from the English Arts and Crafts movement.

The firm's studio-home Hvitträsk, near Helsinki, was finished by 1903. By the 1910s critics such as Sigurd Frosterus argued for rationalist modernism, and Nordic Classicism followed, as in Helsinki's Töölö district (completed 1916). Helsinki Central Station was inaugurated in 1919, and Eliel Saarinen emigrated to the United States in 1923.

where to find it

Helsinki, Stockholm, Tampere and Kiruna: Helsinki Central Station, Stockholm City Hall, Tampere Cathedral and Kiruna Church, plus Hvitträsk near Helsinki.

easy to confuse with

Casa Batlló, an example of Art Nouveau Art Nouveau Whiplash curves and plant-like ironwork: facades that look grown rather than built. Red House, an example of Arts and Crafts Arts and Crafts Handcraft against the machine: visible joinery, natural wood and stone, and homes rooted in their gardens. Trinity Church, an example of Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque Muscular rough-cut stone, huge low round arches on stubby columns, and round corner towers. Church of the Savior on Blood, an example of Russian Revival Russian Revival Onion domes, steep tent-roofed towers, kokoshnik gables and patterned red brick or colored tile on churches and secular buildings.