Palazzo style architecture

Palazzo style refers to an architectural style of the 19th and 20th

centuries based upon the palazzi (palaces) built by wealthy
families of the Italian Renaissance. The term refers to the general
shape, proportion and a cluster of characteristics, rather than a
specific design; hence it is applied to buildings spanning a period
of nearly two hundred years, regardless of date, provided they are
a symmetrical, corniced, basemented and with neat rows of
windows. "Palazzo style" buildings of the 19th century are
sometimes referred to as being of Italianate architecture but this
term is also applied to a much more ornate style, particularly of
residences and public buildings.

While early Palazzo style buildings followed the forms and scale
of the Italian originals closely, by the late 19th century, the style The Ryrie Building, (1913–15) Toronto, Canada

was more loosely adapted and applied to commercial buildings

many times larger than the originals. The architects of these
buildings sometimes drew their details from sources other than the Italian Renaissance, such as Romanesque and occasionally
Gothic architecture. In the 20th century, the style was superficially applied, like the Gothic revival style, to multi-storey buildings.
In the late 20th and 21st century some Postmodern architects have again drawn on the palazzo style for city buildings.

Contents
History
Origins
Early 19th century
1850s to 1900
Early 20th century
Post Modern revival
Characteristics
Palazzo style buildings
See also
References

History

Origins
The Palazzo style began in the early 19th century essentially as a revival style which drew, like Classical revival and Gothic
revival, upon archaeological styles of architecture, in this case the palaces of the Italian Renaissance. Italian palazzi, as against
villas which were set in the countryside, were part of the architecture of cities, being built as town houses, the ground floor often
serving as commercial premises. Early palazzi exist from the Romanesque and Gothic periods, but the definitive style dates from
a period beginning in the 15th century, when many noble families had become
rich on trade. Famous examples include the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi built by
Michelozzo in Florence, the Palazzo Farnese built by Antonio da Sangallo the
Younger and completed by Michelangelo in Rome, and the Ca' Vendramin
Calergi by Mauro Codussi and Ca'Grande by Jacopo Sansovino on the Grand
Canal in Venice.

Early 19th century

Palazzo Farnese, Rome, 16th
The earliest true Renaissance Revival "Palazzo style" buildings in Europe were
century
built by the German architect Leo von Klenze who usually worked in the Greek
Neo-Classical style.[1] The Palais Leuchtenberg, (1816) is probably the first of
several such buildings on the new Ludwigstrasse[2] and has a rusticated half-basement and quoins, three storeys of windows with
those of the second floor being pedimented, a large cornice and a shallow columned portico around the main door. The walls are
stoccoed and painted like the Palazzo Farnese.

In England, the earliest 19th-century application of the Palazzo style was to a

number of London gentlemen's clubs.[3] It was then applied to residences, both
as town and, less commonly, country houses and to banks and commercial
premises.[3] In the late 19th century, the Palazzo style was adapted and expanded
to serve as a major architectural form for department stores and warehouses. In
England, the Palazzo style was at its purest in the second quarter of the 19th
century. It was in competition with the Classical Revival style, which
incorporated large pediments, colonnades and giant orders, lending a grandeur to
public buildings as seen at the British Museum (1840s), and the more romantic
Italianate and French Empire styles in which much domestic architecture was
The Travellers Club (1829) and The built.[3]
Reform Club (1830), Pall Mall,
London, by Charles Barry Early examples are the London clubs, The Athenaeum Club by Decimus Burton
(1824) and The United Service Club by John Nash and Decimus Burton (1828)
on Waterloo Place and Pall Mall. In 1829 Barry initiated Renaissance Revival
architecture in England with his Palazzo style design for The Travellers' Club, Pall Mall.[4] While Burton and Nash's designs
draw on English Renaissance models such as Inigo Jones' Banqueting House, Whitehall and the Queen's House, Greenwich,
Barry's designs are conscientiously archaeological in reproducing the proportions and forms of their Italian Renaissance models.
They are Florentine in style, rather than Palladian. Barry built a second palazzo on Pall Mall, The Reform Club, (1830s) as well
as The Athenaeum, Manchester.[4] Barry's other major essays in this style are the townhouse Bridgewater House, London, (1847–
57) and the countryhouse Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, (1849–51).[4]

After Charles Barry, the Palazzo style was adopted for different purposes, particularly banking. The Belfast Bank had its premises
remodelled by Sir Charles Lanyon in 1845. No. 15 Kensington Palace Gardens (1854) by James Thomas Knowles freely adapts
features of the palazzo.[3]

1850s to 1900
A major 19th-century architect to work extensively in the "Palazzo style" was Edmund Blacket. Blacket arrived in Sydney,
Australia, just a few years before the discovery of gold in NSW and Victoria in 1851. Within the next decade he built the head
premises of six different banking companies in Sydney, as well as branches in country towns. In Sydney, these rare examples of
Blacket's early Palazzo style architecture, all constructed from the local yellow Sydney sandstone were all demolished in the
period from 1965–80, to make way for taller buildings.[5]
From the 1850s, a number of buildings were designed that expand the palazzo
style with its rustications, rows of windows, and large cornice, over very long
buildings such as Grosvenor Terrace in Glasgow (1855) by J. T. Rochead and
Watts Warehouse (Britannia House), Manchester, (1856) by Travis and Magnall,
a "virtuoso performance" in palazzo design.[3] From the 1870s, many city
buildings were designed to resemble Venetian rather than Florentine palazzi, and
were more ornately decorated, often having arcaded loggia at street level, like
James Barnet's General Post Office Building in Sydney, (1866 and 1880s). The
Palazzo style was extremely popular in Manchester in the United Kingdom,
The General Post Office Building,
particularly the work of Edward Walters whose finest Palazzo works include the
Sydney, by James Barnet is in the
Free Trade Hall (1853) and 38 and 42 Mosley Street (1862). Venetian Renaissance style. 1866-80

The palazzo style found wider

application in the late 19th century when it was adapted for retail and
commercial buildings. Henry Hobson Richardson designed a number of
buildings using the palazzo form but remarkable for employing the Italian
Romanesque rather than Renaissance style. The largest and best known of such
works was Marshall Field's Wholesale Store in Chicago, (1885, demolished
1930) which, with its large windows set into arcades demonstrates the direction
that commercial architecture was to take, in the replacement of structural outer
walls with screen walls protecting an inner structural core.[6] Only one of
Marshall Field's Wholesale Store, Richardson's palazzo style commercial buildings remains intact, the Hayden
(1885, lost 1930), Chicago, by Building in Boston.
Richardson
The American architect Louis Sullivan pioneered steel-frame construction,
meaning that both the floors and outer walls of a building were supported by an
internal steel frame, rather than the structure of the walls. This technological development permitted the construction of much
taller habitable buildings than was previously possible. Sullivan's Prudential Building in Buffalo and the Wainwright Building in
St. Louis demonstrate the application of the palazzo style to tall structures which maintain the Renaissance features of a cornice
and differentiated basement but which have its cliff-like walls composed mainly of glass, the rows of windows separated by
vertical bands which also define corners of the building, giving a similar effect to quoins.[6]

Early 20th century

Palazzo style architecture remained common for large department stores through
the first half of the 20th century, sometimes being given Art Deco details. The
architects Starrett and van Vleck built several typical examples such as Gimbel
Brothers (now Heinz 57 Center Sixth Avenue) in Pittsburgh in 1914, as well as
Garfinckel's (now Hamilton Square) in Washington, D.C. in 1929. The latter
building is eight storeys high, and has a pronounced course which juts like a
cornice above the third level, a device that gives the lower parts of the building a
more traditional palazzo scale than the less decorated levels that rise above it.
The 1924 flagship of Rich's, once one of Atlanta's main department stores, is
another example of the Palazzo style.[7] The Reich Aviation Ministry Building,
Berlin, (1935–36) by Ernst Sagebiel
The style was also applied to much taller buildings such as The Equitable
Building (1915), designed by Ernest R. Graham, a 38-story office building in
Lower Manhattan which is a landmark engineering achievement as a skyscraper.[8]
The 1930s saw the construction of a number of government buildings in Berlin for the Third Reich, designed by Ernst Sagebiel in
a stripped Palazzo style that maintains the basement and cornice but is almost devoid of decorative detail, relying for effect on the
overall proportion and balance of the simple rectangular components. The Reich Aviation Ministry (now the Finance Ministry),
built in 1935–36 is a notable example.

With the development of Moderne architecture the palazzo style became less common.

Post Modern revival

Quartier Schützenstrasse, Berlin,
(1996) designed by Aldo Rossi
of multiple structures, of varying widths, designs and colours, many of which have elements of palazzo architecture.[10]
Post-modern architecture has seen some revival in the Palazzo style, in greatly
simplified and eclectic forms. The Italian architect Aldo Rossi has designed a
number of Palazzo style buildings, including Hotel Il Palazzo in Fukuoka, Japan,
(1989) which combines elements of a typical palazzo facade, including
projecting cornice, with the intense red found in Japanese traditional
architecture, and the green of patinated bronze.[9] In 1996 Rossi designed a
building complex on a large corner block in the Schützenquartier, Berlin, and
previously occupied by a section of the Berlin Wall. Rossi's study of the
architecture of the city led him to construct a single building with the appearance

Characteristics
The characteristic appearance of a palazzo style building is that it draws on the appearance of an Italian palazzo or town house
such as those found in Florence and along the Grand Canal in Venice. The style is usually Renaissance revival but may be
Romanesque or, more rarely, Italian Gothic. The facade is cliff-like, without any large projecting portico or pediment. There are
several storeys with regular rows of windows which are generally differentiated between levels, and sometimes have pediments
that are alternately triangular and segmental. The facade is symmetrical and usually has some emphasis around its centrally
placed portal. The basement or ground floor is generally differentiated in the treatment of its masonry, and is often rusticated. The
corners of early-19th-century examples generally have quoins or, in 20th-century buildings, there is often some emphasis that
gives visual strength to the corners. Except in some Postmodern examples, there is always emphasis on the cornice which may be
very large and overhang the street. All public faces of the building are treated in a similar manner, the main difference being in
the decoration of doors.

Palazzo style buildings

The Carlton Hotel, now The Athenaeum Club, Bauakademie, Berlin by The Free Trade Hall,
known as The St. Regis, London, by Decimus Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Manchester, a Venetian-
was designed by Mihran Burton early 19th century (1832-36), demolished style building by Edward
Mesrobian in 1926. 1962 Walters, (1853)

38 and 42 Mosley Street, Former Bank of New The Guaranty Building, The Machinery Hall at
Manchester, Edward South Wales, George Buffalo, US, (1894) by Illinois Institute of
Walters (1862) Street, Sydney, late 19th Louis Sullivan Technology, Chicago, by
century C. V. Kerr of Patten &
Fisher (1901)

The former Cunard The Equitable Building Former Garfinckel's Aarhus City Hall (1941)
Building, Liverpool Manhattan, (1915) by Department Store, Arne Jacobsen and Erik
(1914-17) designed by Ernest R. Graham Washington D.C. (1929), Møller
William Edward Willink Starrett & van Vleck
and Philip Coldwell
Thicknesse

See also
Renaissance architecture
Renaissance revival
Gothic revival architecture
 Romanesque revival architecture
Richardson Romanesque
Chicago school (architecture)

References
1. Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture, Penguin, (1964)
2. James Stevens Curl, A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape, Oxford University, (2000), ISBN 978-0-19-
280017-6
3. James Stevens Curl, Victorian Architecture, David & Charles, (1990). ISBN 0-7153-9144-5
4. Banister Fletcher, A History of Architecture on the Comparative method (2001). Elsevier Science & Technology.
ISBN 0-7506-2267-9
5. Joan Kerr, Our Great Victoria Architect, Edmund Thomas Blacket, 1817–1883, (1983) The National Trust of
Australia, ISBN 0-909723-17-6
6. Helen Gardner, Art through the Ages, Harcourt, Brace and World, (1970) ISBN 0-15-503752-8
7. Library of Congress, photos of Rich's Department Store, 45 Broad Street, Atlanta (https://www.loc.gov/pictures/ite
m/ga0713/)
8. Allen, Irving Lewis (1995). "Skyscrapers". In Kenneth T. Jackson (ed.). The Encyclopedia of New York City. New
Haven, CT & London & New York: Yale University Press & The New-York Historical Society. p. 1074. ISBN 0-
300-05536-6.
9. "Archived copy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20111003144123/http://hotels.lonelyplanet.com/japan/fukuoka-r209
9271/hotel-il-palazzo-p1023586/). Archived from the original (http://hotels.lonelyplanet.com/japan/fukuoka-r20992
71/hotel-il-palazzo-p1023586/) on 2011-10-03. Retrieved 2011-03-27. Lonely Planet, Michael Clark, Hotel Il
Palazzo, accessed 2011-03-27
10. [1] (http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/newspaperarea/), Jay Berman, Newspaper Area Complex, Aldo Rossi
1996, (1999), accessed 2011-03-27

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