The Classical Revival was a dogmatic revival based on intensive studies of Greek
and Roman styles. It applied classical motifs and adornments to Georgian
or other English traditional floor plans. The Classical Revival was
particularly concerned with the application of Greek plans and proportions
to civic buildings.
Nineteenth Century industrialists were sympathetic to both monumental architecture
and the ideas of Greek democracy. Consequently, schools, libraries,
government offices, and most other civic buildings of this time were built
in the Classical Revival style. The white columned
porches of the Classical Revival domestic buildings are identified
with the mansions on cotton plantations in the Southern United
States, but many of these can also be found in the houses of wealthy
land owners in Canada.
This style is uncommon in Lunenburg County. In more
cosmopolitan places, builders, consulting their style books,
produced pretentious caricatures of Graeco-Roman buildings or those
suggestive of the Gothic architecture of medieval Europe. In Lunenburg,
builders couldn't disassociate themselves from British conservatism and
the old colonial influences in building styles so things did not get too strange.
394 Main.Street |
The Bank of New Brunswick, St. Stephen, N.B., 1882
1. The symmetry is not quite perfection in the above building; the entryway being offset
but otherwise this is a Grecian temple built with local woods.
2. Windows are like those in Neo Classical buildings with
the addition of a cornice on the top and end pilasters. The complex
mouldings and other details of the Neo Classical door were lost
to machines which produced much simplified geometric mouldings.
3.This is one of a few local buildings retaining genuine Greek
columns although the bottoms rotted away many decades ago and the upper portions now rest on cement blocks..
4, Although this style began with a celebration of authentic
detail the Orders
of Column was soon lost and the ends of buildings came to be
faced with plain flat vertical boards simulating columns
5. A very nice gable used to overhang the ground floor. This
design features a roof which is better suited to a Greek temple in a climate having little rain or no
snow.
This building is now a pizza joint and totally defaced.
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In Nova Scotia, this style was at first
seen as "too American" and a lot of folk remembered the unfriendliness
of the United States privateers during the War of 1812. While the
development of this fad in building centered on Greek models in Britain
and the United States a lot of Roman architectural detail entered the
mix in this province.
This style, unlike some others, emerged just as the Nova Scotian
economy went into a downward spin. so it was not simply a matter of
trying to avoid making a revolutionary statement. The building market
was depressed!
What was finally constructed here was buildings with the gable-end
facing the road and without proper decorations or at best modest
replicas of detailing from a Greek or Roman building. That St. Stephen
building shows a full portico but these were almost never built in
this province. The Nova Scotian residence of this time and style showed
a broken piedmont so that except for its orientation and minor
decorative differences it was very like a Neoclassical structure.
It will be remembered that the colonial homes had delicate exterior
woodwork around windows and doors. Here, the windows became much larger
although moulkdings remained simple. On the other hand end boards and
verge boards became wide and a little disproportionate. As the
style developed window and door treatments became extreme, the
Neoclassical style being modified by adding a cornice on the top and
end pilasters on doors and windows. The general look was more clunky
than delicate but the overall effect was not as bad on a large house.
Another characteristic was a crowding of horizontal windows under
the eaves and an awkward placement of them close to the verge boards at
the gable.
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