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There was an implicit struggle between
horizontals and diagonals when this style was translated into the North
American idiom. All of the suggested structural elements were
vertical! All original Gothic buildings were constructed of stone!
When A.J. Downing began promoting the new designs in his book The Architecture of Country Homes
(1850) he was definite in his support of traditional European materials
and forms. If wood had to be used he recommended that it be painted to
resemble stone or at least be stuccoed.
Nova Scotians were probably looking for something beyond the Neoclassic
model but these were not the best economic times and the first Gothic
buildings had a somewhat old-fashioned preference for
horizontals. Ideally windows were supposed to be arched like church
windows, but this kind of framing involved expensive joinery and was
abandoned in buildings erected after the turn of the century.
The classical models, Greek and Roman temples, were now recognized as
entirely pagan designs and strange ecclesiastical wars emerged in
favour of church-inspired architecture. In Nova Scotia this was
supported by the development of a merchant class which had more time to
consider the arguments of the Church of England. The simple folk
probably found it merely a welcome change from past fashion.
Given time it gradually gained ground but while churches and
parliament buildings embraced change, banks remained attached to
Neoclassic architecture. |
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The first churches were
austere meeting house built in the 1830s. The firsts Lutheran looked a
bit like a New England meeting house but they replaced it with
this building in 1869. The earlier Georgian styled building was
not quite as strange as this one. The Gothic windows (1) are an
on-the-cheap version of gently peaked windows found in Britain.
The tower of the earlier church had been fitted with spires like
this one, (2) but that highway-to-heaven steeple was new to
the scene, although the Presbyterians and Anglicans had their own
versions of these hard to maintain structures.
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