Gingerbread (architecture)
[1] It is more specifically used to describe the detailed decorative work of American designers in the late 1860s and 1870s,[2] which was associated mostly to the Carpenter Gothic style.
By the middle of the 19th century, with the invention of the steam-powered scroll saw, the mass production of thin boards that were cut into a variety of ornamental parts had helped builders to transform simple cottages into unique houses.
Andrew Jackson Downing, a prominent advocate of the Gothic Revival criticized this style in his Architecture of Country Houses in 1852.
He classified homes in the United States into three types: villas for the wealthy, cottages for working people and farmhouses for farmers.
[6] Some attributed a cause of the fire to be worsened due to the cheap construction materials and the gingerbread decorations in hoping other cities would heed the warning.
[11][12] According to the National Register of Historic Places, "Cape May has one of the largest collections of late 19th century frame buildings left in the United States.
It contains over 600 summer houses, old hotels, and commercial structures that give it a homogeneous architectural character, a kind of textbook of vernacular American building.
[14] Residential buildings of wealthy individuals in Haiti during the Gingerbread era, between the 1880s and the 1920s, had a unique architecture that combined the local traditions and adaptation of foreign influences.
[19]The gingerbread house by design combines architectural knowledge that stemmed abroad, into an understanding of the Caribbean climate and its living conditions.
They were constructed with tall doors, high ceilings, with steep turret roofs to redirect hot air above its inhabitable rooms, along with a cross-breeze of louvered shutter windows on all sides instead of glass to offset the most scorching of days, flexible timber frames with the innate ability to weather some of the toughest storms and tremors, and built with wrap-around verandas.
[17][23] This specific architectural heritage in Haiti is now threatened as the natural aging of the wood, the weather, the high cost of restoration and repairs are all detrimental to the survival of this style.
The British timber industry started logging in India for teak, a tropical hardwood native to south and southeast Asia.
[27] The British companies and rulers in northern Thailand built their teak gingerbread houses based on the styles from Britain.
Thais of high social standing in the era of King Rama V built teak gingerbread houses to showcase the craftsmanship.
[29] Today, the remaining gingerbread houses in Thailand can be seen in various locations in Bangkok, Nakhon Pathom, Phrae, Lampang and Chanthaburi.
[30] Gingerbread houses in the northern provinces of Thailand combined the Lan Na arts and crafts and Victorian-era architecture.
Additionally, commercial buildings owned by Chinese settlers and Burmese logging workers incorporated elaborate gingerbread decoration as part of the unique half-wood half-concrete structure called Saranai (or Salanai).
The principal design elements of Victorian Gothic such as quatrefoil, cross, and flame were used as an inspiration and several gingerbread patterns were developed locally.
