Italianate architecture
For example, from the late 1840s to 1890, it achieved huge popularity in the United States,[5] where it was promoted by the architect Alexander Jackson Davis.
Later examples of the Italianate style in England tend to take the form of Palladian-style building often enhanced by a belvedere tower complete with Renaissance-type balustrading at the roof level.
Following the completion of Osborne House in 1851, the style became a popular choice of design for the small mansions built by the new and wealthy industrialists of the era.
However, "after a modest spate of Italianate villas, and French chateaux"[15] by 1855 the most favoured style of an English country house was Gothic, Tudor, or Elizabethan.
The Italianate style came to the small town of Newton Abbot and the village of Starcross in Devon, with Isambard Brunel's atmospheric railway pumping houses.
Davis' design for Blandwood is the oldest surviving example of Italianate architecture in the United States, constructed in 1844 as the residence of North Carolina Governor John Motley Morehead.
Motifs drawn from the Italianate style were incorporated into the commercial builders' repertoire and appear in Victorian architecture dating from the mid-to-late 19th century.
[24] Its popularity was due to being suitable for many different building materials and budgets, as well as the development of cast-iron and press-metal technology making the production more efficient of decorative elements such as brackets and cornices.
The popularity of Italianate architecture in the time period following 1845 can be seen in Cincinnati, Ohio, the United States' first boomtown west of the Appalachian Mountains.
[25] This city, which grew along with the traffic on the Ohio River, features arguably the largest single collection of Italianate buildings in the United States in its Over-the-Rhine neighbourhood, built primarily by German-American immigrants that lived in the densely populated area.
In recent years, increased attention has been called to the preservation of this impressive collection, with large-scale renovation efforts beginning to repair urban blight.
The architect William Wardell designed Government House in Melbourne—the official residence of the governor of Victoria—as an example of his "newly discovered love for Italianate, Palladian and Venetian architecture.
"[28] Cream-colored, with many Palladian features, it would not be out of place among the unified streets and squares in Thomas Cubitt's Belgravia, London, except for its machicolated signorial tower that Wardell crowned with a belvedere.
The principal block is flanked by two lower asymmetrical secondary wings that contribute picturesque massing, best appreciated from an angled view.
The Italianate style of architecture continued to be built in outposts of the British Empire long after it had ceased to be fashionable in Britain itself.
As in Australia, the use of Italianate for public service offices took hold but using local materials like timber to create the illusion of stone.
At the time it was built in 1856, the official residence of the Colonial Governor in Auckland was criticized for the dishonesty of making wood look like stone.
