Gothic Revival architecture

[5] Gothic architecture began at the Basilica of Saint Denis near Paris, and the Cathedral of Sens in 1140[6] and ended with a last flourish in the early 16th century with buildings like Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster.

[7] However, Gothic architecture did not die out completely in the 16th century but instead lingered in on-going cathedral-building projects; at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and in the construction of churches in increasingly isolated rural districts of England, France, Germany, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and in Spain.

[11] At the same time, the Great Hall of Lambeth Palace, that had been despoiled by the Puritans, was rebuilt in a mixture of Baroque and older Gothic forms, demonstrating the restitution of the Anglican Church.

Sir Christopher Wren's Tom Tower for Christ Church, University of Oxford, consciously set out to imitate Cardinal Wolsey's architectural style.

Also in Warwickshire, in 1729/30, the nave and aisles of the church of St Nicholas at Alcester were rebuilt by Edward and Thomas Woodward, the exterior in Gothic forms but with a Neoclassical interior.

[a][17] Throughout France in the 16th and 17th centuries, churches continued to be built following Gothic principles (structure of the buildings, application of tracery) such as St-Eustache (1532–1640, façade 1754) in Paris and Orléans Cathedral (1601–1829).

The most important example is Johann Santini Aichel, whose Pilgrimage Church of Saint John of Nepomuk in Žďár nad Sázavou, Czech Republic, represents a peculiar and creative synthesis of Baroque and Gothic.

[21] During the mid-18th century rise of Romanticism, an increased interest and awareness of the Middle Ages among influential connoisseurs created a more appreciative approach to selected medieval arts, beginning with church architecture, the tomb monuments of royal and noble personages, stained glass, and late Gothic illuminated manuscripts.

Other Gothic arts, such as tapestries and metalwork, continued to be disregarded as barbaric and crude, however sentimental and nationalist associations with historical figures were as strong in this early revival as purely aesthetic concerns.

[b][24] The "Gothick" details of Walpole's Twickenham villa, Strawberry Hill House begun in 1749, appealed to the rococo tastes of the time,[c][26] and were fairly quickly followed by James Talbot at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire.

Architectural elements such as pointed arches, steep-sloping roofs and fancy carvings like lace and lattice work were applied to a wide range of Gothic Revival objects.

[44][45] Abbotsford in the Scottish Borders, rebuilt from 1816 by Sir Walter Scott and paid for by the profits from his hugely successful, historical novels, exemplifies the "Regency Gothic" style.

[g][47] Gothic Revival also includes the reintroduction of medieval clothes and dances in historical re-enactments staged especially in the second part of the 19th century, although one of the first, the Eglinton Tournament of 1839, remains the most famous.

[58] The following year Victor Hugo's historical romance novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame appeared, in which the great Gothic cathedral of Paris was at once a setting and a protagonist in a hugely popular work of fiction.

[61] Following this, Viollet le Duc set out to restore most of the symbolic buildings in France including Notre Dame de Paris,[62] Vézelay,[63] Carcassonne,[64] Roquetaillade castle,[65] Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey on its peaked coastal island,[66] Pierrefonds,[67] and the Palais des Papes in Avignon.

[77] In Mechelen, the largely unfinished building drawn in 1526 as the seat of the Great Council of The Netherlands, was not actually built until the early 20th century, although it closely followed Rombout II Keldermans's Brabantine Gothic design, and became the 'new' north wing of the City Hall.

This competition was won by Emilio De Fabris, and so work on his polychrome design and panels of mosaic was begun in 1876 and completed by 1887, creating the Neo-Gothic western façade.

[97] For the Royal furniture makers Morel and Seddon he provided designs for redecorations for the elderly George IV at Windsor Castle in a Gothic taste suited to the setting.

When his ideas were put into practice, Ruskin often disliked the result, although he supported many architects, such as Thomas Newenham Deane and Benjamin Woodward, and was reputed to have designed some of the corbel decorations for that pair's Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

A public competition for the construction of a new Foreign Office in Whitehall saw the decision to award first place to a Gothic design by George Gilbert Scott overturned by the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, who successfully demanded a building in the Italianate style.

Although Gothic Revival succeeded in becoming an increasingly familiar style of architecture, the attempt to associate it with the notion of high church superiority, as advocated by Pugin and the ecclesiological movement, was anathema to those with ecumenical or nonconformist principles.

[123] The arguments against modern construction materials began to collapse in the mid-19th century as great prefabricated structures such as the glass and iron Crystal Palace and the glazed courtyard of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History were erected, which appeared to embody Gothic principles.

[127] Though these projects were never realised, they influenced several generations of designers and architects, notably Antoni Gaudí in Spain and, in England, Benjamin Bucknall, Viollet's foremost English follower and translator, whose masterpiece was Woodchester Mansion.

[147] This claim has also been made for Edmund Blacket's MacLaurin Hall at the University of Sydney,[148] which sits in the quadrangle complex described as "arguably the most important group of Gothic and Tudor Revival style architecture in Australia".

Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the architectural historian, noted the spread of the Gothic Revival in the 19th and early 20th centuries, "wherever English culture extended – as far as the West Coast of the United States and to the remotest Antipodes".

The English-speaking dominions, Canada, Australia particularly the state of Victoria and New Zealand generally adopted British styles in toto (see above); other parts of the empire saw regional adaptations.

[q][163] Other examples in the east include the late 19th century Church of the Saviour, Beijing, constructed on the orders of the Guangxu Emperor and designed by the Catholic missionary and architect Alphonse Favier;[164] and the Wat Niwet Thammaprawat in the Bang Pa-In Royal Palace in Bangkok, by the Italian Joachim Grassi.

Steel framing supplanted the non-ornamental functions of rib vaults and flying buttresses, providing wider open interiors with fewer columns interrupting the view.

Some architects persisted in using Neo-Gothic tracery as applied ornamentation to an iron skeleton underneath, for example in Cass Gilbert's 1913 Woolworth Building[173] skyscraper in New York and Raymond Hood's 1922 Tribune Tower in Chicago.

[197] By 2008, the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Victorian Society, the architecture of the Gothic Revival was more fully appreciated with some of its leading architects receiving scholarly attention and some of its best buildings, such as George Gilbert Scott's St Pancras Station Hotel, being magnificently restored.