Palazzo style architecture
The term refers to the general shape, proportion and a cluster of characteristics, rather than a specific design; hence it is applied to buildings spanning a period of nearly two hundred years, regardless of date, provided they are a symmetrical, corniced, basemented and with neat rows of windows.
Italian palazzi, as against villas which were set in the countryside, were part of the architecture of cities, being built as town houses, the ground floor often serving as commercial premises.
Famous examples include the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi built by Michelozzo in Florence, the Palazzo Farnese built by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and completed by Michelangelo in Rome, and the Ca' Vendramin Calergi by Mauro Codussi and Ca'Grande by Jacopo Sansovino on the Grand Canal in Venice.
[1] The Palais Leuchtenberg (1816) is probably the first of several such buildings on the new Ludwigstrasse in Munich,[2] and has a rusticated half-basement and quoins, three storeys of windows with those of the second floor being pedimented, a large cornice and a shallow columned portico around the main door.
[3] In the late 19th century, the Palazzo style was adapted and expanded to serve as a major architectural form for department stores and warehouses.
In 1829 Barry initiated Renaissance Revival architecture in England with his Palazzo style design for The Travellers' Club, Pall Mall.
[5] From the 1850s, a number of buildings were designed that expand the Palazzo style with its rustications, rows of windows, and large cornice, over very long buildings such as Grosvenor Terrace in Glasgow (1855) by J. T. Rochead and Watts Warehouse (Britannia House), Manchester, (1856) by Travis and Magnall, a "virtuoso performance" in Palazzo design.
The Palazzo style found wider application in the late 19th century when it was adapted for retail and commercial buildings.
Henry Hobson Richardson designed a number of buildings using the Palazzo form but remarkable for employing the Italian Romanesque rather than Renaissance style.
[6] Palazzo style architecture remained common for large department stores through the first half of the 20th century, sometimes being given Art Deco details.
The architects Starrett and van Vleck built several typical examples such as Gimbel Brothers (now Heinz 57 Center Sixth Avenue) in Pittsburgh in 1914, as well as Garfinckel's (now Hamilton Square) in Washington, D.C. in 1929.
[8] The 1930s saw the construction of a number of government buildings in Berlin for the Third Reich, designed by Ernst Sagebiel in a stripped Palazzo style that maintains the basement and cornice but is almost devoid of decorative detail, relying for effect on the overall proportion and balance of the simple rectangular components.
