Italianate Style in the United States

The Italianate style spread beyond England and was used in varying forms (much after it fell out of favor in Britain) all over Northern Europe and the British colonies.

By the 1840s, the Italianate style gained popularity in the United States, as an option to the existing Gothic and Greek Revival styles. The architect Alexander Jackson Davis is credited with designing the first Italianate style building, Blandwood, the Governor’s mansion in North Carolina, that was completed in 1846. The mansion, an early manifestation of Italianate architecture, can be compared more readily in its culture with the Italianate designs of Nash than with the more Renaissance-influenced works of Barry.

Italianate architecture went through a modification and took on an indigenous form in the United States. This variant is characterized by an increased emphasis on Italian Renaissance – bold eaves supported by corbels, low-pitched roofs almost extending to the ground level, or even flat roofs with a wide projection. A tower is typically integrated suggesting the Italian belvedere or even campanile tower. Commercial builders featured motifs from the Italianate style in their structures. Similar motifs are also seen in Victorian architecture of the mid to late 1800s.

By the late 1860s, Italianate architecture almost took over from Greek Revival in popularity, propelled by its attributes of being able to be incorporated across different buildings and budgets. Moreover, technological developments in cast iron and press-metals greatly simplified the manufacture of ornamental components such as brackets and cornices that were widely used in Italianate.

By the late 1870s, the style was starting to give way to the Queen Anne and the Colonial Revival styles in the United States.

An Italianate style structure, The Breakers, deserves more than a mention in the history of the style in the United States. A 70-room mansion located on Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, it was designed by the architect Richard Morris Hunt for Cornelius Vanderbilt II, and was built between 1893 and 1895. While it appears as a typical Renaissance palazzo from the outside, the construction used the most advanced techniques (up until then) in that, steel trusses were used with no wooden components. Typical indigenized Italianate characteristics that are portrayed include tall chimneys, juxtaposed wings and the ostentatious, large corbels holding up the pitched and visible roof. However, by the time The Breakers was completed, the Italianate style declined in popularity in the United States.

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