North America, 1513–1830

After touching land in Florida in 1513, Spain seemed likely to conquer North America, but instead other major European powers jockeyed for control of the continent, with Britain taking the lead by the late seventeenth century. France came to hold Canada, but Britain also made territorial gains there, too. Rapid population growth followed waves of immigration from Europe, and increasing wealth and self-confidence led the Thirteen Colonies to make a bid for independence in 1776 as grievances grew with the British Crown and the taxation policy. The United States, as it was now constituted, expanded rapidly after the American Revolution ended in 1783, enjoying prosperity from trade, farming and manufactures, which a canal-building boom further fostered in the 1820s. By the early nineteenth century, its population was soaring. However, the economy of the Southern states was dependent on slavery, with millions of Africans being forcibly transported across the Atlantic in a triangular trade led by Britain. US Congress’s 1820 Missouri Compromise drew a free-North/slave-South division across the territories and settled, at least for a time, the perilous question of whether to abolish slavery. North American architectural culture emerged out of British precedents and continually looked to Britain for guidance, even as a greater sense of America’s unique cultural identity began to coalesce. Neoclassicism in public buildings was seen as a pathway to improved public taste. Architectural revivals eventually dominated the scene, pushing aside those long-familiar Classical modes that expressed themselves in North America as Georgian and Federal. Greek and Gothic Revivals became popular, increasingly adorned with sculpture as an aesthetic embellishment. Critics called for better, more durable and more handsome buildings in US cities. Philadelphia, with its marble banks, was considered the architectural model, whereas fast-growing New York had far to go. Although not a professional architect, Thomas Jefferson, President from 1801 to 1809, did much to promote better design, whether in his house at Monticello (1769–1809) or for the University of Virginia (1826). As Secretary of State, Jefferson, along with Pierre Charles L’Enfant, had helped lay out Washington, DC and select the plans of major public buildings. Neoclassical style also became increasingly popular for tasteful homes in the Southern states and elsewhere. The eastern half of the North American continent was dominated by forests, so wooden construction prevailed to an extent unknown in most of Europe. Timber-framed architecture thus became the American hallmark. Brick and stone were put to use locally, and stone architecture became more common once quarries were opened widely after 1800. The introduction of European-style stone vaulting brought a new sense of scale and permanence to American architecture, a promising step towards fireproof construction on a continent plagued by urban conflagrations. Building types multiplied, from the many churches demanded by Protestant sects, to capitol buildings for an ever-growing number of US states, to banks and prisons. The Georgian style of architecture emerged around 1700, practised by skilled craftsmen-builders and gentlemen amateurs. Taste changed abruptly after the American Revolution, with the coming of Federal style derived from the Adamesque in Britain. Fine commercial buildings and mansions graced cities like Baltimore, Boston and Philadelphia, with other centres such as New York growing apace. US colleges proliferated as campus-based architecture, often including Neo-Gothic quadrangles. The first professional architects appeared on the scene by 1800, namely Benjamin Henry Latrobe and Charles Bulfinch: the first an immigrant from England, the latter native-born. But both also faced financial hardship, and it was not till later in the nineteenth century that the profession flourished.

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