Mission Revival Architecture

Mission Revival architecture flourished between about 1890 and 1915, developing mainly in California and the American Southwest and known there as California Mission Revival, with a related Spanish Mission style also taking hold in Australia. It looked back to the Spanish colonial missions of the 18th and early 19th centuries, using thick adobe or stuccoed walls, few and small windows and doors, low pitched clay tile roofs with wide eaves, heavy arches, arcades and enclosed courtyards, features that had once served practical ends and became largely decorative in the revival. The Mission Inn in Riverside, California, Santa Barbara's rail station of 1902 and Los Angeles Union Station, which blends the style with Art Deco and Streamline Moderne, are leading examples. The style reflected a romantic nostalgia for California's colonial past at a moment of rapid modernization, a mood the period's popular fiction, including the novel Ramona, helped to spread.