Romanesque Revival Architecture

Romanesque Revival, also called Neo Romanesque, is a nineteenth century building style inspired by the round arched Romanesque architecture of eleventh and twelfth century Europe. Its best known American variant, Richardsonian Romanesque, is named for the architect Henry Hobson Richardson, who lived from 1838 to 1886 and first used elements of the style in the Richardson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo, New York, designed in 1870, before producing his most celebrated example, Trinity Church in Boston. This variant drew on eleventh and twelfth century Romanesque forms from southern France, Spain and Italy, and is marked by strong, picturesque massing, round headed arches often springing from clusters of short, squat columns, deeply recessed entrances, richly varied stone rustication, and cylindrical corner towers capped with cone shaped roofs. The style spread widely through American civic, commercial and religious buildings in the later nineteenth century, distinguished from other Victorian revival styles by its emphasis on heavy stone massing and rounded rather than pointed arches.