A European Profile of American Architecture

Abstract

European criticism of American architecture was superficial and condescending until the last quarter of the 19th century. After the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876 the quantity of studies increased slowly, but only by 1885 was a corresponding rise in quality noticeable. From this year through the wake of the Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893, European architects and critics, particularly in London, Paris, and Berlin, studied closely the approaches and practices of architects in the United States and discussed their merits vigorously. For many, American work became a model of sensible, contemporary methodology and design, offering clues to the possible nature of architecture in the 20th century. For others, the buildings of the United States proved the cultural superiority of the "senior nations" of the Old World. If the value of American architecture was uncertain to Europeans, its characteristics were not. They treated it as a definable entity with recognizable traits, a distinctive national architecture distinguishable both in theory and practice from European work in general and their nation's work in particular. This body of criticism reveals those aspects of design Europeans considered typically American. Because they approached this architecture with presuppositions and assumptions shaped by European experiences, visitors frequently saw artistic and practical features hidden to or discounted by native commentators. They often discovered characteristics that American professionals did not consciously regard as characteristics. Their dissimilar vantage points and their need for comprehendible explanations encouraged them to risk interpretations of relationships between causes and final form; they attempted to explain why the Americans built as they did.