High Victorian Gothic; Or, The Dilemma of Style in Modern Architecture

Abstract

IN A RECENT ISSUE of JSAH, Paul Norton devoted no fewer than four pages to reviewing sixteen books recently published on Victorian architecture, and concluded that clearly architectural history of Victorian era has yet to be written.' Whether it is now possible to write such a history is another matter, but most historians will probably agree with Norton's statement, although this admits that all of many books and articles on subject are in one way or another inadequate. For example, David Gebhard, in his review of Robert Furneaux Jordan's Victorian Architecture, a title implying a certain inclusivity, obviously did not consider book inclusive enough; for he pointed out that the nineteenth century, despite numerous studies, has yet no coherent history. Norton and Gebhard, taken together, maintain that not only is there no coherent history of Victorian architecture, but none for nineteenth century as well. And why? Gebhard answered because the multiplicity of historical remnants which this century was so fond of using has made it difficult to discern those elements which, in its own way, are as coherent and recognizable as any that occurred before 800o.2 Gebhard may be right in his suspicion that nineteenth-century architecture has coherent elements; trouble is that no agreement exists as to what they are. Jordan suggested that Victorian architecture is best understood by its natural complexity and contradiction, characterized by an intensity of passion never reconciled with technique. If such a thesis shows promise, this promise was shattered by Jordan's opinion that such complexity and contradiction is bad, that Victorian architecture is mainly bad, and that we must never forget that main contribution of Victorian age to architecture is Slum, what, in this post-Victorian age, has been monumentalized as sprawl. What ultimately emerges from