Collegiate Gothic Architecture Reconsidered

About Collegiate Gothic architecture. What are your thoughts?

If you had been asked that question in the first half of the 20th century, chances are your response would have been mostly positive. Here is a look that harkens back to the halls of academe in Britain, and evokes the aura of a world set apart for learning. Even before you know the reason for the building, it announces itself as serious, conservative, solid, venerable, imposing, permanent. Certainly, it can also incorporate elements of asymmetric charm and even a bit of whimsy. But the overriding effect is grand. 

Now, fast forward to the 1950s and the next several decades thereafter. What was being said about Collegiate Gothic architecture, then?

Not much good. Any of “the styles” were considered hopelessly passé. Indeed, in the years I was at Penn State, one of the architecture professors - hello Roy! - gave an annual popular walking tour of the campus, for architecture students, mainly to poke fun at the many campus buildings with beaux arts, Romanesque revival, Georgian, or Collegiate Gothic leanings. In the know observers of the architectural scene could have told you about the International Style, and it’s contemporary offspring. These were considered worthy of note and of praise. But Collegiate Gothic?  Mere stage set dabbling. 

Of course, then as now, every city has a collection of Collegiate Gothic structures, most of which were conceived in the 1920s and 1930s, and still function as intended. Homes, schools, hospitals, churches, and more. They are part of the urban landscape. And can be found in many a village or open countryside.

There are subsets of the style. You might immediately think of the all-grey stone structures.  However, I am concentrating on a different look in this post.  One of these subsets is the red brick with finely crafted limestone trim genre. You probably have an example or two near you. Or may even live, work, or study in one of them.  Whether nearby, or your very own, how does it strike you?  Good?  Bad?  Indifferent?  

Where exactly does this red brick and whitish stone crisp style find its roots?  The answer is, in the realm of royalty. In one particular building. That is, Hampton Court Palace. Where red brick with stone detailing set the bar high for all that followed. Some photos of Hampton Court are interspersed with much newer buildings in the group above.  Can you tell which are which?

A visitor to Hampton Court may see elements of his college in Florida or apartment building in Manhattan. Of her local Methodist church, or quiet leafy suburb of character houses. Hampton Court is, at one and the same time, familiar and impressive to the American observer. "We have buildings like that, back home." And the architects would tell us, intentionally so. Stately, self-assured, dignified. In a way that even the finest International Style building seldom achieves. 

Do we admire these buildings enough to revisit them with the intention of settling aside the architectural critics’ penchant for dismissing them?  And are there lessons they can teach us about how we will live now, and in future?