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American Renaissance

American Renaissance

Overview

In the history of American architecture and the arts, the American Renaissance was the period ca 1876 - 1914 characterized by renewed national self-confidence and a feeling that the United States was the heir to Greek democracy
Athenian democracy
Athenian democracy was developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 500 BC. Athens was one of the very first known democracies...

, Roman law
Roman law
The term Roman law denotes the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the seventh century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the official lingua franca. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence —...

, and Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance Humanism was a European intellectual movement that was a crucial component of the Renaissance, beginning in Florence in the latter half of the 14th century. The humanist movement developed from the rediscovery by European scholars of Latin literary and Greek literary texts. Initially,...

. The American preoccupation with national identity (or nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. It is a type of collectivism emphasizing the collective of a specific nation...

) in this period was expressed by modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late...

 and technology
Technology
Technology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment...

 as well as academic classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...

. It expressed its self-confidence in new technologies, such as the wire cables of the Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, stretching 5,989 feet over the East River, connecting the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn...

 in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

.
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Encyclopedia

In the history of American architecture and the arts, the American Renaissance was the period ca 1876 - 1914 characterized by renewed national self-confidence and a feeling that the United States was the heir to Greek democracy
Athenian democracy
Athenian democracy was developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 500 BC. Athens was one of the very first known democracies...

, Roman law
Roman law
The term Roman law denotes the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the seventh century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the official lingua franca. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence —...

, and Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance Humanism was a European intellectual movement that was a crucial component of the Renaissance, beginning in Florence in the latter half of the 14th century. The humanist movement developed from the rediscovery by European scholars of Latin literary and Greek literary texts. Initially,...

. The American preoccupation with national identity (or nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. It is a type of collectivism emphasizing the collective of a specific nation...

) in this period was expressed by modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late...

 and technology
Technology
Technology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment...

 as well as academic classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...

. It expressed its self-confidence in new technologies, such as the wire cables of the Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, stretching 5,989 feet over the East River, connecting the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn...

 in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. It found its cultural outlets in both Prairie School
Prairie School
Prairie School was a late 19th and early 20th century architectural style, most common to the Midwestern United States.The works of the Prairie School architects are usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands,...

 houses and in Beaux-Arts architecture
Beaux-Arts architecture
Beaux-Arts architecture denotes the academic neoclassical architectural style that was taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The style "Beaux Arts" is above all the cumulative product of two and a half centuries of instruction under the authority, first of the Académie royale...

 and sculpture, in the "City Beautiful" movement, and high-minded American interference in the internal affairs of other states. Americans felt that their civilization was uniquely the modern heir, and that it had come of age. Politically and economically, this era coincides with the Gilded Age
Gilded Age
In American history, the Gilded Age refers to substantial growth in population in the United States and extravagant displays of wealth and excess of America's upper-class during the post-Civil War and post-Reconstruction era, in the late 19th century...

 and the New Imperialism
New Imperialism
New Imperialism refers to the colonial expansion adopted by Europe's powers and, later, Japan and the United States, during the 19th and early 20th centuries; expansion approximately took place from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I...

.

The World's Columbian Exposition
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition — also known as The Chicago World's Fair — was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of...

 in Chicago, 1893 was a demonstration that impressed Henry Adams, who was of the mind that in the future people would talk about Hunt
Richard Morris Hunt
Richard Morris Hunt was an American architect of the nineteenth century and a preeminent figure in the history of American architecture...

 and Richardson
Henry Hobson Richardson
Henry Hobson Richardson was a prominent American architect of the 19th century whose work left a significant impact on Boston, Pittsburgh, Albany and Chicago, among others.-Biography:...

, La Farge and St Gaudens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens , was the Irish-born American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation who most embodied the ideals of the "American Renaissance"...

, Burnham
Daniel Burnham
Daniel Hudson Burnham, FAIA was an American architect and urban planner. He was the Director of Works for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and designed several famous buildings, including the Flatiron Building in New York City and Union Station in Washington D.C.-Biography:Burnham was...

 and McKim
Charles Follen McKim
Charles Follen McKim FAIA was one of the most prominent American Beaux-Arts architects of the late nineteenth century...

 and Stanford White
Stanford White
Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be...

 when their politicians and millionaires were quite forgotten. (The Education of Henry Adams
The Education of Henry Adams
The Education of Henry Adams records the struggle of Bostonian Henry Adams , in early old age, to come to terms with the dawning 20th century, so different from the world of his youth. It is also a sharp critique of 19th century educational theory and practice. In 1907, Adams began privately...

http://www.classicreader.com/Adams_Henry/Education_of_Henry_Adams/23.html).


In the dome of the reading room at the new Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress and is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and holds the largest number of books. The head...

, Edwin Blashfield
Edwin Blashfield
Edwin Howland Blashfield , an American artist, was born in New York City.He was a pupil of Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat in Paris beginning in 1867, and became a member of the National Academy of Design in New York...

's murals were on the given theme, The Progress of Civilization.

The exhibition American Renaissance: 1876 - 1917 at the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum, located at 200 Eastern Parkway, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, is the second-largest art museum in New York City, and one of the largest in the United States. Arnold L...

, 1979, encouraged the revival of interest in this movement.