Notes from my Knapsack 10-22-2026
Jeff Gill
From Greek Revival to Baroque, a cultural journey
___
When considering the architectural style of the Oval Office, whose history we looked at last time, there’s a transition from the Greek Revival influences in the White House complex as a whole to a Colonial Revival influence in what Taft and finally Franklin D. Roosevelt embodied in their executive office design.
In Granville, we have a scattering of Greek Revival buildings, enough that we get almost as much attention from cultural tourism around architecture as Newark does for the Louis Sullivan jewel-box bank on Courthouse Square.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Avery-Downer House where now resides the Robbins Hunter Museum are two gems on Broadway, although we have a number of other homes in the village that embody that period of design. The former Beth Eden up on campus, now Reese House, is a late evocation of the earlier style, built in 1901 and considered Federal Revival (akin to the Oval Office and West Wing design style), but is often called Greek Revival — that is technically an 1820 to 1860 architectural term.
This is why the Executive Mansion (Teddy Roosevelt named it the “White House” in 1901) is considered a Neoclassical design, but again, with new influences in the extension of the West Wing (we are not going to talk about the East Wing, no we are not), and the modifications culminating with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Oval Office as it is in outline today.
So, Neoclassical, Greek or Colonial Revival, let alone Federal Revival: who cares? Well, we care because architecture says something. If you aren’t sure about that, you should sit on a church building design committee some time. Oh, it says something.
Modernism has its fans, but to be perfectly blunt (and I’m two columns in, almost done with this week’s installment, with more to say in another two weeks) modernism is a close kin to budget building. To build a Swasey Chapel today would take immensely more money even adjusted for inflation, because craft work is valued more, and it should be said more justly. Skilled labor was cheaper in 1922, let alone 1822, so ornamentation and detail costs more today. In many cases, especially public buildings but also often in church structures or other traditionally decorative types of architecture, a modernist aesthetic goes along with cost control and keeping a project under budget.
We’re still not sure what Modernism “says.” Some of us think it says “blehhh.” (That’s with three h’s, by the way.) Don’t even get me started on Brutalism, which is affordability meets concrete. What does it say? Well, the name says quite a bit. Brutally so.
Baroque, on the other hand, isn’t just ornamentation run riot, it says something symbolically to both the conscious and the unconscious. A dense florid accumulation of twirls and swirls has a history and narrative all its own, and frankly American ideals have never had much in common with the Baroque template of design. We just don’t do Baroque, except for maybe Bach, and that’s late Baroque music, dangerously close to a different subject altogether.
When you decorate a space with Baroque ornamentation, you are seeking to overwhelm, to hyper-stimulate, to create a sort of emotional intensity in the experience. Not to inspire or move one to reflect on simple rules and essential values, but to be reminded you are less than the room and space and central figure in that office.
That’s why Taft and later Roosevelt went for a more Greek Revival vibe in the Oval Office they appropriated from the Palladian echo in the White House ovals. They wanted a simpler, more egalitarian design, in which people could reason together.
You can see where I’m going with this, I hope. More to come.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s not a big go-for-baroque kind of guy. Tell him what architecture says to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
From Greek Revival to Baroque, a cultural journey
___
When considering the architectural style of the Oval Office, whose history we looked at last time, there’s a transition from the Greek Revival influences in the White House complex as a whole to a Colonial Revival influence in what Taft and finally Franklin D. Roosevelt embodied in their executive office design.
In Granville, we have a scattering of Greek Revival buildings, enough that we get almost as much attention from cultural tourism around architecture as Newark does for the Louis Sullivan jewel-box bank on Courthouse Square.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Avery-Downer House where now resides the Robbins Hunter Museum are two gems on Broadway, although we have a number of other homes in the village that embody that period of design. The former Beth Eden up on campus, now Reese House, is a late evocation of the earlier style, built in 1901 and considered Federal Revival (akin to the Oval Office and West Wing design style), but is often called Greek Revival — that is technically an 1820 to 1860 architectural term.
This is why the Executive Mansion (Teddy Roosevelt named it the “White House” in 1901) is considered a Neoclassical design, but again, with new influences in the extension of the West Wing (we are not going to talk about the East Wing, no we are not), and the modifications culminating with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Oval Office as it is in outline today.
So, Neoclassical, Greek or Colonial Revival, let alone Federal Revival: who cares? Well, we care because architecture says something. If you aren’t sure about that, you should sit on a church building design committee some time. Oh, it says something.
Modernism has its fans, but to be perfectly blunt (and I’m two columns in, almost done with this week’s installment, with more to say in another two weeks) modernism is a close kin to budget building. To build a Swasey Chapel today would take immensely more money even adjusted for inflation, because craft work is valued more, and it should be said more justly. Skilled labor was cheaper in 1922, let alone 1822, so ornamentation and detail costs more today. In many cases, especially public buildings but also often in church structures or other traditionally decorative types of architecture, a modernist aesthetic goes along with cost control and keeping a project under budget.
We’re still not sure what Modernism “says.” Some of us think it says “blehhh.” (That’s with three h’s, by the way.) Don’t even get me started on Brutalism, which is affordability meets concrete. What does it say? Well, the name says quite a bit. Brutally so.
Baroque, on the other hand, isn’t just ornamentation run riot, it says something symbolically to both the conscious and the unconscious. A dense florid accumulation of twirls and swirls has a history and narrative all its own, and frankly American ideals have never had much in common with the Baroque template of design. We just don’t do Baroque, except for maybe Bach, and that’s late Baroque music, dangerously close to a different subject altogether.
When you decorate a space with Baroque ornamentation, you are seeking to overwhelm, to hyper-stimulate, to create a sort of emotional intensity in the experience. Not to inspire or move one to reflect on simple rules and essential values, but to be reminded you are less than the room and space and central figure in that office.
That’s why Taft and later Roosevelt went for a more Greek Revival vibe in the Oval Office they appropriated from the Palladian echo in the White House ovals. They wanted a simpler, more egalitarian design, in which people could reason together.
You can see where I’m going with this, I hope. More to come.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s not a big go-for-baroque kind of guy. Tell him what architecture says to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
No comments:
Post a Comment