Renaissance Revival is the style that in the second half of the nineteenth century took up the formal language of the Renaissance again. It belongs to historicism and dominated public building — stations, schools, post offices, town halls, museums — as well as the town extensions of the period. In the Netherlands and northern Germany it acquired a national flavour: architects deliberately drew on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century brick tradition, with crow-stepped gables, pale stone banding and sandstone ornament.
Characteristics
- Brickwork with stone banding — horizontal light-coloured bands of stone or render set into red masonry
- Stepped, neck and shaped gables with stone copings and scrolled kneelers
- Round and basket arches over windows, with voussoirs and keystones
- Cross windows with a stone mullion and transom
- Rich ornament: cartouches, gable stones, pilasters, festoons, decorative brick patterning
- Symmetrical, clearly articulated facades with an emphasised central bay
Distinguishing it from the Renaissance itself
As with every revival style, the difference lies in the execution. Revival work is built in machine-made, dimensionally accurate brick with narrow bed joints. Structurally it often already contains cast iron or steel — beams over shopfronts, columns in station halls. The plan is a nineteenth-century plan: corridors, stairwells and storey heights suited to the uses of that era.
Repair points
- Stone is the weak spot. Bands, copings and ornament are usually soft sandstone. Never clean with high pressure; make good with a matched repair mortar or replace the stone
- Use lime-based mortar. The original masonry was built for it; hard cement mortar does more harm than good
- Cramps and dowels. Rusting iron fixings in copings and kneelers split the stone; replace with stainless steel
- Gable stones and cartouches are a mason’s work, not a job for filler
- Consent. Many Renaissance Revival buildings are listed or sit in a conservation area; establish that before the scaffold goes up
Related terms
- Gothic Revival
- Classicism
- Dutch classicism
- Neck gable
- Cross window
- Gable stone
- Natural stone replacement
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