Renaissance Revival House
with
Jackie Craven
You don't have to live in Italy to have a Renaissance Revival-style home. Find out how to determine the style of your house.
Transcript: Renaissance Revival House
Hi, I'm Jackie Craven, guide to architecture at About.com, with today's featured house style.This home, built in the early 1900s, has the aura of a Mediterranean palace, but it's here…in Schenectady, NY? So, what style is it? Let's look for clues.
Examine the Shape of the House
First, the shape. This house is basically a cube, with porches added to each side. Why would they add two porches? To keep the symmetry.The door is at the center, and the windows are evenly balanced on each side. The two big windows on the first floor resemble Roman arches. The windows upstairs are small, simple rectangles.
Check Out the Roof of the House
The roof can reveal a lot about any house. This roof has a low, gradual slope. It's what we call a hipped roof.Those asphalt shingles probably aren't original, but why would they choose red? They look like clay tiles, like you see on roofs in Italy.
Notice the wide overhang of this roof. The eaves are unusually deep. And just look at those decorative brackets beneath the eaves. They are massive.
Renaissance Revival-Style Decorations
Decorations provide important clues to the style of any home. That balcony below the center window is too narrow to actually use. The balcony is just for show, a romantic display of vase-shaped balusters along the porch roof.Look for Ionic Columns
Further down, below the balusters and above the entrance, I see a detail associated with the classical architecture of ancient Greece and Rome: dentil moldings.Wow, what an impressive entrance. I see another arch here, over the front door. On each side are ionic columns. Ionic is a classical column style characterized by scrolled ornaments at top.
No one detail can define the style of a house. But now that we have a list of important features, we can be pretty sure that this house is Renaissance Revival.
This house isn't quite 100 years old, but it's modeled after the urban palaces of 16th century Italy. In fact, it looks a bit like something the great Italian Renaissance architect, Palladio, might have built. Bellissimo!
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