The Great Fire of 1666 devastated London’s religious infrastructure, reducing 87 parochial churches, six chapels, and St Paul’s Cathedral to rubble and ashes, an estimated £1,800,000 worth of damage. The parish churches provided a great opportunity to architect Christopher Wren, who was appointed head of the commission in charge of rebuilding 51 parish churches. In his rebuilding, Wren needed to balance limitations from existing church foundations and complicated finances. He had to consider the religious needs of the Church of England, satisfy the wishes of individual parishes, all while trying to show off his own ability as an architect. Overwhelming responsibility from the redesign and construction of St. Paul’s Cathedral and lack of an established system of church building challenged Wren. All these factors served as reasons for the final product: a new array of parish churches.
By the time the Act of 1670 created the commission to rebuild churches, four years had passed since the fire. Some churches gave up waiting for the committee and began repairs and rebuilding with the help of private donations. A new obstacle formed: “Wren and the Commissioners were therefore faced not with fifty-one churches waiting to be rebuilt, but with fifty-one in states ranging from largely rebuilt to others untouched since the Fire and still in ruins” (Jeffery, Page 44). Any design or draft Wren composed had to take into account existing walls, foundations, and recent renovations. His freedom in design was severely limited.
With only some churches partially rebuilt, the task of completing 51 churches would prove expensive. The Act of 1670 enacted a tax on coal to pay for the rebuilding, but the tax would not cover everything. The collection...
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...ches would have been entirely different. Wren dealt with the given circumstances, from foundations to preoccupation with St Paul’s, to invent a new system of church building that “all fit into place like a mathematical solution” to the problem of a devastated London (Downes, The Architecture of Wren, Page 67).
Works Cited
Bell, Walter George. The Great Fire of London. London: William Clowes and Sons, Limited, 1920. Print.
Downes, Kerry. The Architecture of Wren. Reading, England: Redhedge, 1988. Print.
Downes, Kerry. Christopher Wren. London: Allen Lane, 1971. Print.
Jeffery, Paul. The City Churches of Sir Christopher Wren. London: Hambledon, 1996. Print.
Summerson, John. Architecture in Britain 1530-1830. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983. Print.
Summerson, John. Heavenly Mansions, and Other Essays on Architecture. New York: W.W. Norton, 1963. Print.
The original Chartres Cathedral was designed by Fulbert and lasted until 1194, when a fire destroyed almost the entire church. The townspeople pulled together to make a large contribution to the reconstruction of the cathedral (Miller, Malcolm, Chartres Cathedral, Riverside Book Company, 1980, p.5). The present Chartres Cathedral is largely the work of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. However, there are substantial remains of older monuments, notably in the crypt and on the wes...
The church pleaded each farmer to transport a carload of bricks for six dollars and fifty cents a thousand. Also, the church asked each family to bring twelve loads of creek gravel. (“Schnellville 2” 14) The price tag of the new church would come out of a total of one thousand six hundred dollars; thereafter, Joseph Merkel took the position of the contractor. Construction of the new church began in 1874. (“Schnellville 1” 11-12) Schnellville had its first church when the laborers put what the townspeople called “weatherboards,” or made out of wood; later, white became the new color of the church (Welp 1). On May 4, 1876, Sacred Heart offered its first mass (“Schnellville 3” 12). Sadly on April 24, 1898; surprisingly, a fire occurred at the site of the church. The only things that survived included baptism, marriage, and death records because they found the records in a safe. Lightning may have caused the fire, but the truth of the source of the fire remains unknown. (Welp 1) Three hand carved angles and six stained glass windows, in fact, now located in the present church, came from the first church (Striegel 12). After the first fire occurred in 1898, the members of the church determined to build a new church sixteen years
Before this council, the way a church building would have been set out was very different. A church built prior to 1962 would have been built as if it were a large cross if you were to look at it from the sky.
Before the start of the Gothic revival the mediaeval style, since the last Gothic structure in 1509 of Henry VII ’s chapel, was seen as irrational and illogical and as one man described it as barbaric. This was one of the main causes that the mediaeval buildings of the 18th century fell into disrepair. During the Cromwellian period many Gothic buildings were classical in the interior and church interiors in the 17th century became increasingly boring and plain. Many statues, altars and windows were destroyed.
Maddex, D. (2000). 50 Favourite houses by Frank Lloyd Wright. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.
Dell Upton is a historian and renowned professor of architecture and Urbanism at the University of California. He has published several books on architecture; one of them is “Architecture in the United States”, published in 1998. In this book, Upton analyzes the architecture of the United States in different aspects, such as nature, money and art, thus depicting the great variety in architectural forms, and how throughout the decades, different interests have lead communities to different ways of building, different purposes and materials, thus reflecting their way of thinking and their relationship with the environment. By exploring so many different architectural styles, Upton reveals the great diversity and richness that has always, and continues to characterize American architecture.
...ral (138 ½ feet), Michelangelo’s St. Peter’s (137 ½) and Wren’s St. Paul’s (109 feet). Until steel and concrete technology advanced in the 19th century, no single spaces were larger than these. Bibliography Dirimtekin, Feridun. [1964]. Saint Sophia Museum. Istanbul: Touring and Automobile Club of Turkey. Fossati, Gaspare. 1852. Aya Sofia, Constantinople : as recently restored by order of H. M. the sultan Abdul-Medjid. London: R. & C. Colnagni & Co. James Stevens Curl. Classical Architecture: an introduction to its vocabulary and essentials, with a select glossary of terms. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992. ISBN 0-442-30896-5. NA260.C87. interior photo of circular space (photo of the prostyle octstyle portico of the Pantheon) William L. MacDonald. The Architecture of the Roman Empire I. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. ISBN 0-300-02818-0. LC 81-16513
Scott, Robert. The Gothic Enterprise: A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003.
James F. O'Gorman, Dennis E. McGrath. ABC of Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Document. October 2013.
The church's architecture over all is simple. It is 24 by 34 square feet and set on a stone wall. It is a frontier style cabin and is made from hand hewn logs, which are notched at each end so that they fit together snugly at the corners. The roof is shingled...
As someone with a passion for writing, my final project will be an extended expository essay about the history of homebuilding from ancient to modern times. It will discuss the different types of dwellings throughout recorded human history from the perspective of how art and culture influences building design. This will fulfill my own curiosity to understand the different influences on homebuilding and design over the years and how people have dealt with these changes.
Mitchell, Lee Clark. "'Keeping His Head': Repetition And Responsibility In London's 'To Build A Fire.'." Journal Of Modern Literature 13.1 (1986): 76. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Feb. 2012.
Thesis: Both St. John the Baptist Cathedral and Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Chartres are constructed in French Gothic style which means that architecturally they have many similarities. However, the 700 year gap between their construction offers St. John the Baptist more flexibility in design and style. Still, their likeness and variations extend far beyond the realm of their design.
...rchitecture into the early neo-classical/ baroque style. Wren’s style was one of simple magnificence. His style was composed more of in agreeable proportions rather than glorious decoration. Wren was believed to have contributed design ideas for many buildings for which he did not do final designs. Wren’s design concepts were carried into the early years of the eighteenth century by fellow architects, Hawksmoor, and his partner Vanbrugh. However, Wren’s relative simplicity, and his “Protestant plainness” in comparison with European “Popish” richness, was dominated in their designs by superimpose of rich applied decoration and a more complex and extravagant style.
...er is still an economic boost to the city of London as a must see. Because the structure was so impressive, it brought quite a bit of tourism to the city. The designs were extremely important to the people because it showed the greatness of their country and still held the conservative belief that was once lost in the past. It just goes to show just how important it was to the church, the people, and to the commonwealth of the cities and towns that had such amazing structures erected.