Historical Perspectives On The Colonial Revival In Progressive Era America

Whatever is new, Is bad : Historical Perspectives on the Colonial Revival in Progressive Era America

The Colonial Revival is a phenomenon that materialized as a national expression of

American culture from the 1870s to the 1940s. Though founded on ideological traditions, it

most often manifested itself through decorative arts and architecture. Elements of revival

furniture, arts and architecture symbolically served as tools to promote republican ideas of

democracy, patriotism most notably, moral superiority. In many ways the it is a direct

response to results of Industrialization and progress. Historian Alan Axelrod contends,

“Colonialism is not a surface phenomenon, a thin veneer over the real body of American life, but

a network

This best represents a consensus history that

has a long tradition in American history that persists today.

Immigration has a deep connection with the revival and is directly tied to its creation.

Most revivalist historians can agree that this idea represents nationalism and nativism. In the eyes of the Americans, immigration threatened American values. This movement represented

nationalistic Anglo Saxon ideas of superior civilization.

As evidenced in William Rhoads’ “The Colonial Revival and the Americanization of

Immigrants,” between the years 1880 and 1930 the immigrant population in America more than

doubled from 6.7 million to 14.2 million, with ethnic groups bringing their own speech,

Like Rhoads, Ellen M. Rosenthal, author of the essay “The Colonial Revival: New Words

for an Old Book,” notes the significance of the wave of immigration experienced in the

Progressive Era as it relates to the movement. She contests that social historians, in specific,

argue that it began as an effort of Americans with significant family histories attempted

to separate themselves from new immigrants of the second half of the nineteenth century. Her

argument however looks inwardly. Unlike the discussion of anti-immigration sentiment of the

time, Rosenthal looks to interior changes, ones within the home and the domestic sphere. She

believed that if historians understood more about the Victorian home, they could better analyze

the social and cultural ramifications.

Anti-modernists blamed the state of the country in a variety of ways. Historians argue

that the most significant and the most unique was the creation of a disease called neurasthenia. A

phenomenon within a phenomenon, neurasthenia is term coined in 1881 by New York