Federal architecture

Not to be confused with Federation architecture.
Central Pavilion at Tontine Crescent in Boston, built in 1793–94
Elfreth's Alley in Philadelphia, featuring Colonial and Federal-style homes, is believed to be the nation's oldest residential street.[1]
Federal Hill mansion, built in 1795, at My Old Kentucky Home State Park in Bardstown, Kentucky
Old Town Hall in Salem, Massachusetts, built in 1816–17
Hamilton Hall, built in 1805 by Samuel McIntire in Salem, Massachusetts
An 1827 illustration by Alexander Jackson Davis of Massachusetts State House in Boston, built in 1798
South Carolina State House in Columbia, South Carolina, an example of American Federal style of architecture

Federal-style architecture is the name for the classical architecture built in the United States following the American Revolution between c.  1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to 1815, which was influenced heavily by the works of Andrea Palladio with several innovations on Palladian architecture by Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries. Jefferson's Monticello estate and several federal government buildings, including the White House, are among the most prominent examples of buildings constructed in Federal style.

Federal style is also used in association with furniture design in the United States of the same time period. The style broadly corresponds to the classicism of Biedermeier style in the German-speaking lands, Regency architecture in Britain, and the French Empire style. It may also be termed Adamesque architecture. The White House and Monticello were setting stones for what Federal architecture has become.

In the early United States, the founding generation consciously chose to associate the nation with the ancient democracies of Greece and the republican values of Rome. Grecian aspirations informed the Greek Revival, lasting into the 1850s. Using Roman architectural vocabulary,[2] the Federal style applied to the balanced and symmetrical version of Georgian architecture that had been practiced in the American colonies' new motifs of neoclassical architecture as it was epitomized in Britain by Robert Adam, who published his designs in 1792.

  1. ^ Historical marker on Elfreth's Alley
  2. ^ The design vocabulary of Federal architecture is accessibly illustrated and contrasted with Greek Revival in Rachel Carley, The Visual Dictionary of American Domestic Architecture, 1994, ch. 5 "Neoclassical Styles", pp. 90ff.