Style for the Zeitgeist: The Stealthy Revival of Historicist Housing Since the Late 1960s

Abstract

A revival has occurred in the use of historical architectural styles for modern suburban houses but this has attracted little attention from journalists and academics. Those who have noted it disagree about when it began and gathered momentum. Newspaper and trade journal evidence for Canadian cities indicates that the revival began in the late 1960s; that it has reached market saturation; and that Victorian and neo-classical styles became dominant after 1980. Coinciding with the beginnings of inner-city gentrification, the historicist revival in suburban dwellings preceded the recent interest in neotraditional urban design. Not a fringe taste, it says something about the zeitgeist.

Ha ocurrido un resurgimiento del uso de estilos arquitectónicos históricos en casas suburbanas modernas, pero esto ha atraído poco la atención de periodistas y académicos. Aquellos que lo han notado difieren respecto a su inicio y adquisición de impulso. La evidencia contenida en periódicos y revistas comerciales de ciudades canadienses indica que el resurgimiento comenzó a finales de la década de los 60, que ha saturado el mercado, y que los estilos victorianos y neoclásicos comenzaron a dominar después de 1980. Coincidiendo con el inicio del aburguesamiento de las zonas céntricas pobres, el resurgimiento historicista en las viviendas suburbanas precedió el reciente interés en el diseño urbano neotradicional. No siendo un gusto marginal, da indicios del espíritu de la época.

Key Words:

• architectural style
• Canada
• housing
• suburbs
• Toronto

关键词:

• 建筑风格
• 加拿大
• 郊区
• 多伦多

Palabras claves:

• estilo arquitectónico
• Canadá
• vivienda
• suburbios
• Toronto

Acknowledgments

NADINE DOSTROVSKY completed her BA and BSc at McMaster University. E-mail: [email protected]. Her interest in architecture led to a fourth-year thesis on historicist housing styles in Toronto. She is currently completing her JD at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and has an interest in labor and employment law.

RICHARD HARRIS is a Professor in the School of Geography and Earth Sciences at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, L8P 3Z7, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include the history of urban housing and suburban development in North America, and the evolution of British colonial housing policy in the twentieth century.

Notes

*We would like to thank those on the H-Urban and (courtesy of Chris French) the RecentPast discussion lists for their suggestions, and also Annmarie Adams, Elizabeth Butman, Jon Goss, Dianne Harris, Dolores Hayden, Sharon Ir, Philip Langdon, Peter Larkham, John Massengale, Jay Parsons, Ted Relph, Dell Upton, Alexander von Hoffman, and Gwendolyn Wright. We are especially indebted to Ryan George, Jason Gilliland, Paul Langlois, Michael Mercier, Dick Walker, and two anonymous referees for comments on a previous draft.

¹ http://www.riverdalefarms-caledon.com/community.cfm

²Samuel interprets suburban taste as part of a wider shift that included gentrification and historic preservation, but he notes the suburban aspect only in passing. See also Walker (1995).

³At the time that he was writing (1992) there were very few pure New Urbanist communities in North America, and Knox does not discuss them.

⁴For a dissenting view see Scully (1994, 227).

⁵For a subtle discussion of truth in relation to architecture see Forty (2000).

⁶Jeremy Whitehand and Christine Carr (2001) have shown that architects were involved in a substantial proportion of English interwar housing, although often in a subsidiary role.

⁷Tribute Homes, the company responsible for The Beach, based its designs in part on the character of the nearby housing stock, which mostly dates from the period from 1910 to 1930. Mays ruefully admits his own lingering reservations about the project.

⁸Simon and Holdsworth's observations were drafted in 1986–1987.

⁹Until 1969 it was named Canadian Builder. We surveyed every year from 1966.

¹⁰Playfulness may have been toned down because future residents had input into the designs.

¹¹Typically, as an architectural historian, Jencks largely ignores this category, which he suggests is one of six types of modern architecture.

¹²We found no illustrations of houses that could be classified as postmodern, in the sense discussed in the text.

¹³These labels imply modern distinctions. Victorian lumps together Gothic and Queen Anne. It also excludes Georgian even though, in Toronto, the popularity of the latter style extended well into the reign of Queen Victoria, and was then revived before her death (McHugh 1985, 14, 21).

¹⁴We examined advertisements for detached, semidetached, and row (town) houses, but not apartments or condominiums.

¹⁵Sample sizes were as follows: 1969–1970: 90; 1975: 88; 1979–1980: 142; 1985: 98; 1990: 47; 1995: 56; 2000: 47; 2005: 45. The houses illustrated varied widely in price but the sample was too small to support an analysis by price segment.

¹⁶These are articles in which “New Urbanism” appears in the title or lead paragraph, as found by using keyword search capabilities in the LexisNexis Toronto Star database (http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/form/academic/s_guidednews.html?_m=d4a7750ff684d10af7ee4f94226b5151&wchp=dGLbVlz-zSkVA&_md5=b9236e77f60-de14dbed8a30e17a5b053&srccat=NEWS;MAJP-AP&srcecat=General+News&pubtitle=%22The%20Toronto%20Star%22&fss=Y).

¹⁷The precise numbers depend on how strictly New Urbanist principles are defined. Even when a few hybrid and projected projects, such as Brooklin West (1,200 units projected), are added to the core of New Urbanist developments in the Toronto area (Brooklin: 1,200 units; Oak Park: 900 units; and The Village: 550 units projected) the total impact is smaller than that of Cornell.

¹⁸ http://www.tributecommunities.com/ (last accessed 3 March 2008.)

¹⁹It is possible that the extent of suburban Romanesque is understated by our survey of the Star: Within subdivisions targeted to southern Europeans (chiefly Italians) developers may have devoted more attention to advertising in ethnic media. In older residential areas it has been common for southern European immigrants to alter existing dwellings through the addition or remodeling of verandas with romanesque arcades.