Lego Architecture Белый Дом (21006) [7/76] Federal style

TheWhiteHouseisagrandmansionintheneoclassical

Federal style with details that echo classical Greek

Ionic architecture James Hoban’s original design was

modeledaftertheLeinsterHouseinDublinIrelandand

didnotincludethenorthandsouthporticos

Federal-style architecture is the name for the

classicizing architecture built in the United States

between c. 1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to

1815. This style shares its name with its era, the Federal

Period. In the early Republic, 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, 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. The classicizing manner of constructions and town

planning undertaken by the federal government was

expressed in federal projects of lighthouses and harbor

buildings, hospitals and in the rationalizing urbanistic

layout of L’Enfant’s Washington, D.C. and in New York the

Commissioners’ Plan of 1811.

American federal architecture diﬀ ers from preceding

Georgian colonial interpretations in its use of plainer

surfaces with attenuated detail, usually isolated in panels,

tablets and friezes.

Federalstyle

Sailors’ Snug Harbor, Minard Lafever.

WikimediaCommons

Tennessee State Capitol, William

Strickland. WikimediaCommons

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