The New International Encyclopædia/Georgian Architecture

GEORGIAN (jôr′jan) ARCHITECTURE. The style of architecture in England prevailing during the reigns of the four Georges, and corresponding to the Colonial style in the United States. It was an adaptation of the Italian or Palladian style to English requirements, in which it lost the greater part of the sculpture and carved ornament of the Italian prototype, but gained, on the other hand, in freedom and picturesqueness of detail, and never fell into the extravagances and bad taste of contemporary Italian work. Hawksmoor, James Gibbs, the architect of Saint-Martin's-in-the-Fields, London, Colin Campbell, the Adam brothers, Sir William Chambers, architect of Somerset House, London, Robert Taylor, and George Dance, are among the most notable architects of this period, to which American architecture owes the models which, in the second half of the eighteenth century, were followed generally in the design of the so-called Colonial churches and mansions of New England and the South. This neo-classic style was merged during the later Georgian period into the modern style, and lasted, roughly, from c.1715 to 1800.