Victorian architecture is an ornate style now dismissed as decorative excess, but this period is actually about the democratization of home building and interior design. Queen Victoria was the British monarch from 1837 to 1901. Her name is associated with this period of design not for anything she did, but for the fact the period paralleling her reign was one of significant industrial, scientific, and social change. The industrial revolution allowed for the mass production of goods at a lower cost so suddenly everyone could afford architectural detail, furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, ornament and more; products that were previously only available to the robber barons and those with wealth. And, admittedly, the masses went crazy.
Photo credit: Cory Maylett
Fine design was no longer an exclusive playground of the rich and everyone wanted to emulate the upper classes. Opulent and intricate patterns of needlework or hand knotted rugs that used to be the costly labor-intensive work of craftspeople were now easily woven on a mechanical loom. Printing presses churned out cheap wallpaper replacing the laborious technique of block printing by hand. Fabrics draped every house, window, and doorway. Machine lathes churned out spindles for railings, corbels, and other architectural ornament.
Importantly for home design and building, with the rise of the machine, timber could now be processed into regularized material getting rid of both the reliance on heavy timber framing and its time-consuming hand hewing and processing. Sawmills cut and diced the wood producing standardized and smaller dimensioned two-inch sized framing lumber making the framing of a house faster and plans easier to follow. Another innovation was to nail the lumber with machine produced wire nails rather than more expensive nails cast in molds. All this simplified construction, allowing for irregular designs instead of simple boxes.
Source: Library of Congress
Victorian home designs were based on European precedent, primarily medieval, but freely interpreted as budget and availability of material and ornament allowed. Creativity and exploration abounded with experimentation in highly pitched and varied roofs, turrets and towers for everyone who wanted them, stylish balconies, railings, paneling, millwork and moldings, molding, moldings! Every wall surface was an opportunity for a decorative element. Everyone wanted more. Everyone could afford more.
Lowering the cost of building meant more construction. The formal education of design professionals began to be offered in this period in the United States and architectural programs and conferring degrees sprang up in the late 1800’s. Architects wrote journals and formalized designs but the explosion of construction in this era also created a need for accessible and affordable plans that didn’t need a professional. Publishers responded and flooded the market with books with easy-to-follow plans and guides on how to organize all that architectural ornament and possibility. Now that almost anyone could afford design, design itself became a commodity. Journals and publications extolled the latest trends. Magazines like “The Ladies Home Journal” helped educate and elucidate the masses.
The interior of a Victorian era house was highly ordered. Rooms had public or private functions and were clearly separated. Guests came in the front door off a covered porch to a foyer, then a parlor and, if a meal was served, they were invited into the dining room. The kitchen was a cramped, smokey, hot utility space for the maid or the woman of the house to work in and serve in the breakfast or dining room. Bedrooms were smaller as heating was still primarily from a fireplace, centralized heating had not been invented yet. Indoor plumbing was evolving and not every city had a municipal sewage system (even as of 1940 half of houses in the US lacked indoor plumbing). Outhouses were still common. Septic pits were the innovation.
Source: Family member of JGKlein
The Victorian period was one of deep and rich colors. Partially that was due to the fact that darker fabrics conveniently hid the smoke stains from coal or wood burning fireplaces. It was also because dyes were based on organic pigments, ground minerals or plants. Modern synthetic dyes were discovered around the middle of the 19th century but modern manufacturing techniques didn’t evolve until the end of the century during which home heating began to shift to cleaner burning gas. Once the smoke was out of the house and synthetic dyes offered hundreds and thousands of possible color hues, textiles and wallpaper took a creative turn brightening up the smaller and darker Victorian interiors.
Whether it’s your style or not, Victorian Architecture should rightly be honored as an exuberant celebration of design, pattern, and color for the masses. The industrial revolution allowed for the rise of individual expression and consumer choice. Society, the arts and home design, were radically and irrevocably altered.
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