ABSTRACT
In the one monograph that has been written on American Egyptianizing architecture, Carrott argued that the true Egyptian Revival in architecture was limited to the first six decades of the 19th century. Carrott seems to suggest that the Croton Reservoir and other Egyptianizing reservoirs or waterworks may have been associated with ideas relating to the annual flood of the Nile and Egypt's irrigation-based economy, an idea rejected by Humbert, who sees the forms as reflecting aesthetic concerns. The Washington Monument as completed an unadorned obelisk without ornate base may better suit Burkean artistic theories than Robert Mills' original design, but that is not why it lost its original colonnaded base with portico. A certain degree of complexity of symbolic associations is also to be found in the second most prominent field for the use of Egyptianizing designs in the United States up to the Civil War prisons and courts.
