ABSTRACT
It is nonsensical, of course, to speak of nineteenth-century architecture as if it suddenly appeared in 1800 and ceased or was redirected with equal abruptness in 1900. The building programs and the available building materials did indeed change enormously during the nineteenth century, but to a large degree the outward appearance of nineteenth-century architecture developed fairly logically from what was being done in the 1780s and ’90s, and continued with only modest changes until 1914 and the outbreak of World War I-with the dramatic exception of Art Nouveau. And even after the war, certain aspects of the conservative branch of design theory and practice continued through the 1920s and into the 1930s. What did change in the nineteenth century was the need to design for building functions that had never existed through the entire
course of previous human history: large covered public markets, railroad stations, public and charitable institutions, hospitals, insane asylums, and housing for workers being drawn to rapidly expanding industrial cities, to mention only a few of the new building tasks. Moreover, these buildings had to be larger than any had been since Roman times. Architects were also presented with new building materials, cast and wrought iron as well as glass, in quantities never available before thanks to improvements in mass production.
