| Paper 824-b | The Gargoyles of San Francisco: Medievalist Architecture in Northern California, 1900-1940
(Language: English)
James Mitchell, Department of History, San Francisco State University, California
Index terms: Architecture - Religious, Architecture - Secular, Medievalism and Antiquarianism |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
This presentation will comparatively examine the cultural implications of the 900 year anniversary of the battle of Stiklestad in 1930, and the 1000 year anniversary of the Battle of Harfsfjord in 1872. It will explore what these two jubilees represent in as a part of Norwegian national medievalism, and remembering of the Glorious Middle Ages. It will furthermore explore how St Olaf and Harald Fairhair were presented in cultural manifestations at these jubilees to decipher how Norwegian society remembered them, and why these anniversaries were so relatively important in their time.
Paper -b:
In the aftermath of the fire which destroyed the city in 1906, San Francisco quickly constructed an extraordinary variety of buildings incorporating medieval designs and ornamentation. Castellated towers adorned parish churches and a military armory; the country's third largest Gothic cathedral was completed of poured concrete in record time; offices, schools and hospitals were adorned with Romanesque portals and gables; a Masonic lodge appeared in the shape of a trecento Italian palazzo; monastery stones imported from Spain by Wm. R. Hearst were designated to house a medieval arts museum; and Julia Morgan, America's first woman architect, created medieval halls for Hearst's residential palaces, as well as designing elaborate medieval fireplaces and arched wooden ceilings for the interiors of a number of San Francisco homes. We will explore this sudden outburst of medievalist architecture which featured the innovation of poured concrete as a building material, and which was strongly influenced by the California Arts and Crafts Movement. We will also ask why many artifacts were meant to replicate or imitate medieval objects, while others departed from medieval models into full-blown flights of fantasy, hybridizing the Gothic with modernity.
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