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The Kelso Hotel and Depot in Southern California is a great example of the Spanish influence on the indigenous cultures of California and Florida. The Spanish were in a hurry to make as many discoveries as they could, and lack of time and labor would not allow them to build structures with intricate features. Furthermore, there weren’t too many readily available architectural ornaments. The only time you would find a door with a barrier was when it led to a private room. The adobe brick regulates the temperatures in the house while staying sturdy on the wall.
Adobe Walls
The Spanish visited areas with weather similar to Spain’s, and replicating the architecture was not very challenging. The favorable conditions allowed a rapid Spanish influence, and their architecture has contributed to modern house designs today. Spanish colonial architecture became dominant in the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries when Spain undertook Catholic missions.
The History of Spanish-Style Homes
Wherever Spanish colonizers built homes, they used local building materials, giving Spanish colonial buildings in Florida a different look and feel from similar structures in California. Similarly, different leaders of the Spanish Revival movement in different parts of the country-influenced local building trends. In Florida, you will often see fewer of the simple, stucco structures of the Southwest. Instead, Florida Renaissance homes (and those that came after it) borrow more heavily from Baroque and Moorish influences.
Design Styles
Additionally, the doors inside the house are large compared to the ones outside to allow for the free flow of air. Interior features include plaster walls (again resembling smooth stucco) and corner fireplaces of adobe-like material. Prominent architects who worked in the Pueblo Revival Style include John Gaw Meem, perhaps the best known of the lot; and Mary Jane Coulter, the architect for the Santa Fe Railroad and the railroad’s affiliated Fred Harvey restaurants. The combination of light and dark elements, and of both simple and elaborate architectural features, gives Spanish Colonial style homes warmth, charm, and timeless appeal. Between the late 17th century and 1750, one of Mexico's most popular architectural styles was Mexican Churrigueresque. These buildings were built in an ultra-Baroque, fantastically extravagant and visually frenetic style.
Characteristics And Examples Of Spanish Colonial Architecture
Learn more about the shape, frame, and structure of these magnificent abodes. Popularized in the 1920s and 30s, Pueblo Revival took elements from indigenous design as well as Spanish. Pueblo revival homes typically have flat roofs, thick stucco walls, and visible, rounded roof beams, or “vigas,” that can be seen inside and extending out from the home. More traditional Pueblo Revival houses are a red earthen color, though they can also be painted white or even bright colors. The Mission Revival movement saw homes as well as public buildings built in a style reminiscent of the Spanish missions.
Pueblo Revival
This San Antonio Spanish Revival home was meticulously restored to its 1926 glory - San Antonio Current
This San Antonio Spanish Revival home was meticulously restored to its 1926 glory.
Posted: Fri, 15 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Since the Spanish settled in areas with similarly temperate climates as their homeland, the houses they built were quite similar to those found in Spain. Although the Spanish Colonial period in America ended in the mid-1800s, the architectural style remained popular. Later, in the 1900s, Spanish Colonial style was swept up in the Colonial Revival—and homebuilders chose to build with adobe and clay, rather than using the materials out of necessity.
The first widespread use of Spanish motifs was developed from the white-stuccoed churches that dotted the California landscape during the Spanish settlement period of the 17th and 18th centuries. The Spanish missions provided the general inspiration for these picturesque structures with smooth, flat wall surfaces, shadowy arcaded promenades, and curvaceous gables. Their most conspicuous features were most often their shapely, scalloped parapets with heavily molded edges, which might adorn not just the main roof but one or more dormer and porches as well. They had low-pitched barrel-tile roofs, generally with widely overhanging eaves. Part of a group of picturesque Spanish Colonial Revival houses of the 1920s in Coronado, California, this house displays the rambling, asymmetrical massing and prominent chimneys of its style, all unified by white stucco walls and a red barrel-tiled roof. Taking cues from traditional Spanish architecture, natural materials like adobe, wood, and terra-cotta are front and center in Spanish Colonial homes.
Some of the most famous cities in Mexico built in the Colonial style are Puebla, Zacatecas, Querétaro, Guanajuato, and Morelia. The bars allow the windows to stay open without anyone breaking into the house since most colonial homes are built in hot regions, and there is a need for lots of ventilation. The Banco Hipotecario Nacional in Argentina was built in 1886 and has some Spanish architectural style features due to the vast influence the Spanish had in South America. Spanish colonial homes have one thing in common all over the world, and that is the arched door design. Houses from the Spanish colonial period have large doors indoors, and the doorways are arched and often without any barriers. The function of the courtyard was to provide space for anyone to sit outdoors whenever it became too hot inside.
The Spanish colonization of western America lasted longer than the British claim on the 13 original colonies, but by the mid-1800s, the Spanish Colonial period in America came to an end. Clay roof tiles are extremely durable and require little maintenance, but the low-pitched or flat ceilings found on Spanish Colonial homes can often leak. This again demonstrates that Spanish Colonial homes are ideal for warm, relatively dry climates. Today, you'll find marked differences in Spanish Colonial homes across the country—thanks to regional styles, and the tools and materials available to the original settlers—but most share traditional characteristics of the style.
Windows are generally small and few, and are more often casements rather than double-hung sash. The interest in Spanish Revival architecture intensified during the period between the two World Wars, finally petering out around 1940. While the earlier revivals were built mostly in Spanish-settled areas, the later ones (though they often continued to have regional flavor) popped up all over the country.
Spanish-style houses vary widely but have a few common features that set them apart from other American home styles, particularly the English-inspired revivals. Many of the utilitarian elements meant to make homes cooler in a hot climate, like stucco walls and terracotta roofs, are now beloved details of this design style. Contrasted with the white stucco walls the Spanish preferred on their buildings, the red tile roofs looked aesthetically pleasing and distinct from other architecture-style homes.
Furthermore, the houses built by the Spanish settlers were L-shaped, creating a natural space for a patio. The doors were strategically positioned to avoid direct sunlight and trap the ocean breeze. Also, the tiny and mostly circular windows had wooden shutters that could open during the day and close during the night.
It was, and still is, extremely popular in Spanish-settled areas of the Southwest, particularly New Mexico and Arizona. The intricate Spanish Renaissance ornament known as churringueresque is found in the best Spanish Revival houses in window and door details, as in this Coconut Grove, Florida, example. However, it was only in 1915, when the Panama California Exposition in San Diego showcased Bertram Goodhue’s stunning Spanish Revival designs that the Spanish craze began in earnest. If you grew up in certain parts of the country, it can be easy to forget the influence that Spanish colonialism had on America.
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