Historical Perspectives On The Colonial Revival In Progressive Era America

Whatever is new, Is bad : Historical Perspectives on the Colonial Revival in Progressive Era America

The Colonial Revival is a phenomenon that materialized as a national expression of

American culture from the 1870s to the 1940s. Though founded on ideological traditions, it

most often manifested itself through decorative arts and architecture. Elements of revival

furniture, arts and architecture symbolically served as tools to promote republican ideas of

democracy, patriotism most notably, moral superiority. In many ways the it is a direct

response to results of Industrialization and progress. Historian Alan Axelrod contends,

“Colonialism is not a surface phenomenon, a thin veneer over the real body of American life, but

a network

of communications and linkages that reach deep into American experience and

behavior.” (ADD A SENTENCE)

Historians examine the movement from various perspectives; as a social and cultural

movement, its representation in U.S. material culture, and its significance to immigration and

nationalism. Noteworthy scholarship includes everything from Alan Axelrod’s The Colonial

Revival in America from 1985 to Briann G. Greenfield’s Out of the Attic: Antiques in Twentieth-

Century New England from 2009. Therefore, various monographs and essays will be analyzed to

determine correlations and points of dissent within the historiography.

The Colonial Revival has also been a popular area of examination in the museum

community as evidenced by Geoffrey Rossano’s Creating a Dignified Past: Museums and the

Colonial Revival and Thomas Denenberg’s Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America.

Rossano’s collection of essays examines the impact of the Colonial Revival on the museum

profession. Thomas Denenberg himself is a curator of the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of

Art and his monograph Wallace Nutting’s Invention of Old America served as a companion to his

2003 exhibition.

The Colonial Revival in America manifested itself for various reasons. Such reasons stem

from three products of the Progressive era. The Colonial Revival manifested itself through mass

immigration, industrialization and to a degree, salesmanship. Historian Harvey Green

acknowledges, as many other historians, the movement was not perpetuated by a single

individual and certainly not by a single object. This is clearly conveyed through case studies.

Emulating the republicanism of early America was a substantial part of this reactionary

effort. Established citizens wanted to be a part of a change of the status quo. This republican

history celebrated the founding fathers as pillars of virtue and models to aspire towards. It was a

simpler, more successful, more moralistic time in the nation’s history. It was a time that, on the

surface, reflected the exact opposite of modernism.

In his essay “Looking Backward to the Future: The Colonial Revival and American

Culture,” Harvey Green argues, “the fascination with the nation’s early history became a

common thread that linked some citizens with their own ancestors and ultimately, a way by

which the elusive and loosely defined idea of ‘Americanism’ came to be measured.”But as

Green articulates, this version of history was also mutually exclusive in the way that it omitted

differing cultural, political and social traditions.

This best represents a consensus history that

has a long tradition in American history that persists today.

Immigration has a deep connection with the revival and is directly tied to its creation.

Most revivalist historians can agree that this idea represents nationalism and nativism. In the

eyes of the Americans, immigration threatened American values. This movement represented

nationalistic Anglo Saxon ideas of superior civilization.

As evidenced in William Rhoads’ “The Colonial Revival and the Americanization of

Immigrants,” between the years 1880 and 1930 the immigrant population in America more than

doubled from 6.7 million to 14.2 million, with ethnic groups bringing their own speech,

culture

and politics. He further argues that there was an overarching fear among established Americans

that their traditions of the early republic would be glossed over by a rise of foreign ideas and

practices. Through census records, newspaper articles and various forms of advertisements

Rhoads successfully illustrates the pervasive sentiment towards immigrants at the time. One

particular advert that Rhodes uses, from The City Club, states “Father Knickerbocker making

Good Americans of the Children of all Nations.

Like Rhoads, Ellen M. Rosenthal, author of the essay “The Colonial Revival: New Words

for an Old Book,” notes the significance of the wave of immigration experienced in the

Progressive Era as it relates to the movement. She contests that social historians, in specific,

argue that it began as an effort of Americans with significant family histories attempted

to separate themselves from new immigrants of the second half of the nineteenth century. Her

argument however looks inwardly. Unlike the discussion of anti-immigration sentiment of the

time, Rosenthal looks to interior changes, ones within the home and the domestic sphere. She

believed that if historians understood more about the Victorian home, they could better analyze

the social and cultural ramifications.

Anti-modernists blamed the state of the country in a variety of ways. Historians argue

that the most significant and the most unique was the creation of a disease called neurasthenia. A

phenomenon within a phenomenon, neurasthenia is term coined in 1881 by New York

physician

George Beard. Beard confirmed that neurasthenia resulted from “more sophisticated labors”

That took people away from the labors of the field and to industry. Green attributes the

manifestation of the illness to an overall lack of preparedness to face increasing national

changes.

Thomas Denenberg’s analysis of Wallace Nutting reveals that Nutting indeed suffered

from this supposed malady. Denenberg describes his condition as an overall tiring of the mind

and body. Nutting’s position as a minister made Denenberg believe that he was particularly

susceptible to neurasthenia. It was Denenberg believed as the “scourge of the Victorian

brain-worker.” Manifestations of the disease ranged from insomnia to flushing to drowsiness

to bad dreams to pressure and heaviness of the head to nervous dyspepsia. Many historians

concur that, neurasthenia is a cultural construct and nothing more than depression.

Generally, many would contend that the Colonial Revival was isolated to large

metropolitan cities in the east coast during the Progressive Era. Many further argue that it is

confined to New England and the North Eastern region of the United States. Though many

similar themes are visible throughout, there are cases of distinct regional differences. Alan

Axelrod’s collection of essays, The Colonial Revival in America offers various case studies

examining the movement in numerous American locales and regions.

A stark contrast to its counterpart in Boston and New York, Edward Teitelman and
Betsy Fahlman’s “Wilson Eyre and the Colonial Revival in Philadelphia,” recognized

contributions in other regions of the United States and acknowledges the importance of studying

those in achieving a cohesive view of the revival. Wilson Erye is the most significant

proponent of the movement in Philadelphia. Coming from an architectural background, Erye was

chiefly interested in Colonial exteriors. Eyre’s vision mixed traditional patterns and symbols of

Colonial architecture while fusing architectural and cultural developments of the late nineteenth

century. Tetleman and Fahlman argue that Philadelphia was experiencing a continuance of

what they were always doing, while absorbing new ideals along the way.

In her essay “A Georgian Renascence in Georgia: The Residential Architecture of Neel

Reid,” Catherine Howett compares Colonial architecture of cosmopolitan Atlanta to smaller

areas like Macon. Atlanta represented the capitol of the deep south, immolating all things

industrial and of progress. By including a smaller town like Macon, Howett effectively depicted

the spectrum of the social and cultural landscape at the time. Conversely, Howard uses the term

coined by Henry Woodfin Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, “The New South” as a term

to discuss the Colonial Revival in the Deep South, specifically Georgia.