Georgian

The Georgian development of Dublin, Ireland, in the late 18th century, gave the city many wide, tree-lined streets and graceful facades, as well as some of the most famous civic buildings, such as the Custom House. These particular houses can be seen in the area around St Stephen's Green, to the south of Trinity College.

Period of English architecture, furniture making, and decorative art between 1714 and 1830. The architecture is mainly classical in style, although external details and interiors were often rich in rococo carving. Furniture was frequently made of mahogany and satinwood, and mass production became increasingly common; designers included Thomas Chippendale, George Hepplewhite, and Thomas Sheraton. The silver of this period is particularly fine, and ranges from the earlier, simple forms to the ornate, and from the neoclassical style of Robert Adam to the later, more decorated pre-Victorian taste. See also English architecture.

Georgian architecture Palladian architecture in England includes not only the work of Inigo Jones but also that of many architects of the 18th century who followed Palladio rather than Christopher Wren.

Buildings of the period include many vast aristocratic mansions such as Holkham, Kedleston, Harewood, Kenwood, and Chatsworth; many Georgian houses; many churches of the new ‘Protestant’ type and Nonconformist meeting-houses; and important public buildings such as Chelsea Hospital and Somerset House.

There was keen rivalry during the second half of the 18th century between William Chambers, the upholder of Palladianism, and Robert Adam, the practitioner of a more original style inspired by Greek and Roman archaeology. Greece, for long inaccessible, was now visited by many architects and connoisseurs during the second half of the 18th century; Stuart and Revett published their Antiquities of Athens in 1762.

John Nash introduced Regency style, so-called because of its patronization by the Prince of Wales (later George IV) during his years as Prince Regent (1811-20). Decorous and refined, it is associated with an extensive use of stucco, and may be seen at Hove, Brighton, Weymouth, Cheltenham, Clifton, and Tunbridge Wells, as well as in the terraces and mansions around ‘the Regent's Park’ in London. The style constituted the last phase of that Georgian architecture which had been in vogue since 1725 or so. Examples of Greek Revival, which lasted for several decades abreast of the Regency style, include the Athenaeum Club, London (1827-30) by Decimus Burton; St Pancras Church (1819-22) by Henry William Inwood; Downing College, Cambridge (1820) by William Wilkins; and several buildings in Edinburgh by William Henry Playfair.

For details of English architecture in the later 19th century, see English architecture: 19th century.