The American Renaissance and Cleveland: A Lecture on Cleveland’s Architectural History

{"version":"0.3.0","atoms":[],"cards":[],"markups":[],"sections":[[1,"p",[[0,[],0,"The\nAmerican Renaissance expressed the confidence and ambitions of governmental,\ncommercial, institutional, and residential patrons during America\u0027s First\nGilded Age. Rooted before Chicago\u0027s 1893 World Columbian Exposition, the style\ntook advantage of that fair\u0027s extraordinary influence to argue that Roman art\nand architecture, as classified and refined by Italian-speaking practitioners\nand theorists during the 15th and 16th centuries, was uniquely suited to\nexpress the current stature and glowing future of a nationalizing United\nStates, a ready peer to other world powers. Cleveland was an early adopter of\nit, commissioning Daniel Burnham, its Chicago champion, to co-design the Group\nPlan around which the Forest City\u0027s civic structures would be arranged.\nNewly-enriched Northeast Ohio patrons hired architects and artists of national\nand international reputation, some with local practices, cultivated Buckeye\nState artisans, and sought out the most-skilled craftspersons among\nlately-arrived Europeans to imagine and build a grand capital city. The\nAmerican Renaissance unites the some of the very best work by American\ncreators, both in design and fabrication, and remains for many the style\nthrough which Cleveland, at its most dominant, spoke to the world."]]],[1,"p",[[0,[],0,"Professor\nWilson is an expert chronicler of the American Renaissance and of the\narchitecture firm of McKim, Mead, and White, one of its most important\nadvocates. He will address its beginnings, the joining together of many\ndistinct arts, and how it came to dominate Cleveland\u2019s public realm."]]]]}