A Short History of Architecture
Arthur Lyman Tuckerman's *A Short History of Architecture* (1887) is a concise survey written explicitly for students and general readers rather than connoisseurs, tracing the origin, characteristic features, and lineage of each major architectural style without heavy technical jargon or extensive political-historical digression. In his preface, Tuckerman states his aim plainly: to give the "chief historical facts" of building history "within a small compass," believing architecture as useful and beautiful a subject for schoolboys as military history. The book opens with an Introduction defining architecture as the union of utility and beauty, achieved through the twin sciences of construction and decoration, each shaped by climate, materials, and race. Tuckerman sketches the primitive origin of building—from caves and branch shelters to post-and-lintel construction—and identifies four essential divisions of architectural study: construction, proportion, drawing, and history. He then outlines his chronological plan, covering eleven successive periods. The chapters proceed through: (1) Celtic/Druidical remains—menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs like Stonehenge—valued as the earliest hints of constructive intelligence rather than as true architecture; (2) Egyptian monuments, covering the pyramids of Gizeh, rock-cut tombs at Beni Hassan and Thebes, and the great hypostyle temples of Karnak, Luxor, and Abu Simbel, praised for engineering mastery but criticized for artistic stagnation across millennia; (3) Asiatic architecture, surveying Indian stupas, rock-cut temples like Ellora's Kailasa, Chinese wooden pagodas and the Great Wall, and Assyrian/Persian palace-cities (Nineveh, Khorsabad, Persepolis) with their winged-bull portals and ziggurats, plus Solomon's Temple and Lycian tomb architecture; (4) Greece, detailing the Cyclopean walls of Tiryns and Mycenae, the origin myths of the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders per Vitruvius, and the Athenian Acropolis—Parthenon, Erechtheion, Propylaea, Temple of the Wingless Victory—held up as architecture's supreme achievement in "harmonious proportions and majestic simplicity"; (5) Etruria and Rome, explaining how Rome fused the Greek lintel with the Etruscan arch to produce a distinctive, grander but less refined art, illustrated through the Colosseum, Pantheon, aqueducts, baths, triumphal arches, and basilicas; (6) the Early Christian style, showing how the Roman basilica plan (nave, aisles, transept, apse) was adapted for worship, plus the emergence of centralized baptisteries; (7) the Byzantine style, centered on Hagia Sophia and the structural innovation of the pendentive dome on a square base, tracing its spread to Venice's St. Mark's and Aquitaine's domed churches like St. Front; (8) Mahometan architecture, covering the Kaaba, mosques of Jerusalem, Damascus, and Cairo, and Moorish Spain's Córdoba mosque and the Alhambra, noted for rich surface ornament rather than new constructive principles; (9) the Romanesque style, explaining the gradual, experimental solving of stone vaulting over the nave—from tunnel vaults to intersecting ribbed vaults—that eventually produced the flying buttress; (10) Gothic architecture, presented as the logical continuation of Romanesque structural logic once the pointed arch became systematic, covering French and English cathedral design (Chartres, Reims, Notre-Dame, Salisbury), fan vaulting, tracery, and the distinct, less structurally honest Italian and Venetian Gothic; and (11) the Renaissance, beginning with Brunelleschi and Orcagna's revival of round arches in Florence, and extending through Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo's St. Peter's, Vignola's codification of the classical orders, and the French châteaux of the Loire and palaces of Louis XIV. The closing chapters (Conclusion) argue that only two true structural traditions exist—Classic (including its Byzantine and Romanesque offshoots) and Gothic—and that both succeed only when construction and decoration remain honestly unified, condemning ornament that conceals or contradicts structure (false buttresses, purposeless columns, sham materials). Tuckerman contends Gothic is uniquely suited to religious buildings for its expressive spiritual character, while classical orders suit civil architecture for their proven, timeless proportion. He closes with an appeal to reverence: architecture should not be reduced to commercial trade or mechanical fashion, but pursued as a living, evolving art guided by educated sentiment, studied historically not for imitation but for principle, so that new work might extend rather than merely echo the great styles of the past.
By Arthur Lyman Tuckerman · First published 1887 · Genre: Architectural History, Art History, Non-fiction · 42,337 words
First lines
"To build, to build! That is the noblest art of all the arts. Painting and Sculpture are but images, Are merely shadows cast by outward things On stone or canvas, having in themselves No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow. " -LONGFELLOW, in _Michael Angelo_.
PREFACE.
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A Short History of Architecture is listed on Textopian as an article by Arthur Lyman Tuckerman, dated 1887 CE.
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- Work type: Article
- Author: Arthur Lyman Tuckerman
- Date: 1887 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Architectural History, Art History, Non-fiction, Educational Reference, Cultural History
- Length: 42,337 words
- Structure: 1 section, 535 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Difficult (College Level)
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Genres
- Architectural History — The entire work is a chronological survey of architectural development from Celtic remains through the Renaissance, explicitly stated as a history of architecture.
- Art History — The text analyzes architectural styles as artistic expressions, examining aesthetic principles, ornamentation, and the evolution of artistic approaches across periods.
- Non-fiction — Factual, evidence-based treatment of historical buildings, archaeological findings, and documented architectural practices.
- Educational Reference — Written explicitly for students and general readers seeking foundational knowledge without technical jargon, organized systematically for learning.
Tags
architecture · history · non-fiction · educational · reference · survey · design · buildings · structures · art history · cultural history · architectural styles