Discover

'Moorish Revival' or 'Neo-Moorish' is one of the exotic revival styles that were adopted by architects of Europe and the Americas in the wake of the Romanticist fascination with all things oriental. It reached the height of its popularity after the mid-nineteenth century, part of a widening vocabulary of decorative ornament beyond classical and Gothic modes. Little distinction was made in European and American practice between motifs drawn from Ottoman Turkey or from Andalusia.
The "Moorish" garden structures built at Sheringham, Norfolk, ca. 1812, were an unusual touch at the time, a parallel to chinoiserie, but as early as 1826, Edward Blore used "Mohammedan" arches, domes of various size and shapes and other details of Near Eastern Islamic architecture to great effect in his design for Alupka Palace in Crimea, a cultural setting that had already been penetrated by authentic Ottoman styles. By the mid-19th century, the style was adopted by the Jews of Central Europe, who associated mudejar architectural forms with the golden age of Jewry in medieval Muslim Spain. As a consequence, Moorish Revival spread around the globe as a preferred style of synagogue architecture.
In the United States, Washington Irving's travel sketch, ''Alhambra'' (1832) first brought Moorish Andalusia into readers' imaginations; one of the first neo-Moorish structures was Iranistan, a mansion of P. T. Barnum in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Constructed in 1848 and demolished by fire ten years later, this architectural extravaganza "sprouted bulbous domes and horseshoe arches".^[1] In the 1860s, the style spread across America, with Olana, the painter Frederic Edwin Church's house overlooking the Hudson River, Castle Garden in Jacksonville and Nutt's Folly in Natchez, Mississippi usually cited among the more prominent examples. After the American Civil War, Moorish or Turkish smoking rooms achieved some popularity. There were Moorish details in the interiors created for the Havemeyer residence on Fifth Avenue by Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Although Carlo Bugatti employed Moorish arcading among the exotic features of his furniture, shown at the 1902 exhibition at Turin, by that time the Moorish Revival was very much on the wane everywhere but Imperial Russia, where the shell-encrusted in Moscow (a stylisation of a Portuguese palace in Sintra) and the Neo-Mameluk palaces of Koreiz exemplify the continuing development of the style, and in Bosnia, where the Austrian government commissioned a range of Neo-Moorish structures. This included application of ornamentations and other Moorish design strategies neither of which had much to do with prior architectural direction of indigenous Bosnian architecture. Post office in Sarajevo for example follows distinct formal characteristics of design like clarity of form, symmetry, and proportion while the interior followed the same doctrine. Library in Sarajevo is an example of Pseudo Moorish architectural language using decorations and pointed arches while still integrating other formal elements into the design.
In Spain, the country conceived as the place of origin of Moorish ornamentation, the interest in this sort of architecture fluctuated from province to province. The main stream was called Neo-Mudéjar. In Catalonia, Antoni Gaudí's profound interest in Mudéjar heritage governed the design of his early works, such as Casa Vicens or . In Andalusia, the Neo-Mudéjar style gained belated popularity in connection with the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 and was epitomized by Plaza de España (Seville) and in Cádiz. In Madrid, the Neo-Mudéjar was a characteristic style of housing and public buildings at the turn of the century, while the 1920s return of interest to the style resulted in such buildings as Las Ventas bull ring and Diario ABC office.

Contents

Moorish Revival Theaters in America

Theatres outside the United States

Sources

Notes

Assorted examples

Moorish Revival Theaters in America

Theater	City and State	Architect	Date
Bagdad	Portland, Oregon	Thomas & Mercier	1927
Granada	Emporia, Kansas	Boller Brothers	1929
Keiths Flushing	Queens, New York	Thomas Lamb	1928
Alhambra	Birmingham, Alabama	Graven & Maygar	1927
Olympic	Miami, Florida	John Eberson	1926
Fox	Atlanta, Georgia	Mayre, Alger & Vinour	1929
Alhambra	Hopkinsville, Kentucky	John Walker	1928
Temple	Meridian, Mississippi	Emile Weil	1927
Saenger	Hattiesburg, Mississippi	Emile Weil	1929
Fox	North Platte, Nebraska	Elmer F. Behrens	1929
Civic	Akron, Ohio	John Eberson	1929
Palace	Canton, Ohio	John Eberson	1926
Palace	Marion, Ohio	John Eberson	1928
Sooner	Norman, Oklahoma	Harold Gimeno	1929
Plaza	El Paso, Texas	W. Scott Donne	1930
Majestic	San Antonio, Texas	John Eberson	1929
Tower	Los Angeles, California	S. Charles Lee	1927
Alhambra	San Francisco, California	Miller & Pfleuger	1925
Tennessee	Knoxville, Tennessee	Graven & Mayger	1928
Loews	Richmond, Virginia	John Eberson	1928
Music Box	Chicago, Illinois	Louis J. Simon	1929

Theatres outside the United States

Theater	City and State	Country	Architect	Date
State/Forum Theatre	Melbourne, Victoria	Australia	Bohringer, Taylor & Johnson	1929

Sources

★ Naylor, David, ''Great American Movie Theaters'', The Preservation Press, Washington D.C., 1987

★ Thorne, Ross, ''Picture Palace Architecture in Australia'', Sun Books Pty. Ltd., South Melbourne, Australia, 1976

Notes

1. John C. Poppeliers, S. Allen Chambers Jr. ''What Style Is It: A Guide to American Architecture''. ISBN 0-471-25036-8. Page 63''.

Assorted examples