American Architecture

American Architecture, architecture that developed in the European colonies in America and subsequently in the United States. This development covers a period of almost five centuries, beginning with the establishment of Saint Augustine in Florida in 1565, English settlement along the Atlantic Coast in 1585, and Spanish settlement in New Mexico in 1598. Settlers from France, Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, and other countries arrived in the 1600s.

The full history of building in what became the United States reaches back 10,000 years, but European settlers almost universally ignored the many building traditions of Native American peoples. Over the five centuries after European arrival, transplanted European building traditions were gradually reshaped and redefined. They emerged as distinctly American building traditions by the early 19th century. Each of the European colonies in North America developed its own building tradition.

In the 1800s innovations in technology and the spread of railroads made possible the rapid growth of the Midwest and West. Mass-produced building parts, manufactured in the East, could be ordered from catalogs and shipped West by rail. A major fire in 1871 destroyed downtown Chicago, Illinois, and offered building opportunities for American architects, who over the next 25 years developed the first skyscrapers. This brand-new building type, devised in the United States, influenced architecture around the world from the late 1800s into the 2000s. During the 20th century architects and entrepreneurs vied to build the tallest skyscraper—a contest that continues today. Another unique building type developed in America was the single-family suburban house—a detached or stand-alone building, as opposed to the attached or semiattached suburban house popular elsewhere. It, too, influenced architecture outside the United States.

The emigration of European architects in the 1930s and 1940s brought European modernism to the United States, and in the second half of the 20th century America became a major architectural force. By the late 1900s and early 2000s American architects worked around the globe, while architects from Japan and Spain, to mention only two examples, received commissions for major public buildings in the United States.

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