Glossary
Architectonic Massing the arrangement or composition of the large exterior forms of a building.
Articulation the different parts of a building, particularly as they are related to one another.
Balustrade a handrail, roof or portico rail supported by balusters, generally decoratively carved.
Bay the intervals between recurring members such as windows, columns, pilasters.
Baroque an architectural style of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, using classical and Renaissance forms, but in a more dynamic ornamental and three dimensional fashion.
Baroque Revival Style in America, Europe and European outposts, a latter nineteenth century style borrowing many ideas from the earlier Baroque, but synthesizing them into a current and appropriate idiom. For example, the Paris Opera, or buildings in British India as well as eastern and western American governmental and domestic structures.
Bow front a semicircular projecting window, often extending with masonry or wood intervals, several stories.
Bracket a supporting member projecting from the wall, often “supporting” eaves, porticos, or hooded windows and used principally ornamentally.
Cella the main chamber of a Greek temple, often surrounded in whole or partially by a colonnade.
Coffer a recessed panel in a ceiling. Often but not always in domes and cupolas.
Colonial Style strictly speaking, buildings erected prior to American Independence, a style which covers a broad range of seventeenth and eighteenth century European-inspired buildings. Locally, this style is characterized by one and one-half to two and one-half story structures with often handsome though modest doorways, windows, and decorative detail, made either of wood or brick. The style continued to be used, here and elsewhere into the early nineteenth century, particularly in less pretentious structures.
Colonnade a row of freestanding columns often supporting a roof or some covered, projecting part of a structure.
Colonnette any very small column.
Console a projecting scroll-shaped member actually supporting or decorative, used in much the same way as a bracket.
Cornice a projecting, horizontal element used as the crowning decorative member of an entranceway, or over a window. Originally the topmost of the three parts of a classical entablature.
Crocket in the Gothic Revival style, an adaptation, often in wood, of the original stone curved foliage cluster. Used to decorate the underside of steep gables, often meant, not always accurately, when the word “gingerbread” is used.
Doric along with Ionic and Corinthian are named given the classical orders. Basically a post and lintel support system consisting of a column and entablature. The Doric order was used on the Parthenon. Classical revival styles often adapt the orders, but the Doric derivative is noticeable by the top of the column, its capital formed by a simple square member, as opposed to the scrolled Ionic or even more decorative Corinthian.
Egg-and-dart a decorative molding, used horizontally, derived from the ancient orders, consisting of alternating, slightly projecting oval and pointed forms.
Elevation one side of a building, usually seen head-on. Technically an architectural scale drawing which shows the vertical elements of a ground plan.
Embrasure the splaying or beveling outwards from a door or window frame to the exterior fabric of a building.
Entablature anciently in post and lintel construction, the lintel or horizontal member which strictly consisted of three bands: architrave, frieze and cornice and was supported by the columns, together with which they formed an order: Doric, Ionic, etc. In revival styles this is often modified, imaginatively or not, but in any case is or was an important aspect of the impact of the structure.
Fabric used architecturally to refer to the totality of a structure: its material, construction and ultimate visual effect.
Façade the front or main face of a building. Can refer to sides or rear and is sometimes eschewed in favor of elevation.
Fanlight a semicircular or semi-elliptical window (or as if often said light) above a door. Typically Colonial fanlights are semi-circular, while Federal (and later) are the broader semi-elliptical.
Federal Style in American building, the style following Colonial and so named to coincide with this country’s emergence as a nation. Characterized by both larger and more delicately detailed structures.
Fenestration the type and arrangement of windows in a building.
Finial an ornament placed at the top of a gable, spire, canopy or other vertical element.
Foliated architectural decoration in leaf-like forms. Often associated with crockets and finials and understood as part of “gingerbread.”
Fresco a method of painting into wet plaster, or onto dry plaster. Generally associated with large areas such as ceilings or walls.
Frieze anciently the middle area of the horizontal entablature, supported by columns. More modernly a long decorative horizontal band, often encircling a structure just under the roof line.
Gable the triangular area formed by the meeting of the two slopes of a double pitched roof. Can be on the main façade or on the sides. A stepped gable substitutes the straight diagonal for a series of step-like progressions upward (or downward).
Gambrel a roof construction which differs from the double pitched, triangular gable end by breaking each pitch into two parts, the lower steeper than the upper. The resultant gable is not triangular, but unevenly pentagonal. A roof form used extensively in Colonial dwellings and revived in the more picturesquely irregular forms of the Shingle Style.
Georgian Style although, strictly, this covers the English period of the Georges from 1714-1830, it refers in the United States to buildings of the Colonial era, frequently in brick, in which quoins, scrolled door pediments and other modified Baroque features persisted, though modified.
Greek Revival Style a building style following the Federal in which classical elements such as large columns and façade gables, and some careful study of ancient originals produced structures, both private and public of substantial monumentality.
Grid a plan, in laying out cities, where the streets are neatly straight and intersect at right angles.
Hipped Roof a roof which pitches inward from all four sides. Differs from a gabled or gambrel roof in appearing the same from any side.
Ionic one of the ancient orders, with Doric and Corinthian, in the post and lintel construction. Anciently and in revival styles the columns can be identified by slender proportions and a characteristic scrolled capital, comparable to formalized ram’s horns.
Intarsia inlaid wood (or mosaic) of various types arranged in patterns, often used in interior decoration, both in architectural embellishment and in furniture.
Keystone the central wedge shaped stone at the crown of an arch. Many nicely decorated nineteenth century examples remain.
Lantern an architectural member which may crown a dome or spire, usually pierced by windows or louvers for light and ventilation.
Lights an omnibus architectural term generally synonymous with windows and with other glazed areas such as fanlights and sidelights which may not serve for ventilation.
Lintel a horizontal member spanning an opening such as a door or window to add structural soundness and, often, serve as an important decorative element.
Loggia a covered passage either arcaded or colonnaded attached to a building, or, even, connecting several buildings.
Lunette a semi-circular opening or surface decoration, often but not exclusively in brick work.
Mansard a roof type of the mid to late nineteenth century, comparable to a gambrel in having a double pitch, comparable to a hipped in that all four sides are treated equally. Characteristically the lower pitch is very steep, often concave, while the upper has a much gentler slope. Provides an almost full extra story. The name is a corruption of Mansart, a French baroque architect of the seventeenth century, hence its popularity in the Baroque Revival style.
Mastic thin cement coating used over brick, either on the entire building or around doors, windows and other possibly decorative areas, usually to simulate the effect of stone, hence adding to the monumentality of a structure at a lower cost.
Molding ornamental, projecting parts used in both wood and masonry construction which both define and decorate the larger and smaller forms. The particular types vary.
Mullion a dividing member, usually slender in windows, serving both functional and decorative uses, sometimes called muntins.
Palladian a particular and handsome window treatment, usually on the principal façade where there are three lights, the central higher and arched, the flanking windows lower and square headed. Derives from an idea used by the sixteenth century architect, Palladio.
Pediment a crowning building, door or window member which can be triangular, slightly circular, or even broken, as in two scrolls almost meeting. Derives from ancient architecture where the double pitched roof was constructed to form a triangular gable on the principal façade, often filled with sculpture as in the Parthenon. Used extensively over doors and windows in the Renaissance, Baroque and later classical revival styles.
Pier Buttress in Gothic architecture an external member, square in cross section, abutted to the wall which helped bear the thrust of the interior vaults. In Gothic Revival architecture, especially of wood, a decorative reminiscence, not structurally necessary, of typical Gothic forms.
Pilaster a flattened, attached column in the sense of often retaining base, shaft and capital of an ancient order, but serving as a flat projecting member, to divide or articulate parts of a building. Can be much simplified decoratively, but still serve the same proportional function.
Plat a plan or map of land divisions
Plinth a slab-like member beneath the base of a column or pier.
Portico a porch, usually over a central entranceway and often using a low pitched roof supported by slender columns.
Program the architectural requirements of a building which include use, available space, site, economics as well as materials and appearance.
Prostyle in ancient and Revival architecture a building with columns on the main façade, but not surrounding the other three sides.
Pseudo-peripteral a building giving the effect of being surrounded by a single row of columns.
Quatrefoil a Gothic ornamental device used in various ways, employing four lobes or circles pointing into the center.
Queen Anne Style a late nineteenth, early twentieth century style, derived from England, but modified imaginatively in the United States to include classical, Shingle Style, Romanesque Revival and Stick Style elements. Most frequently but not exclusively seen locally, in many frame buildings. The plan is frequently asymmetrical and the exterior may include, for instance, a small Palladian window as well as brackets.
Quoins refers frequently to the treatment of the corners of buildings. Typically, bricks or stones laid in alternating projections, so that the separation between is quite obvious. Also done in frame construction.
Rondel a round architectural member, used ornamentally, sometimes glazed. A part of the Revival vocabulary borrowed from Renaissance and Baroque architecture, but used in a typically nineteenth century manner.
Rustication a deliberate roughing of stone, often in quoins, but in other similar exterior surrounds, for textural richness. Ultimately derived from the Renaissance appearance of ancient buildings, formerly faced by marble applied over rougher stone.
Scale in general a term used to compare the actual or effected size of a building to the size of a human. This term also refers to the relation of one part to another in a structure which may result in monumentality despite actual measurement or in seeming smallness, depending on the intention and total design.
Solution a term relating to program (the totality of architectural “problem”) meaning how the various factors of use, site, material, etc. have been integrated into a viable whole.
Spandrel a quasi-triangular space formed by two adjoining arches, often decorated.
Stringcourse a fairly narrow, horizontal projecting member used to articulate parts of a façade, usually the various stories. Also called belt-course.
Style the particular amalgamation of architectural elements, usually occurring during a given period of time which characterized the structures of that era. For example, Colonial, Federal, Greek Revival, Baroque Revival, etc. in which buildings of various uses share common shape and decorative ideas.
Surrounds a feature, such as a molding, forming a framing for an architectural member, usually a door or window.
Transept the lateral arms of a cross shaped church, as opposed to and at right angles to the nave. A term from Gothic architecture which in modern building may be modified but identifiable.
Vernacular a term borrowed from the study of language which, in architecture, refers to more modest adaptations of high style buildings.
Vocabulary another word borrowed from the study of language, used in architecture often synonymously with style, although with more latitude as in classical vocabulary. This could be used of some Colonial, Federal, Baroque Revival, Tuscan, Colonial Revival, etc. buildings.
Glossary pages 214-219 in Portland, published by Greater Portland Landmarks, Inc.