What is Tudor Revival

England’s Tudor family of monarchs reigned from 1485 to 1603. It was the era of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh. The Tudor dynasty ruled over England’s transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, when domestic architecture shifted from defensive strongholds to homes built around comfort and beauty. Traditional feudal systems eroded, giving way to an emergent merchant class and the seeds of recognizable capitalism.

British exploration and colonization of the “New World” also began in the Tudor Era. Thus, many in the United States saw the period as the beginning of their own American story. Later, when Americans learned about British history, the Tudor era stood out. It sat conveniently between the so-called Dark Ages of medievalism but before the dawn of Americans’ revolt against British kings and queens. It was a period perfectly suited to be romanticized and embellished centuries after it ended.

American homes began borrowing from England’s Tudor era as early as the mid-1800s. Yet from the beginning, these Olde English elements seemed more rooted in imagination and reinterpretation than faithful reconstruction. By the time Tudor Revival flourished in 1920s Louisville, the style was drawing from dozens of English influences: country cottages, manor homes, village squares, and even fairy tales. Occasionally, architects went beyond England, ascribing “Norman” or “Old World” sources to their Tudor creations.

All of this was part of a larger fashionable trend that quickly spread beyond architecture into all aspects of popular culture. Americans had fallen in love with the imagined world of Merrie Olde England. For example, the phrase “ye olde” skyrocketed in usage during the 1920s and 30s. Elsewhere in the cultural landscape, Louisville-born illustrator Dean Cornwell was just one of many commercial artists who played with Tudor’s whimsy. Tudor Revival’s architectural ascent fed popular culture, which in turn helped accelerate the architecture’s popularity.

“All over the country, the latest and most scientific methods of mass-production are being utilized to run out a stream of old oak beams, leaded window-panes, and small discs of bottle-glass, all structural devices which our ancestors lost no time in abandoning as soon as an increase in wealth and knowledge enabled them to do so.” – Osbert Lancaster, Pillar to Post, 1938