An omission was made in the January newsletter: not featuring 502-1510 Riverside Drive. Please click here for details of that listing.


Again Happy New Year! Today we explore part two of the Renaissance styles – Jacobean architecture. Last week we explored the first part of Renaissance styles – Elizabethan architecture. A topic which as I said started with a Holiday card featuring Blickling Hall by Robert Lyminge. Lyminge also designed Hatfield house.

The Jacobean style was during the reign of James I – 1603 and 1625. It was a transition between the Elizabethan and Pure Renaissance, it blended Medieval and Renaissance styles.

Where Elizabethan architecture was irregular, Jacobean is more regular. It is enhanced with classic columns and entablatures (the horizontal portion above the columns). A more stylistic unity is achieved.

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An omission was made in the January newsletter: not featuring 502-1510 Riverside Drive. Please click here for details of that listing.


It started with a friend showing me a Holiday Card he had received, it featured a photo of Blickling Hall. From there I identified Robert Lyminge as the architect, an architect of the Jacobean era. The Jacobean era being the period during the reign of King James I, between 1603 and 1625. The Jacobean architecture is the second phase of Renaissance architecture, the first one being Elizabethan architecture. The Elizabethan period was between 1558 and 1603 under the reign of Elizabeth I. And so here we are.

Characteristics of the Elizabethan style are: towers, gables, parapets, balustrades, chimney stacks, oriels and bay windows, as well as mullions and transoms. We’ll get to Jacobean architecture next time.

Happy New Year! May 2021 not look like 2020! [Read more…]

Having discovered a new to me architecture organization, Canadian Architect, and their list of annual Winners of Awards of Excellence, I had to put aside the review of starchitects in order to peruse this timely list. Considering this is the 53rd year of these awards – we may have found a new source of recognized architects.

Awards of Excellence

Zeidler Architecture

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Many of us will by now have binge watched Season 4 of The Crown. As the queen would not allow filming in Buckingham Palace, alternate sites had to be found to represent its interior as well as the interiors of Balmoral, Windsor, and Sandringham.
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Let us travel to another time today – the 16th century. Mimar Sinan really was starchitect. He was responsible for over 300 structures, many that endure to this day. Sinan was born in Kayseri, Turkey in 1490, he died in 1588. He was the most celebrated architect of the Ottoman Empire. The Selimiye Mosque in Edirne is considered his masterpiece the Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul his most famous.
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