The German Rundbogenstil and Reflections on the American Round-Arched Style

This article investigates the German Rundbogenstil and its influence on the American "round-arched style." A stylistic and theoretical phenomenon of the 19th century, the German Rundbogenstil held both a specific and a generic meaning: as a contemporary building style and as a term for historical round-arched architecture. In modern scholarship, the Rundbogenstil has come to denote any round-arched building with Romanesque or Italianate features designed by certain early to mid-19th-century German architects. A general contextual analysis of the complex nature of the 19th-century round-arched styles or "tendencies" in Germany helps to define more precisely the Rundbogenstil. Following a theoretical and stylistic examination of major monuments in Karlsruhe, Munich, and Berlin, the present paper outlines the salient characteristics of the Rundbogenstil and its influence in America in the hands of certain central European emigrant architects in New York and two major mid-19th-century American architects. The fundamental theoretical change which the style underwent in the United States in both of these groups warrants a distinct label-the American "round-arched style."