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44-401: Dicksonia was originally a two-story house with a small one-story portico in front, built in 1830 by David White. But, in 1856, the house was purchased by Wiley Turner, who hired an architect to remodel the house into a Greek Revival mansion, very similar in appearance to nearby Meadowlawn . The front porch was removed and a monumental two-story portico extending around two sides of the house

88-412: A palazzo into a church. Three windows on each of three storeys (and the door) alternate regular and segmental pediments; there is no pediment at the top of the facade, just a large cornice, as was usual. In St Peter's Basilica there is a conventional pediment over the main entrance, but the complicated facade stretches beyond it to both sides and above, and though large in absolute terms it makes

132-501: A non-structural element over windows , doors , and aediculae , protecting windows and openings from rain, as well as being decorative. From the 5th century pediments also might appear on tombs and later non-architectural objects such as sarcophagi . In the Hellenistic period pediments became used for a wider range of buildings, and treated much more freely, especially outside Greece itself. Broken and open pediments are used in

176-430: A pediment at each end, but Roman temples, and subsequent revivals, often had only one, in both cases across the whole width of the main front or facade. The rear of the typical Roman temple was a blank wall, usually without columns, but often a full pediment above. This effectively divorced the pediment from the columns beneath it in the original temple front ensemble, and thereafter it was no longer considered necessary for

220-678: A pediment to be above columns. The most famous example of the Greek scheme is the Parthenon , with two tympanums filled with large groups of sculpted figures. An extreme but very influential example of the Roman style is the Pantheon, Rome , where a portico with pediment fronts a circular temple. In ancient Rome , the Renaissance , and later architectural revivals , small pediments are

264-595: A relatively small impression. Many later buildings used a temple front with pediment as a highlight of a much wider building. The St Peter's facade also has many small pedimented windows and aedicular niches, using a mixture of segmental, broken, and open pediments. Variations using multiple pediments became very popular in Baroque architecture , and the central vertical line of church facades often ascended through several pediments of different sizes and shapes, in Rome five at

308-586: A swan's neck, typically volutes ; this is mostly found in furniture rather than buildings. It was popular in American doorways from the 1760's onwards. Very often there is a vase-like ornament in the middle, between the volutes. Non-triangular variations of pediments are often found over doors, windows, niches, and porches. The pediment is found in classical Greek temples, Etruscan, Roman, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, and Beaux-Arts architecture. Greek temples, normally rectangular in plan, generally had

352-797: A way that is often described as "baroque". The large 2nd-century Market Gate of Miletus , now reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin , has a pediment that retreats in the centre, so appears both broken and open, a feature also seen at the Al-Khazneh (so-called "Treasury") tomb at Petra in modern Jordan . The broken pediments on each of the four sides of the Arch of Septimius Severus at Leptis Magna in Libya are very small elements, raking at an extremely steep angle, but not extending beyond

396-459: A wide and low triangular pediment (the side angles 12.5° to 16°) typically formed the top element of the portico of a Greek temple , a style continued in Roman temples . But large pediments were rare on other types of building before Renaissance architecture . For symmetric designs, it provides a center point and is often used to add grandness to entrances. The cornice continues round the top of

440-438: Is now available to the public on a limited basis. The current owner, Dorothy Dickson Skipper, has made significant improvements to the grounds and visibility of the building proper. Dicksonia Plantation is being advertised as a historical rental venue at Dorothy Skipper Rental, LLC on Facebook, with current photos. In 2015 a beautiful family wedding was held in front of the building, and numerous photo shoots have taken place since

484-678: Is typically not used for these; they are often called a "canopy". From the Renaissance onwards, some pediments no longer fitted the steeply pitched roofs and became freestanding, sometimes sloping in the opposite direction to the roof behind. When classical-style low triangular pediments returned in Italian Renaissance architecture , they were initially mostly used to top a relatively flat facade, with engaged elements rather than freestanding porticos supported by columns. Leon Battista Alberti used them in this way in his churches:

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528-557: The Church of the Gesù ( Giacomo della Porta 1584) and six at Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi ( Martino Longhi the Younger , 1646), the top three folding into each other, using the same base line. This facade has been described as "a veritable symphony in repetitious pedimentry, bringing together a superimposed array of broken pediments, open pediments and arched pediments". The Gesù is

572-595: The Tempio Malatestiano (1450s, incomplete), Santa Maria Novella (to 1470), San Sebastiano in Mantua (unfinished by the 1470s), Sant'Andrea, Mantua (begun 1472), and Pienza Cathedral c.  1460 ), where the design was probably his. Here the cornice comes out and then retreats back, forming the top of pilasters with no capitals, a very unclassical note, which was to become much used. In most of these Alberti followed classical precedent by having

616-530: The UK , the temple-front applied to The Vyne , Hampshire, was the first portico applied to an English country house . A pronaos ( UK : / p r oʊ ˈ n eɪ . ɒ s / or US : / p r oʊ ˈ n eɪ . ə s / ) is the inner area of the portico of a Greek or Roman temple , situated between the portico's colonnade or walls and the entrance to the cella , or shrine. Roman temples commonly had an open pronaos, usually with only columns and no walls, and

660-415: The ancient Romans . Roman taste favoured narrow pseudoperipteral and amphiprostyle buildings with tall columns, raised on podiums for the added pomp and grandeur conferred by considerable height. The Maison Carrée at Nîmes , France , is the best-preserved Roman hexastyle temple surviving from antiquity . Octastyle buildings had eight columns; they were considerably rarer than the hexastyle ones in

704-710: The archaic period 600–550 BCE up to the Age of Pericles 450–430 BCE. Some well-known examples of classical Doric hexastyle Greek temples : Hexastyle was also applied to Ionic temples, such as the prostyle porch of the sanctuary of Athena on the Erechtheum , at the Acropolis of Athens . With the colonization by the Greeks of Southern Italy , hexastyle was adopted by the Etruscans and subsequently acquired by

748-665: The broken pediment the raking cornice is left open at the apex. The open pediment is open along the base, with a gap in the cornice for part or all of the space under the pediment. All these forms were used in Hellenistic architecture, especially in Alexandria and the Middle East . The so-called "Treasury" or Al-Khazneh , a 1st-century rock-cut tomb in Petra , Jordan, is a famously extreme example, with not merely

792-457: The equilateral triangle , and the enclosing cornice has little emphasis; they are often merely gable ends with some ornament. In Gothic architecture pediments with a much more acute angle at the top were used, especially over doorways and windows, but while the rising sides of the cornice is elaborate, the horizontal bottom element was typically not very distinct. Often there is a pointed arch underneath, and no bottom element at all. "Pediment"

836-753: The prostyle entrance porticos of large public buildings like the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine . Roman provincial capitals also manifested tetrastyle construction, such as the Capitoline Temple in Volubilis . The North Portico of the White House is perhaps the most notable four-columned portico in the United States. Hexastyle buildings had six columns and were the standard façade in canonical Greek Doric architecture between

880-482: The "Turner Home Track," from the Wiley Turner family. On November 29, 1901, the house and 400 acres (1.6 km) of land was sold to Robert Stiles Dickson, who named the mansion Dicksonia. The first Dicksonia, built of wood, burned in 1939. It was replaced by a cast- concrete and steel replica in 1940. The rebuilt house had the same floor-plan as the first, with one difference. This time the monumental portico

924-457: The bottom. The giant curving volute or scroll used at the sides of the middle zone at Sant'Agostino was to be a very common feature over the next two centuries. As in Gothic architecture, this often reflected the shapes of the roofs behind, where the nave was higher than the side-aisles. Sant'Agostino also has a low, squashed down pediment at the top of the full-width section. This theme

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968-443: The capitals of the columns. Here the whole temple front is decoration applied to a very solid wall, but the lack of respect for the conventions of Greek trabeated architecture remains rather disconcerting. Conventional Roman pediments have a slightly steeper pitch than classical Greek ones, perhaps because they ended tiled roofs that received heavier rainfall. In Carolingian and Romanesque architecture pediments tended towards

1012-653: The classical Greek architectural canon . The best-known octastyle buildings surviving from antiquity are the Parthenon in Athens , built during the Age of Pericles (450–430 BCE), and the Pantheon in Rome (125 CE). The destroyed Temple of Divus Augustus in Rome, the centre of the Augustan cult, is shown on Roman coins of the 2nd century CE as having been built in octastyle. The decastyle has ten columns; as in

1056-477: The entablature for the columns below. There are two faces to each pediment, both carved, with one lying parallel to the wall of the monument, and the other at right angles to that. The Arch of Augustus in Rimini , Italy (27 BC), an early imperial monument, suggests that at this stage provincial Roman architects were not well practiced in the classical vocabulary; the base of the pediment ends close to, but not over,

1100-404: The front door. A side balcony of wooden banisters adorned the upstairs on the west side of the house. A central hall ran the length of the house, with a staircase leading to the second floor. Sometime before 1900, the separate kitchen was added to the house proper. Water was supplied by a windmill at this time. Shem Arthur Tyson and his wife Mary (Toler) Tyson bought the house and land, known as

1144-513: The home church of the Jesuit order , who favoured this style, which was first seen in many cities around Europe in a new main Jesuit church. Pediments became extremely common on the main facades of English country houses , and many across northern Europe; these might be placed over a porch with columns, or simply decorations to an essentially flat facade. In England, if there was any sculpture within

1188-454: The improvements. Portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade , with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cultures, including most Western cultures . Porticos are sometimes topped with pediments . Palladio was a pioneer of using temple-fronts for secular buildings. In

1232-471: The past in new designs. Part manifesto, part architectural scrapbook accumulated over the previous decade, the book represented the vision for a new generation of architects and designers who had grown up with Modernism but who felt increasingly constrained by its perceived rigidities. Multiple Postmodern architects and designers put simplified reinterpretations of the pediment found in Classical decoration at

1276-418: The pediment occupy the whole width of the facade, or at least that part that projects outwards. Santa Maria Novella and Sant'Agostino, Rome (1483, by Giacomo di Pietrasanta , perhaps designed by Alberti) were early examples of what was to become a very common scheme, where the pediment at the top of the facade was much less wide, forming a third zone above a middle zone that transitioned the width from that of

1320-414: The pediment, as well as below it; the rising sides are often called the "raking cornice". The tympanum is the triangular area within the pediment, which is often decorated with a pedimental sculpture which may be freestanding or a relief sculpture. The tympanum may hold an inscription, or in modern times, a clock face. The main variant shapes are the "segmental", "curved", or "arch" pediment, where

1364-460: The pediment, but the whole entablature , very "broken" and retreating into the cliff face. Broken pediments where the gap is extremely wide in this way are often called "half-pediments". They were adopted in Mannerist architecture , and applied to furniture designed by Thomas Chippendale . Another variant is the swan's neck pediment , a broken pediment with two S-shaped profiles resembling

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1408-442: The pronaos could be as long as the cella . The word pronaos ( πρόναος ) is Greek for "before a temple". In Latin , a pronaos is also referred to as an anticum or prodomus . The pronaos of a Greek and Roman temple is typically topped with a pediment. The different variants of porticos are named by the number of columns they have. The "style" suffix comes from the Greek στῦλος , "column". In Greek and Roman architecture,

1452-527: The pronaos of a temple is typically topped with a pediment . The tetrastyle has four columns; it was commonly employed by the Greeks and the Etruscans for small structures such as public buildings and amphiprostyles . The Romans favoured the four columned portico for their pseudoperipteral temples like the Temple of Portunus , and for amphiprostyle temples such as the Temple of Venus and Roma , and for

1496-481: The sides. Large pediments with columns, often called the "temple front", became widely used for important public buildings such as stock exchanges , reserve banks , law courts, legislatures, and museums, where an impression of solidity, reliability, and respectability was desired. Postmodernism , a movement that questioned Modernism (the status quo after WW2), promoted the inclusion of elements of historic styles in new designs. An early text questioning Modernism

1540-426: The straight line triangle of the cornice is replaced by a curve making a segment of a circle, the broken pediment where the cornice has a gap at the apex, and the open pediment , with a gap in the cornice along the base. Both triangular and segmental pediments can have "broken" and "open" forms. Pediments are found in ancient Greek architecture as early as 580 BC, in the archaic Temple of Artemis, Corfu , which

1584-594: The temple front for churches, but in the Baroque, and especially outside Italy, this distinction was abandoned. The first use of pediments over windows in the Renaissance was on the Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni in Florence, completed in 1523 by Baccio d'Agnolo . Vasari says the innovation caused ridicule initially, but later came to be admired and widely adopted. Baccio was accused of turning

1628-494: The temple of Apollo Didymaeus at Miletus , and the portico of University College London . The only known Roman decastyle portico is on the Temple of Venus and Roma , built by Hadrian in about 130 CE. Pediment Pediments are a form of gable in classical architecture , usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice (an elaborated lintel ), or entablature if supported by columns . In ancient architecture,

1672-509: The top of their creations. As with other elements and ornaments taken from styles of the pre-Modern past, they were in most cases highly simplified. Especially when it comes to office architecture, Postmodernism was only skin deep; the underlying structure was usually very similar, if not identical, to that of Modernist buildings. In 1984 Philip Johnson designed what is now called 550 Madison Avenue in New York City (formerly known as

1716-496: The tympanum, it was often restricted to a coat of arms . Neoclassical architecture returned to "purer" classical models mostly using conventional triangular pediments, often over a portico with columns. Large schemes of pedimental sculpture were used where the budget allowed. In 19th-century styles freer treatments returned, and large segmental pediments were especially popular in eclectic styles such as Beaux-Arts architecture , often overwhelmed by sculpture within, above, and to

1760-425: Was added, supported by twelve fluted Doric columns. Elaborate cornice brackets, reflecting an Italianate influence, met at the roof line. The architecture of the house was also noted to show a Mississippi influence. Banisters of intricate design framed the porticoes. The front door had sidelights and an overhead transom. The door upstairs, also with sidelights, opened onto a wrought iron balcony directly over

1804-529: Was by architect Robert Venturi , Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966), in which he recommended a revival of the 'presence of the past' in architectural design. He tried to include in his own buildings qualities that he described as 'inclusion, inconsistency, compromise, accommodation, adaptation, superadjacency, equivalence, multiple focus, juxtaposition, or good and bad space.' Venturi encouraged 'quotation', which means reusing elements of

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1848-607: Was developed by Andrea Palladio in the next century. The main facade of his San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice (begun 1566) has "two interpenetrating temple fronts", a wider one being overlaid with a narrower and higher one, respectively following the roof lines of the aisles and nave. Several of Palladio's villas also introduced the pediment to country house architecture, which was to be become extremely common in English Palladian architecture . In cities, Palladio reserved

1892-492: Was probably one of the first. Pediments return in Renaissance architecture and are then much used in later styles such as Baroque , Neoclassical , and Beaux-Arts architecture , which favoured the segmental variant. A variant is the "segmental" or "arch" pediment, where the normal angular slopes of the cornice are replaced by one in the form of a segment of a circle, in the manner of a depressed arch. Both traditional and segmental pediments have "broken" and "open" forms. In

1936-467: Was rebuilt only across the front, instead of two sides of the house, due to the high cost of producing monumental Doric columns in concrete at the time. Although intended to be fireproof , the second incarnation of Dicksonia burned in 1964. This time the family could not rebuild it, due to extreme heat damage to the foundation. The empty shell and columns were left as a picturesque ivy -covered ruin, on private property without public access. The property

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