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Victorian Building Styles The historical changes that marked an end to the isolation of Utah Territory in the late 19th century are also reflected in the architecture of this period. The great variety of Victorian styles popular in other parts of the country appeared during the 1880s in and around Salt Lake City, and by the 1890s they also appeared in the rural areas of the state. Most of the styles popular during America’s Victorian age emphasized the conventions of the Picturesque, but two styles – Beaux Arts Classicism and Second Renaissance Revival – relied strongly upon bilateral symmetry. The Picturesque characteristics of irregularity, intricacy, and variety present in the Gothic Revival and the Italianate styles discussed in the previous chapter were extended and elaborated upon during the latter decades of the 19th century. Domestic architecture best exemplified these characteristics. Late 19th-century houses were asymmetrical, complex compositions, often of disparate elements, their wall surfaces highly textured and usually intricate and their external surfaces extensively decorated. This conscious effort to achieve visual complexity was not usually achieved by the use of one style; instead, highly eclectic residences combined forms and elements from a number of stylistic sources. Indeed, much of this period’s architecture has been classified by some scholars as “Picturesque Eclecticism.”
