Note 511 — CHAPTER 24 ARCHITECTURE CALLED TRADITIONAL IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

‘Historicism’ is a clumsy term matched by no viable adjective. It does, however, express more accurately than ‘traditionalism’, ‘revivalism’, or ‘eclecticism’ a certain aspect of architecture which was common throughout the last five hundred years, and not unknown in early ages. Quite simply, it means the re-use of forms borrowed from the architectural styles of the past, usually in more or less new combinations. It is late in this book to introduce a definition; but historicism is always so much taken for granted in discussing the architecture of the nineteenth century that it is only after the appearance as an alternative of exclusive modernism, rejecting all borrowed forms, that the older attitude needs to be isolated in order to discuss its continuance in this century. Characteristically, the architecture of two-thirds of the period covered by this book balanced a moderate sort of modernism with more or less of historicism. This is as true of most of the novel projects of Ledoux in the 1780s as it is of a considerable part of the work of the first generation of modern architects. However, only the traditional architects remained firmly attached to the concept of historicism in the twentieth century; men like Behrens and Perret were, through much of their careers at least, in highly significant revolt against it, quite as Ledoux had been in his day.