Dreaming Spires: Collegiate Gothic Architecture on American Campuses

Abstract

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Collegiate Gothic architecture became a favored style on the campuses of several elite educational institutions in the northeastern United States. This style best exemplifies the Anglophile and Christian value system of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) upper class. Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell referred to the upper class as “the Protestant Establishment” which included several mainline Protestant denominations but was largely Episcopalian. The WASP upper class was shaped by what Baltzell described as “the Episcopalianization of the American business aristocracy.” This phrase refers to a cultural assimilation process whereby members of the American upper class shed the religious denominations of their ancestors to join the Episcopal Church, which resulted in a cohesive class identity and consciousness.

Social history and architectural history are a Venn diagram. They have an area of overlap, an intersection or intertwining. The American upper class influenced the development of Collegiate Gothic architecture as a reflection of its value system, heavily rooted in Anglophilia and the Episcopal Church. The rise and decline of the Protestant Establishment from the 19th to the early 20th centuries correlates to the rise and decline of the Collegiate Gothic architecture movement during the same period of time.

Disciplines

Architectural History and Criticism | Architecture | History | United States History

Subject Area

History; Sociology; Architecture; American history

Department

Humanities (HUM)

First Advisor

Shaw, Jeffrey

Second Advisor

Cowdin, Daniel

Third Advisor

van den Hurk, Jeroen

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

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