Page 4 - Millikin Design Book PRINT

Elizabethan Style

I spent much time with the architects in selecting the most appropriate style
of architecture for the location which we had chosen. The Elizabethan

offered the best solution of our problem, and I recommended it to our
patrons and to the board who at once expressed their satisfaction and

instructed us to proceed with details.
Albert Reynolds Taylor
First President, Millikin University

Elizabethan architecture, popular from the
late 1500s through the 1600s, is understood
as the English adaptation of the early Italian
Renaissance style, but with a significant influence
in its details from Dutch and Flemish architecture.
Unlike the royal palaces and new churches
commissioned during the reign of her father,
Henry VIII, Elizabeth I influenced the development
of the great houses spread across England’s
countryside, built for a wealthy and powerful
aristocracy. President Taylor’s indication that the
Elizabethan style was chosen, after considerable
discussion, as the “most appropriate” and the
“best solution,” provides no further explanation
as to how this decision was made, nor to the
“problem” that it apparently resolved. However,
we can speculate on some of the issues that may
have been in play.

First, as a fledgling institution, there was likely
a strong desire to imbue Millikin University
with a sense of permanence, to tie it, at least
symbolically, to the distant past. With Millikin’s
intention that the new University would be
nonsectarian, the more secular Elizabethan
style may have been more appealing than, for
example, the Gothic style with its ecclesiastical
history. Perhaps the large manor houses also
provided a more readily appropriate planning
model to accommodate the range of space types
that would be needed to support the university
curriculum. In any event, the Elizabethan style,
was chosen, and its particular vocabulary was
incorporated into the first buildings erected to
house the new university. Shilling Hall, as it is

© 2016 FGM Architects Page 3