Mission Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, or Spanish Eclectic

Throughout the United States (especially areas that were part of the Spanish Empire)

From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, the United States saw a great variety of buildings designed and constructed to look like Spanish Colonial buildings of the 17th and 18th centuries. Buildings from the late 1800s to 1915 are often labelled as Mission Revival architecture. Buildings from 1915 and after, many inspired by the Panama-California Exposition of 1915, are often labelled Spanish Colonial Revival. The term Spanish Eclectic is used to describe many of these buildings because they include a variety of features which can be traced to multiple sources.

Building types:

Train depots

Gas/Service Stations

Other commercial buildings

Residential buildings

Museums

Features/elements/characteristics:

Mission style parapet or gable

Solomonic columns

Round arches

Spanish tile roofs

Wrought iron grilles or balconies

Bell towers

Carved decorations

Tile decorations

Arcades

Baroque or Spanish Colonial Cathedral

Mexico City Cathedral. Photo by Sam Beebe. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. 1573-1813.

Mission Architecture

Alamo. Photo by Daniel Schwen. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Alamo Mission or Mision San Antonio de Valero. c. 1744-1793.

National Examples of Revival Buildings

Kansas Building. Public Domain. Resized and reformatted as a jpeg.

Kansas Building. 1915.

Built for the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. The buildings for the exposition were designed by Carleton Monroe Winslow, Bertram Goodhue, and Clarence Stein.

Santa Barbara Natural History Museum. Photo by Vahe Martirosyan.
CC BY-SA 2.0. Resized.

Santa Barbara Natural History Museum. 1923.

In Santa Barbara, California. Designed by Carleton Monroe Winslow.

Magnolia Gas Station. Photo by Cliff on Flickr.
CC BY-SA 2.0. Resized.

Magnolia Gas Station. 1920s.

In Little Rock, Arkansas.

Examples in Kansas and Nebraska.

Burlington Depot in Hastings, NE. Photo by Christopher Goedert. 2020.

Burlington Depot. 1902.

Burlington Depot in Hastings, NE. Photo by Christopher Goedert. 2020.

In Hastings, Nebraska. Designed by Thomas R. Kimball.

Stitt Building in Hastings, NE. Photo by Christopher Goedert. 2020.

Stitt Building. 1926.

In Hastings, Nebraska.

Blair Theater. Photo by Christopher Goedert. 2017.

Blair Theater. 1928.

In Belleville, Kansas.

Bonecutter-Dimond Chevrolet Filling Station.
Photo by Christopher Goedert. 2016.

Bonecutter-Dimond Chevrolet Filling Station. 1930.

Bonecutter-Dimond Chevrolet Filling Station.
Photo by Christopher Goedert. 2017.

Bonecutter-Dimond Chevrolet Filling Station.
Photo by Christopher Goedert. 2017.

Bonecutter-Dimond Chevrolet Filling Station.
Photo by Christopher Goedert. 2020.

In Smith Center, Kansas.

Sources for more information:

Article on Spanish Colonial Revival architecture from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission web page.

Article on the 1915 Panama-California Exposition by Jonathan Bechtol on a Cal State San Marcos web page. The page includes short videos from the exposition.

Gellner, Arrol. Red Tile Style: America's Spanish Revival Architecture. New York: Viking Studio, 2002. This is a thorough survey of Spanish Revival architecture with hundreds of photographs by Douglas Keister.

McAlester, Virginia Savage. A Field Guide to American Houses: The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America’s Domestic Architecture. Revised edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. This is the second edition of a classic book on American architecture with hundreds of drawings and photographs.

Winslow, Carleton Monroe, et al. THE ARCHITECTURE AND THE GARDENS of the SAN DIEGO EXPOSITION. San Francisco: Paul Elder and Company: 1916.