Mayan Revival is a modernarchitectural style popular in the Americas during the 1920s and 1930s[1] that drew inspiration from the architecture and iconography ofpre-ColumbianMesoamerican cultures.
Though the name of the style refers specifically to theMaya civilization of southern Mexico andCentral America, in practice, this revivalist style frequently blendsMaya architectural and artistic motifs "playful pilferings of the architectural and decorative elements"[2] with those of otherMesoamerican cultures, particularly the Central MexicanAztec architecture styling from the pre-contact period as exhibited by theMexica and otherNahua groups. Although there were mutual influences between these original and otherwise distinct and richly varied pre-Columbian artistic traditions, thesyncretism of these modern reproductions is often an ahistorical one.
Historian Marjorie Ingle traces the history of this style to thePan American Union Building byPaul Philippe Cret which incorporates numerous motifs drawn from the indigenous traditions of the Americas.[3] Maya and Mexica elements in the Pan American Union Building include the floor mosaics surrounding a central fountain (most of the motifs are copied directly from sculpture atCopan) and figures on lights flanking the entrance to the building. The building's Art Museum of the Americas contains numerousstoneware architectural details that are copied fromMaya andMexica art.
Several prominent architects worked in this style, includingFrank Lloyd Wright. Wright'sHollyhock House on Olive Hill inLos Angeles copied the shape of temples fromPalenque, and theImperial Hotel inTokyo was in the shape of aMesoamerican pyramid. HisEnnis House,Millard House (La Miniatura),Storer House, andFreeman House in Los Angeles are built in his concretetextile block system, with basreliefs and modular unit construction evoking the geometric patterning on the façades ofUxmal buildings.
Wright's son, landscape architect and architectLloyd Wright, served as construction manager for three of his father's four textile block houses. He independently designed the Henry Bollman house in 1922 in the Sunset Square neighborhood inHollywood and the iconic Mayan-modernistJohn Sowden House in 1926 in theLos Feliz District ofHollywood.
Wright's discipleArata Endo constructed theKōshien Hotel in the 1930s, heavily influenced by the architecture of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.
Commissioned in 1953, the massive pyramid of theBeth Sholom Synagogue with its geometric roof detailing is perhaps the most direct Wright evocation of Maya form.
Likely the most publicized example of Mayan Revival wasRobert Stacy-Judd'sAztec Hotel of 1924–1925. Its façade, interiors and furniture incorporated abstract patterns inspired by theMaya script withArt Deco influences, and it was built on the originalU.S. Route 66 inMonrovia, California.
Stacy-Judd was directly influenced byJohn Lloyd Stephens writings, and perhaps even more so by the illustrations byFrederick Catherwood as presented in their bookIncidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan,[4] a work that introduced many to the wondrous ruins of Central America. In it Stacy-Judd explains the choice of the name of the hotel: "When the hotel project was first announced, the word Maya was unknown to the layman. The subject of Maya culture was only of archaeological importance, a, at that, concerned but a few exponents. As a word Aztec was fairly well known, I baptized the hotel with that name, although all the decorative motifs are Maya."[5] Although the buildings use of reinforced concrete to create the intricate designs on the exterior one opinionated observer wrote: "The bizarre Aztec forms may create the atmosphere desired, and will serve the legitimate publicity interests of the establishment, but it would be deplorable if an 'Aztec Movement' set in and the style copyists were diverted from noble examples to the forms of a semi-barbaric people."[6]
Other prominent buildings in this style include:
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