Editing Greek Revival architecture (section)

===Great Britain===
[[File:British Museum from NE 2.JPG|thumb|Façade of the [[British Museum]] in [[London]]]]
Following the travels to Greece, [[Nicholas Revett]], a Suffolk architect, and the better remembered [[James "Athenian" Stuart]] in the early 1750s, intellectual curiosity quickly led to a desire among the elite to emulate the style. Stuart was commissioned after his return from Greece by [[George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton|George Lyttelton]] to produce the first Greek building in England, the garden temple at [[Hagley Hall]] (1758–59).<ref>But [[Giles Worsley]] detects the first Grecian-influenced architectural element in the windows of [[Nuneham House]] from 1756; see [[Giles Worsley]], "The First Greek Revival Architecture", ''The Burlington Magazine'', Vol. 127, No. 985 (April 1985), pp. 226–229.</ref> A number of British architects in the second half of the century took up the expressive challenge of the Doric from their aristocratic patrons, including [[Benjamin Henry Latrobe]] (notably at [[Hammerwood Park]] and [[Ashdown House, East Sussex|Ashdown House]]) and Sir [[John Soane]], but it remained the private enthusiasm of connoisseurs up to the first decade of the 19th century.

An early example of Greek Doric architecture married with a more [[Palladian architecture|Palladian]] interior, is the façade of the Revett-designed rural church of [[Ayot St Lawrence]] in Hertfordshire, commissioned in 1775 by [[Sir Lyonel Lyde, 1st Baronet]] of the eponymous manor. The Doric columns of this church, with their "pie-crust crimped" details, are taken from drawings that Revett made of the [[Temple of the Delians|Temple of Apollo]] on the Cycladic island of [[Delos]], in the collection of books that he (and Stuart in some cases) produced, largely funded by special subscription by the [[Society of Dilettanti]]. See more in [[Terry Friedman]]'s book ''The Georgian Parish Church'', Spire Books, 2004.

Seen in its wider social context, Greek Revival architecture sounded a new note of sobriety and restraint in public buildings in Britain around 1800 as an assertion of [[nationalism]] attendant on the [[Act of Union 1800|Act of Union]], the [[Napoleonic Wars]], and the clamour for political reform. [[William Wilkins (architect)|William Wilkins]]'s winning design for the public competition for [[Downing College, Cambridge]] announced the Greek style was to become a dominant idiom in architecture, especially for public buildings of this sort. Wilkins and [[Robert Smirke (architect)|Robert Smirke]] went on to build some of the most important buildings of the era, including the [[Royal Opera House|Theatre Royal]], [[Covent Garden]] (1808–1809), the [[General Post Office, London|General Post Office]] (1824–1829) and the [[British Museum]] (1823–1848), the Wilkins Building of [[University College London]] (1826–1830), and the [[National Gallery]] (1832–1838).

One of the greatest British proponents of the style was [[Decimus Burton]].

In [[London]], twenty three Greek Revival [[Commissioners' church]]es were built between 1817 and 1829, the most notable being [[St Pancras New Church|St.Pancras church]] by [[William Inwood|William]] and [[Henry William Inwood]]. In Scotland the style was avidly adopted by [[William Henry Playfair]], [[Thomas Hamilton (architect)|Thomas Hamilton]] and [[Charles Robert Cockerell]], who severally and jointly contributed to the massive expansion of [[Edinburgh]]'s [[New Town, Edinburgh|New Town]], including the [[Calton Hill]] development and the [[Moray Estate]]. Such was the popularity of the Doric in Edinburgh that the city now enjoys a striking visual uniformity, and as such is sometimes whimsically referred to as "the Athens of the North".

Within [[Regency architecture]] the style already competed with [[Gothic Revival]] and the continuation of the less stringent Palladian and Neoclassical styles of [[Georgian architecture]], the other two remaining more common for houses, both in towns and [[English country house]]s. If it is tempting to see the Greek Revival as the expression of Regency authoritarianism, then the changing conditions of life in Britain made Doric the loser of the [[Battle of the Styles]], dramatically symbolized by the selection of [[Charles Barry]]'s Gothic design for the [[Palace of Westminster]] in 1836. Nevertheless, Greek continued to be in favour in Scotland well into the 1870s in the singular figure of [[Alexander Thomson]], known as Greek Thomson.