42 What is Architectural History?
in the manner of a historical style – classical, byzantine,
baroque and so forth – the historian’s question of how to
defi ne a style assumed a greater importance for the theory
and practice of architects. ‘In welchem Style sollen wir
bauen?’ asked Heinrich Hübsch in 1828: ‘In what style
should we build?’ Hübsch’s essay provoked a debate on the
theme among German architects and academics of his time,
during an era in which, to quote one of his respondents,
architects could be found working ‘in every style or none’.^2
A more pragmatic discussion on this same set of issues
could be found centred on Cambridge around this time –
echoing countless others elsewhere. Members of the Cam-
bridge Camden Society (established 1839) held strong views
on the appropriate style for Anglican churches in Britain’s
new colonies and territories. Writing in their journal Eccle-
siologist, George Selwyn, Bishop of New Zealand, in 1841
advised that ‘Norman is the style adopted; because as the
work will chiefl y be done by native artists, it seems natural
to teach them fi rst that style which fi rst appeared in our own
country.’^3 For the nineteenth century, when stylistic decisions
no longer seemed given, much thought was dedicated to
determining the most appropriate appearance for a building
in any specifi c setting. Where German architects appreciated
the problem faced by their nineteenth-century contempo-
raries as concerning the choice of style among a relatively
free range of options, the Cambridge Camden Society saw a
more natural logic to the selection of a style appropriate to
a place relative to the pace of its religious, artistic and techni-
cal progress.
The histories of architectural style that appeared in the
nineteenth century thus contended with two kinds of prob-
lems. How, on one hand, could the past be known and
represented? And how, on the other, could those architec-
tural styles embodying recognizable values be taken up or set
aside within a long process of cultural assessment and assimi-
lation? As we shall shortly see, stylistic histories of architec-
ture contributed to the nineteenth century’s larger cultural
projects of knowing the world in its entirety (witness the
world exhibitions, encyclopedias) and constructing taxono-
mies of all things, from insects, fi sh and the chemical elements
to culture and its multiform expressions.^4 Likewise, questions