Editing Greek Revival Architecture (section)

== William Strickland ==

William Strickland emerged as Philadelphia's master of Greek Revival, designing buildings that established the style's authority and demonstrated its adaptability to various functions. The Second Bank of the United States, completed in 1824, presented a Doric temple front modeled on the Parthenon—the most direct quotation of ancient Greece yet attempted in American architecture. The bank's marble columns, precise entablature, and temple form created a monument appropriate to the institution's national importance, suggesting that American finance rested on foundations as solid as Athenian democracy.<ref name="tatum"/>

Strickland continued with the Philadelphia Merchants' Exchange (1832-34), adapting Greek forms to commercial purposes. The building's most distinctive feature—a curved Corinthian colonnade based on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens—demonstrated that Greek Revival could achieve drama as well as solemnity. The Exchange's lantern and dome, rising behind the colonnade, showed creative adaptation rather than archaeological copying. Strickland's influence extended beyond Philadelphia through his design of the Tennessee State Capitol and through students who carried Greek Revival across the expanding nation.<ref name="hamlin"/>