The building, begun in 1616 by the architect Inigo Jones, who brought the classical style reinvented by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio to England, was much admired and widely copied, and it directly influenced the design of the 18th century White House.
Given prestige by this important setting, the classical style rapidly became an "official" one for many of the new public buildings demanded by the expanding cities and their national governments.
It is a block of granite, 36 feet by 37 feet, built in the classical style, with six Doric columns on each side.
In 2014, the comic "The Classical Style" by Stucky and librettist Jeremy Denk became the first opera to premiere at the Ojai Festival.
These rhapsodic parts are wonderful, but I'll admit that my favorite, life-changing parts of "The Classical Style" are the blow-by-blow accounts of great passages of music in the wonkiest of terms.
The custom house's design by Alexander Jackson Davis, an influential architect in the classical style, was the winning entry in an 1833 competition.
Schumann left its un-American monument in 1914, and in 1915 a bank remodeled the exterior in the classical style, followed by another reconstruction in 1939 for James Robinson, the silver firm.
The first of this weekend's concerts, by Boston Hausmusik on Saturday, touches on that theme by exploring the Italian roots of the Classical style (which we usually think of as Viennese).
It was built in the Classical style popularised by the Italian architect Palladio with an Ionic portico, four columns wide by three deep, flanking the entrance.
By the Modernistic 1930's, large-scale government buildings in the classical style seemed embarrassing or even irrelevant.
