Mayan Revival

The Mayan Revival is a modern architectural movement, primarily of the 1920s and 1930s, that drew inspiration from the architecture and iconography of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures.

Though the term refers specifically to the Maya civilization of southern Mexico and Central America, in practice this revivalist style frequently blends Maya architectural and artistic motifs, a "playful pilferings of the architectural and decorative elements" with those of other Mesoamerican cultures, particularly the Central Mexican Aztec architecture styling from the pre-contact period as exhibited by the Mexica and other Nahua groups. Although there were mutual influences between these original and otherwise distinct and richly varied pre-Columbian artistic traditions, the syncretism of these modern reproductions is often an ahistorical one.

Historian Marjorie Ingle traces the history of this style to the Pan American Union Building by Paul Philippe Cret, (1908–10) which incorporates numerous motifs drawn from the indigenous traditions of the Americas. Specifically 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 at Copan) and figures on lights flanking the entrance to the building. Also, in the Pan American Union Building's Art Museum of the Americas there are numerous stoneware architectural details that are copied from Maya and Mexica art.

The largest numbers of Mayan-revival buildings are found in Detroit, Michigan and Mérida, Mexico but such architecture can also be found on a smaller scale in New York, Houston, Los Angeles, Acapulco, Mexico City, Cancun and Tokyo.

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