Window | Description & Facts (2024)

window, opening in the wall of a building for the admission of light and air; windows are often arranged also for the purposes of architectural decoration. Since early times, the openings have been filled with stone, wooden, or iron grilles or lights (panes) of glass or other translucent material such as mica or, in the Far East, paper. Modern windows are almost always filled with glass, though a few use transparent plastic. A window in a vertically sliding frame is called a sash window: a single-hung sash has only one half that moves; in a double-hung sash, both parts slide. A casem*nt window opens sideward on a hinge.

Windows are a very ancient invention, probably coincident with the development of fixed and enclosed houses. Representations of windows occur in early wall paintings in Egypt and in reliefs from Assyria. The Egyptian examples show openings in house walls covered with mattings, like the doors themselves. Assyrian windows were almost always wider than they were high and were subdivided by little colonnettes.

The devotion of the ancient Greeks to the house built around a court led to an almost total disappearance of windows in their architecture, since each room was lighted by a door to the central, colonnaded court. In Roman imperial times, however, the glazed window first definitely appeared, and fragments of glass in a bronze frame have been found in Pompeii, among other sites. It is obvious, moreover, that the great windows in the baths of Rome must have been enclosed in some way, in order to retain the heat. The general hypothesis is that these great clerestory openings were filled, originally, with frames of bronze which subdivided the whole into small areas, each of which held a pane of glass. In general, however, glazed windows were very exceptional in Roman times; marble, mica, and shell were most often used to fill window openings.

In Early Christian and Byzantine churches, windows became more numerous and were often glazed. Thus, it is known that the windows of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople (begun 532) were filled with pierced marble frames enclosing panes of glass. Islamic mosque builders copied this Byzantine technique of small pieces of glass inserted in a masonry frame and, by substituting cement for marble in the frame, obtained great freedom and richness in pattern design, so that with the use of different colours of glass in the small openings, brilliant effects were produced. Islamic builders of Egypt and Syria also developed an extremely rich type of domestic window that was usually unglazed. This consisted of a projecting, bracketed, framework of wood with its sides entirely filled by intricate grillwork formed by carved, turned, wooden spindles. It was not until the 12th and 13th centuries in western and northern Europe, however, that this stained-glass technique reached its most distinguished development. Instead of marble or cement, European glaziers used strips of lead, called cames, to separate the different pieces of coloured glass. Because of the softness of the lead, the cames could be shaped into any pattern. Thus, it was possible to adorn the windows of Gothic cathedrals with detailed pictorial designs. Moreover, with the introduction of stone mullions (slender vertical supports that form a division between glazed areas) and a system of tracery in about 1250, church windows became increasingly larger.

The arch-shaped window, which during the Byzantine period had superseded the segmental and square-headed window common in Roman work, became the governing form for important masonry buildings in medieval European and Islamic architecture. Domestic windows were most often rectangular and were closed with shutters, lattices, or grilles. During the late Middle Ages in Europe, however, the growing cheapness of glass and the development of the fixed glazed sash resulted in a gradual increase in the number of glazed windows in domestic and civil buildings. Because the sashes were small, the desire for light and air was satisfied by the use of mullions and transoms (horizontal supports) to subdivide large window openings. Initially, sashes were set only in the upper portion of the window, with the lower portion still closed with shutters. By the 15th century, however, solid shutters were being replaced by hinged glazed sashes, or casem*nts, which led to the standard use of rectangular openings in all buildings because of the ease with which the casem*nts could be framed in them.

During the High Renaissance in Italy and France, window openings conformed to classical proportions and were divided by a single mullion and a single transom forming a cross. They were frequently decorated with an architrave, and a cornice and pediment. Pilasters and columns were often added at the sides. During the Baroque period these decorative window enclosures were often elaborately scrolled and ornamented with fantastic cartouches, consoles, masks, and human figures.

In the later Renaissance the French produced and developed the type of large casem*nt window that has remained the accepted form on the continent of Europe ever since—popularly known as the French window. In this type of casem*nt window the opening is long—frequently extending down to the floor—and comparatively narrow and is glazed with two large, hinged, wooden sashes, arranged to swing in, each subdivided into three or more lights of comparatively large size. An iron railing or stone balustrade is built on the outside for safety. In the 17th century the vertical sliding sash window and the double-hung window were developed in England, becoming standard in that country and in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries.

In modern architecture the impact of industry on many processes of contemporary building has led to the use of metal frames for windows in most residential construction, and it has made possible the use of ever greater areas of glass. Windows are often wall to wall and floor to ceiling, and frequently when the building is air-conditioned they no longer have opening sash members. Shop windows and other similar large glass areas are, in fact, both wall and window, and to withstand wind pressures they must be of a prescribed thickness per square foot of exposed area. Skyscrapers have been covered completely in glass; though at first these window sidings were simply “curtain walls” or unopenable windows, subsequent energy-saving requirements made necessary the use of openable and often tinted sections of these glass walls. Modern windows are often made with double or triple thicknesses of glass separated by air space for insulation; these are called double- or triple-glazed windows.