Gothic architecture was a style used mostly for decoration, especially in Cathedrals. The Gothic architecture that grew in the United States was the same-copied styles of Gothic England. A great number of architectural styles and inspirations of future architects got its start from the Gothic architecture revival. The Gothic architectural style in England was seen as strictly ecclesiastical#. Therefore because of this categorization, Gothic architecture was used in the construction of Roman Catholic Cathedrals. English architects began to refashion the design of the neoclassical buildings of the Federal and colonial eras when the Gothic revival began in England. These buildings were bright but boxy and compared to new Gothic ideals, seemed very uninteresting#. The new Gothic structures were to be the opposite: narrower, darker, and more bewildering to those used to classical styles, and were reverberate the enigmatic feel of the Medieval Period. Eventually, but not without struggle, these churches were built in the countryside, cities, and towns. Repeatedly country churches possessed simplified or modified Gothic detailing. When England reintroduced gothic architecture to housing, the United States slowly followed suit and later built hospitals and prisons in the Gothic architectural style, because of the symbolism it held#. .
However, the United States did not just simply follow the trends of English Architecture, the transition to Gothic architecture proceed with some difficulty. There were a few important factors that inhibited the growth of the Gothic styles in the United States. Gothic architecture was foreign to most seventeenth century Americans. Being associated with the Roman Catholic Church inhibited the revival of Gothic architecture in the United States, when it was already speedily growing in England#. This was certainly a factor in the northern United States. People immigrated to America to escape the authority of the Roman Catholic church and therefore did not embrace Gothic architecture and these inhibitions lasted throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.