James Maclaren (1829-1893) was one of the leading architects of Victorian Dundee.
His work includes such well-known buildings as:
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Cox's Stack
Grove Academy
the Alliance Trust HQ
the Orchar Gallery and
Ashludie Hospital
This exhibition has been curated to mark the donation to the School of Architecture of
Maclaren's Soane Medallion (one of the most prestigious prizes of its day) by his great great
grand-daughter.
Born in Dundee, Maclaren's work as an apprentice to David Smith earned him a position with
David Bryce's office in Edinburgh. At the age of 19 he won the Soane Medallion, which
earned him the status to set up his own practice in Dundee. He soon won influential patrons
such as the Cox family, and became architect to the Panmure Estates, which included
Barnhill, Monifieth and Carnoustie.
Maclaren's two sons and nephew all followed him into the business, and after his death his
practice was continued, first by his sons and then by other partners, until 1972.
From the Institute of Architects
James Maclaren was born in Dundee on 11 March 1829, the son of William Maclaren and
Mary Anderson, and was christened on 22 March. He was articled to David Smith who had
succeeded to James Black's practice, but Smith died in 1845 or early 1846 and he completed
his apprenticeship with ____ Johnstone who was a land surveyor rather than an architect.
Nevertheless he managed to secure a place in the office of David Bryce in Edinburgh from
which he won the Soane Medallion in 1848 at the early age of nineteen, the subject being a
vast complex of public baths. In 1850 he returned to Dundee to commence practice with his
brother William, perhaps at his father's wish. William had been born on 12 May 1831
(christened 22 May); nothing is known of his training. The partnership was very brief: it is
not yet known whether William died or followed another profession. In that same year James
won the competition for the Peel Monument at Forfar and soon thereafter he was appointed
architect and surveyor to the Panmure estate, perhaps through the influence of Bryce: this
gave him control over the feuing of Barnhill, Monifieth and Carnoustie, and brought him
many domestic commissions, enabling him to marry Jemima Margaret Miller c.1853. By
1854 at the latest he had secured the patronage of the Cox family, and in that same year,
although only twenty-five, he was the founder-editor of the Scottish architectural journal,
'The Building Chronicle' which was published in Edinburgh and was an important forum for
architectural debate until it ceased publication in 1857.
Initially Maclaren's public and commercial architecture derived from Bryce, Graeco-Roman
neo-classical for monuments and public buildings and astylar Renaissance for commercial
buildings. Influenced perhaps by the stylistic debate in his Building Chronicle he built no
baronial houses. The earliest were neo-Jacobean of the Burn school sometimes with
curvilinear gables, but from the early 1860s his houses adopted a more freestyle treatment
with neo-Jacobean, Second Empire and sometimes completely non-period elements, an idiom
also adopted by his nephew and pupil David Maclaren who commenced practice on his own
account with James Ireland in 1872. From the later 1870s James Maclaren similarly adopted
a more free interpretation of Renaissance for his commercial buildings, a development which
may have been associated with George Shaw Aitken, who had been taken on as his chief
assistant in 1871 and became his partner in 1873, the practice now assuming the name of
Maclaren & Aitken, the office then being within the building Maclaren had built for himself
at 10 Bank Street.
Aitken had been born in Edinburgh in 1836, the son of Robert Shaw Aitken, a silversmith in
Bread Street, and had been articled to John Dick Peddie c. 1850, remaining with him as an
assistant until he joined Maclaren. The partnership was briefly very successful but ended
soon after March 1879 as a result of disagreements and litigation over the specification of
stone from the Ferrybank estate near Cupar, which had been acquired by Maclaren. It was a
fine white sandstone but proved unreliable on exposure to the weather. Aitken thereafter
practised on his own account in Dundee for a year or two before moving back to Edinburgh
and Maclaren continued on his own with his eldest son George Gordon Maclaren, who had
been born 26 June 1855 and apprenticed to his father.
The Ferrybank stone affair adversely affected the practice and George had neither London
nor Edinburgh experience. In the early 1880s the patronage of Maclaren's most important
client, the Cox family, gradually slipped away to the much more up-to-date John Murray
Robertson whose inspiration was partly American, and although the firm still had a very
substantial domestic practice from the Panmure estate feus, it had lost the commanding
position it had previously enjoyed. Nevertheless Maclaren's position as father of the
profession in Dundee was still very much evident when he called a meeting in June 1884 to
devise a uniform set of rules for the measurement of the work of the various trades. His
efforts led to the Dundee Mode of Measurement in 1898 and ultimately the Scottish National
Building Code of 1915. At the June 1884 meeting Charles Ower observed that it was the first
time the architects in the area had met professionally and proposed an organisation on the
lines of London's Architectural Association. In the same month the Dundee Institute of
Architecture Science and Art was founded with James Maclaren as its first president, 188486.
James Maclaren died at Ferrybank on 16 June 1893. Prior to his death he appears to have
recognised that the practice was becoming out of date as a younger son, John Turnbull
Maclaren, born 1864, was sent to an unspecified office in the United States to gain
experience, returning on his father's death as a partner. It appears that John Turnbull
Maclaren practised briefly as 'J T Maclaren & Son' in the months just after his father's death.
He exhibited a design for some work on Lyndhurst at the Glasgow Institute of Architects in
1893 under this name.
George Gordon Maclaren who had set up house in Invermark Terrace, Barnhill, retained his
father's management of the Panmure feus for the Dalhousie Trustees and concentrated his
interests in Broughty Ferry where he had become a parish councillor and a burgh
commissioner, successfully promoting a scheme for a municipal gasworks, though not the
scheme for municipal swimming baths and private baths of which he was the principal
advocate. Stylistically his work was a pale version of his father's. In 1896 he suffered a heart
attack and from the summer of 1898 he was confined to his house. He died on 31 June 1899,
survived by a widow Isabella Stenhouse and a young family. He left a moveable estate of
£1,633 15s 10d.
John Turnbull Maclaren continued the practice as sole practitioner into the early years to the
twentieth century but his American experience was not significantly reflected in the firm's
buildings. The more ambitious designs of the later 1890s and early 1900s were known to be
the work of Andrew Graham Patrick, born in Perth in 1864. He had been recruited as leading
draughtsman from David Smart's office in Perth in 1894. He had attracted the Maclarens'
notice by winning an open competition at Port Townsend, USA, but his fiancé had declined
to emigrate with him. In 1908 Maclaren took Charles Geddes Soutar into partnership, a move
which took the practice back into the premier league, the office now being at 10 Reform
Street. Soutar was born in 1878 of a Forfar family and apprenticed to Charles & Leslie Ower,
1892-98, latterly working under William Gillespie Lamond by whom he was profoundly
influenced. During this period he took classes at Dundee Technical College, latterly under
Patrick Hill Thoms who also had a considerable influence on the development of his
domestic style. In 1899 following the break-up of the Charles & Leslie Ower partnership he
moved to the office of John Murray Robertson to widen his experience, but returned to Leslie
Ower in 1900, remaining with him as assistant until 1902, from which year he practised on
his own account with some success. He remained on good terms with Charles Ower, for
whom he designed Aystree in 1903. In 1908 he merged his practice with Maclaren's as
Maclaren Sons & Soutar. With his white or cream suits and stylish boating hats he brought a
breath of fresh air to the practice, which had remained somewhat staid despite the recruitment
of Patrick: a staff photograph of that time, now in the RCAHMS, well illustrates the
difference between the partners, Maclaren being a portly figure in a sombre city suit.
In 1920 the practice merged with J & F Salmond, a firm of civil engineers, land surveyors
and architects based at 6 High Street, the firm now becoming Maclaren Soutar Salmond with
John Turnbull Maclaren, Charles Geddes Soutar and William Salmond as partners. In 1921
Maclaren retired and Patrick was taken into partnership, but the name of the firm remained
unchanged, the merged firms now moving to 15 South Tay Street.
Maclaren enjoyed a very long retirement, dying at the house he had built for himself,
Whinsby, Abercromby Street, Barnhill on 20 March 1948. Although described in his RIAS
obituary as 'always easily approachable,' in later years at least he was remembered by the
Patrick family as somewhat humourless. He left the then very substantial sum of £75,123,
and endowed an RIAS student scholarship.
The Salmond practice had a long if architecturally undistinguished history. It was founded in
1826 by James Sime, Schoolmaster of Strathmartine, as surveyor. In 1853 James Salmond
was taken into partnership as Sime & Salmond, but in 1855 Sime died. James was
subsequently joined by his brother Frank who had been trained as a civil engineer with the
Caledonian Railway under its engineer-in-chief George Graham, becoming a partner under
the style of J & F Salmond in 1873. James Salmond retired in 1904 and died in 1905, at
which date Frank's son William joined the firm as a partner. Frank Salmond died in 1911
leaving William as sole partner. Their architectural practice prior to the merger had consisted
almost exclusively of farm steadings, farmhouses, and farm cottages.
Until 1922 none of the partners had sought membership of the RIBA, but in that year Soutar
was admitted Fellow, his proposers being Alexander Nisbet Paterson, William Brown Whitie
and Patrick Hill Thoms: Paterson and Whitie he knew through the RIAS of which he was an
active member and was to become president in 1936-38.
In 1929 Maclaren Soutar Salmond took over the practice of David Wishart Galloway who
had been killed in a motorcycle accident in that year, and for rather more than a decade
maintained his office at 2 Market Street, Brechin as a branch, but this was de-merged to A B
Roger as an independent practice in the 1940s.
Around 1933 the practice was joined as prospective partner by Thomas Steuart Fothringham,
born 5 April 1907, who had been educated at Wellington and had read architecture at Trinity
College Cambridge with Ian Gordon Lindsay and R A C Simpson. In the event his
association with the practice was relatively short as he inherited the Pourie and Fothringham
estates in April 1936 and did not return to the practice after serving as a Major in the Black
Watch during the Second World War.
Charles Soutar's interest in the practice did not survive the Second World War either, and
without him it went into a gradual decline. Although his practice was not particularly large,
Soutar was a prominent figure in Scottish architecture between the wars. He was an
outstanding Arts and Crafts architect with wide artistic interests and was remembered by his
friends as generous in spirit and of infinite human kindness. Along with his client David
Band of Band & Whyte and the schools inspector John Taylor Ewen, he was one of the
principal patrons of the Arbroath artist James Waterston Herald. Although a very able
designer and a fine draughtsman and watercolourist Patrick was content to take a secondary
role in charge of the drawing office, producing beautiful presentation drawings for clients.
Soutar became a very active member of the RIBA, and was elected to the Council for 192324, 1925-26 and 1935-44, serving as Vice-President from 1939 to 1944. Thomas Forbes
Maclennan recalled that at these meetings he remained informal in style to the end, preferring
plus fours to a city suit. Soutar moved house to Wheatfields, Forfar in 1941. In 1946 he began
to suffer from Alzheimer's disease and had to withdraw from the practice completely. He died
on 14 November 1952.
Soutar's architect son David did not remain with the practice, preferring to take a civil service
job in Aberdeen. The practice was continued by the ageing Andrew Patrick and by William
Salmond whose expertise lay chiefly in valuation. The latter was an old-fashioned gentleman
of impressive presence, very tall, infinitely courteous and patient, qualities which served him
well as the long-serving chairman of the Dundee rent tribunal. After Andrew Patrick died in
1951 the architectural work was in the hands of the practice's middle-aged chief assistant
Stuart O Barron who had become a partner on Soutar's retirement. Salmond remained senior
partner until his death on 2 March 1956, Barron thereafter becoming sole partner. He took Ian
Imlach into partnership c.1970, but it was too late to save the practice, which closed in 1972.
At the date of closure very few of the practice drawings had survived. A card index to them
compiled by Soutar during the First World War survives at RCAHMS, but gives no
indication of what was built anew, what was altered or which were competition drawings that
may not have been successful.
Private and Business Addresses
The following private or business addresses are associated with this architect:
Address
Ferrybank, Cupar, Fife, Scotland
Type
Business
Date from Date to Notes
1893
24, Meadowside, Dundee, Scotland Business(?)
1865 *
10, Bank Street, Dundee, Scotland
Business
1868
12, Bank Street, Dundee, Scotland
Business
1869
24, Bank Street, Dundee, Scotland
Business
After 1871
31, Reform Street, Dundee, Scotland Business
c. 1953
* earliest date known from documented sources.