| Architect Details |
J & W Smith & James Duncan 1875; James Duncan & Son 1890s; A Marshall Mackenzie & Son and Alexander George Robertson Mackenzie 1914.
John Smith was born in 1781, the son of William Smith, architect and builder, Aberdeen. Of the father little is recorded except that he was known as 'Sink'em'; that he had his workshop in Longacre; that he designed and built Gilcomston Chapel of Ease and the houses at the bottom end of Marischal Street, all in Aberdeen. It is not known exactly when he died but it appears to have been between February and November 1812. The son is said to have been sent at an early age to the office of James Playfair (or perhaps he assisted him in some junior capacity at the building of Cairness, Aberdeenshire, but neither the Playfair diary nor the Gordon minutes provide any evidence of it). He cannot have worked long for Playfair who died in 1794, and it is not known which London office he was in thereafter. Around 1804 he returned to Aberdeen with an extensive collection of plans and was nearly lost as his ship entered Aberdeen Harbour in a storm. Circa 1805 Smith designed his first major work in Aberdeen, a large house on Union Street for Patrick Milne of Crimonmogate. Two years later Smith succeeded Thomas Fletcher as engineer to the King Street, Union Street and Union Terrace works and laid out St Nicholas Street to connect it with George Street. By 1860 he had produced the first accurate survey of Aberdeen which was published in the same year. Thereafter he built up the largest business both in architecture and building and cabinet-making in the north-east, with headquarters at his house at 142 King Street, Aberdeen. He was associated with Thomas Telford on the harbour improvements planned from 1824 and was formally appointed superintendent of work for the City of Aberdeen in that same year. In that capacity he attended to such matters as street lighting, cleansing and executions (which are said to have brought gloom to the Smith household for weeks). He was also agent for the Imperial Insurance Company. John died at Rosebank Hardgate, a pleasant 18th-century mansion with a large garden which he inherited from his father-in-law. He had married Margaret Grant, only child of Colonel George Grant of Auchterblair in Banffshire, a marriage which brought useful landed connections, their first home being at Longacre adjacent to the elder William Smith's house and builder's yard. Near contemporary accounts record that she was tall good-looking and aristocratic in demeanour which a family portrait appears to confirm. Smith himself was 'a shy retiring man as well as an able and diligent official'. Most members of their family died early but his son William joined the practice after graduating MA at Marischal College and subsequently sought experience in London with Thomas Leverton Donaldson. He appears to have returned to Aberdeen by 1842 and was made a partner in 1845. His eldest daughter Margaret Grant Smith (died 1857) married Alexander Gibb, the civil engineer, on 17 March 1831. Some biographical details will be found in Lettice Milne Rae's 'Story of the Gibbs.' John Smith's work was in his early years almost exclusively refined neo-Greek, but from 1820 onwards most of his churches and large houses were Tudor Gothic, the latter sometimes with Scottish features as at Balmoral from about 1830. These were closely modelled on William Burn's style with which he had become acquainted at Robert Gordon's, Fintray and Auchmacoy. Brief biographical notices with short lists of principal works compiled by John's son William appeared in the Aberdeen Journal' in July 1852, in 'The Builder' and in the 'Architectural Publication Society's Dictionary'. A great many informative references to his career in Aberdeen will be found in G M Frazer's biography of Archibald Simpson (1790-1847), which appeared as a serial in the 'Aberdeen Weekly Journal' of 1918. A collected copy of these articles is available at Aberdeen Public Library. A fragmentary list of plans and some of his accounts (1807-1832) are in the National Monuments Record of Scotland.
James Duncan was born in 1828, the son of George Duncan, a Turriff mason. Nothing is known of his professional training, but he commenced practice in Turriff by at least 1862 when he designed Cuminestown School. He quickly acquired a well-deserved reputation for the planning and construction of farm steadings and had more than forty estates, great and small, as clients. In 1887 his son William Liddle Duncan, born 1870, became an apprentice; he was taken into partnership in 1897. He was admitted LRIBA in the mass intake of 20 July 1911, his proposers including Arthur Clyne and Arthur Hay Livingstone Mackinnon. James Duncan died on 6 March 1907 and was buried in St Congan's Churchyard; William Liddle Duncan continued the practice under his own name thereafter. William Liddle Duncan was born in 1870, son of James Duncan, architect of Turriff. He took classes at Edinburgh School of Art in 1885-87 before being apprenticed to his father and completing his studies at Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen. On completing his apprenticeship he moved briefly to Edinburgh 'to complete his architectural training' and then returned to his father's office as assistant. He was finally taken into partnership in 1897, later continuing the practice on his own account after his father's death in 1907. He was awarded the bronze medal by the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland for designs for farm buildings in their competition of 1908. Duncan was admitted LRIBA in the mass intake of 20 July 1911, his proposers being Arthur Clyne, John Wilson Walker and Arthur Hay Livingstone Mackinnon, and was admitted FRIBA in May 1930. For a number of years he held the appointment of architect to Aberdeen Education Authority for the Turriff and Huntly districts and his housing at Rhynie, Gartly and Insch was 'of such outstanding merit that he was specialliy invited to exhibit at the Royal Scottish Academy of 1943'. In the realm of public life he was active, being Preident of the Aberdeen Society of Architects and a member of the Council of the RIBA and RIAS. In his private life he was an enthusiastic volunteer and an expert marksman, winning the St George's Medal at Bisley as well as being a devotee of the game of bridge. William Liddle Duncan died in 1951, remaining in practice until the week of his death. The practice was continued by James Munro, whom he had taken into partnership in 1947 and who had worked in his office since 1930. The practice title changed to W L Duncan & Munro. Munro retired in 1975.
William Smith II was the fourth of John Smith and Margaret Grant's eight children, born 16 September 1817. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and at Marischal College where he graduated MA. During that period he studied sketching and watercolour under James Giles. Thereafter he was articled to his father, working alongside Robert Kerr, the future Professor of Architecture at King's College in London. Smith subsequently spent eighteen months in London as assistant to Thomas Leverton Donaldson in whose office he had the opportunity to study the extensive library and classical antiquities that the latter had collected. He may have attended Donaldson's classes at University College as he was admitted ARIBA on 25 July 1842, his proposers being Donaldson, Samuel Angell and George Bailey. At that date he appears to have been back in Aberdeen, but shortly thereafter he embarked on a tour of Italy and of Greece which lasted almost two years. He returned to his father's office as senior assistant and became his partner in 1845. This enabled him to marry on 2 July 1846 Mary Blaikie, born 27 September 1826 and one of the five children of Dr Patrick Blaikie RN who came of a prominent family of ironmasters in Aberdeen, Blaikie Brothers. Family photographs show that she remained a beautiful woman in middle age. Smith's father having gone into semi-retirement at Rosebank, they set up house at 142 King Street. William Smith's first major commission was Trinity Hall, Union Street, Aberdeen, in 1846. Its adaptation of neo-Tudor to granite attracted the attention of the Prince Consort who in 1848 commissioned J & W Smith to reconstruct and enlarge old Balmoral Castle to which the elder Smith had built an addition in 1834-39. That commission did not proceed beyond the sketch plan stage but when the commission extended to a completely new house in 1852 their appointment attracted the attention of William Burn. Recent research by Paul Bradley has shown that Burn obtained an interview with the Prince Consort, probably to complain that the elder Smith had unprofessionally displaced him at Robert Gordon's College and at Fintray and had plagiarised his designs at Menie and elsewhere. Smith nevertheless retained the confidence of the Prince Consort and the construction of the castle in 1853-59 was followed by other buildings on the estate. By 1852 he had also officially succeeded to his father's post as Superintendent of the Town's Works, having taken on increasing amounts of work in an unofficial capacity during his father's latter years of declining health. William Smith and Mary Blaikie had sixteen children. All eight of their surviving children were sent to the University of Aberdeen. Only the eldest, John, born 5 July 1847 became an architect. John Smith II is said to have been of 'gentle disposition and retiring habits' and 'not a man of robust frame…his health was on the whole delicate'. He married Helen Elsmie Hall, daughter of John Hall, merchant and sister of the prominent Aberdeen advocate Harvey Hall, and was taken into partnership in or about 1880, the practice title becoming W & J Smith. Like William and Mary Smith before them, John and his wife set up house at 142 Great King Street. They had three sons and a surviving daughter who were aged 8, 6, 4 and 2 when John Smith died suddenly on 11 April 1887 after a long period of declining health, leaving 'absolutely no money at all'. When they grew up all three sons entered bank service since a university education could not be afforded, thus bringing the Smith dynasty of architects to a close. Shortly after John's death William Smith merged his practice with that of his former pupil William Kelly, the practice name now becoming W & J Smith & Kelly. This partnership was dissolved just before William Smith died at 142 King Street on 22 December 1891, saddened not only by the death of his son but also by that of his wife who had predeceased him on 21 January 1883. During his short final illness he was cared for by his son Dr Patrick Blaikie Smith, later of San Remo. His moveable estate was a surprisingly modest £1026 5s 8d, although he may have owned some property beyond the houses and yard in King Street. In politics he was described as being conservative and he 'shrank from publicity…present day methods of gaining popularity were foreign to his disposition.' Principal Cooper described him as having a 'high bred courtesy' and 'a reticence to the point of shyness'. It was perhaps these qualities which lost him the commission for Aberdeen Sheriff Court in the limited competition of 1861 set up between himself, James Matthews and the Edinburgh practice of Peddie & Kinnear. That project subsequently grew into that for Aberdeen Municipal Buildings and was the major disappointment of his career. His interests outwith architecture were music, children and animals. Dogs figure importantly in family photographs and either he or his son of the same name appears to have been the author of a book entitled 'The uses and abuses of domestic animals'. None of his daughters married and they were said to have led a somewhat impoverished existence after his death, dependent on the support of their surviving brothers, all of whom had successful careers.
Alexander Marshall Mackenzie was born in Elgin on 1 January 1848, the son of Thomas Mackenzie, architect and his wife Helen Margaret McInnes. His middle name derived from his mother, who was a granddaughter of William Marshall, the Duke of Gordon's factor and a celebrated composer of reels and strathspeys. His father died in October 1854 when he was six. Educated at Elgin Academy, he was articled to James Matthew's Aberdeen office from 1863 to 1868, and remained there as assistant for a year. His elder brother Hugh being already settled in Edinburgh he then found a place in the office of David Bryce, living at 10 Forrest Street. During that period he studied drawing and painting with Robert Innes who had painted a portrait of his father in 1851, and exhibited a selection of his topographical views at the RSA in 1870. This was, perhaps, at least partly in preparation for a study tour of Italy and France undertaken in that year, after which he commenced practice in Elgin at the early age of twenty-two. By 1877, Marshall Mackenzie had amply demonstrated his capacity to gain clients, and Marshall was persuaded to re-admit him as a partner, but in respect of Aberdeen and Elgin-based business only, Lawrie retaining his semi-independent position in Inverness where the practice continued under the name of Matthews and Lawrie. From 1883 onward Mackenzie undertook virtually all of the design work of the Aberdeen office, Matthews being pre-occupied with civic duties as provost, principally on Rosemount Viaduct and the Union Terrace improvements. When William Lawrie died in 1887 his chief assistant John Hinton Gall took over the practice in his own name only and Matthews eventually retired completely in 1893 at the age of seventy-three, leaving Mackenzie as sole partner. Marshall Mackenzie's classical work varied greatly in quality, mainly because of cost factors, working in granite being expensive. According to Herbert Wigglesworth, then his apprentice, a second visit to Italy in or about 1883 inspired the Northern Assurance Building and the Gray's School of Art and Aberdeen Art Gallery buildings, the details of the former suggesting that he had looked as much at modern Italian architecture as at high Renaissance examples. In the latter he adopted a two colour treatment by introducing elements of pink Corrennie granite, apparently in deference to the use of sandstone and brick dressings in Simpson's Triple Kirk opposite, an experiment that was to extend to the neo-Georgian villas he built in the 1890s. Much of his classical work from the mid-1880s onward was in a rather flat pilastraded idiom that lent itself to machine cutting: only at the Parish Council and School Board offices, and at the Manx Bank did he have the budget to adopt a more three dimensional treatment. Marshall Mackenzie's Gothic work was much more consistent in quality. From 1883 onwards beginning with Craigiebuckler, he paralleled Honeyman, Rowand Anderson and Blanc in the adaptation of mediaeval forms to a more liturgical form of Presbyterian worship. Both Craigiebuckler and Ruthrieston were English Gothic in detail, but thereafter he showed a marked preference for late Scots Gothic forms. This development stemmed from his restoration of Arbuthnott Church in 1889, but was also related to the Aberdeen Ecclesiological Society, originally initiated by the Rev James Cooper of St Nicholas East Church, William Kelly, later of Smith & Kelly, and his brother-in-law Charles Carmichael on Kelly's return from London and a continental study tour in 1885. Mackenzie was one of their founder members and his first new-build church in the Scots Gothic idiom was Powis, Aberdeen, 1895, its details drawn from Greyfriars Church, then under threat from the Marischal College extension scheme and which - against his own wishes - he was to be obliged to demolish. Mackenzie was elected ARSA in 1893 although he had exhibited only once twenty-three years earlier, and admitted FRIBA on 30 November 1896 with the influential support of the London architects Alfred Waterhouse, Colonel Robert W Edis, and John McKean Brydon. These events were prompted by royal patronage, initially at the new church at Crathie in 1893 and again in 1895 when the Duke and Duchess of Fife (the Prince of Wales's daughter Princess Louise) commissioned the rebuilding of Mar Lodge. An honorary LLD followed in 1906, marking the final completion of the Marischal College extension scheme, formally opened by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra to mark the Quater Centenary celebrations. The completion of the Marischal College works brought the practice still greater national fame, but by then the practice had already opened a London office in 1903, a development directly related to Mackenzie's brother-in-law. Mackenzie had married the only daughter of Alexander Cooper of the Elgin legal firm Cooper & Wink, and a granddaughter of General George Duncan Robertson, head of the Clan Robertson. Her brother George Alexander Cooper (1856-1940), later Sir George 1st Baronet, had become an American property magnate. He had also married an heiress, Mary Smith of Evanston, Illinois, the niece of 'Chicago' Smith, and became a major art collector, his dealer being Joseph Duveen. In 1901 the Coopers bought the lease of 26 Grosvenor Square, which made them neighbours to the Earl and Countess of Aberdeen at no 27: they had recently returned from Canada where Lord Aberdeen had been Governor General from 1893 to 1898. The London decorators Howard & Sons redecorated no 26 'under the aegis of Duveen Brothers' probably with some involvement by Duveen's architect Rene Sergent in Paris, the panelling for Duveen's tapestries being made by Anatole Beaumetz. While this work was in progress, Marshall Mackenzie's eldest son Alexander George Robertson Mackenzie (born 1879) - his middle names were those of his maternal grandfather - was working with Sergent in Paris as an improver. Articled to his father in August 1894 at the age of fifteen, 'AGR' took classes at Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology and the University of Aberdeen, and quickly developed extraordinary ability, becoming his father's chief assistant at the end of his apprenticeship in 1898. Nevertheless he felt he needed London experience, and early in 1900 he obtained a place in the office of one of his father's proposers, Colonel Edis, which enabled him to study at the Architectural Association and at the Central School of Arts and Crafts under Lethaby, Halsey Ricardo and Frampton. After his spell with Sergent in 1901 he obtained a place in the London office of Niven & Wigglesworth, Herbert Wigglesworth having been an apprentice of his father's, and passed the qualifying exam in June. He was admitted ARIBA on 17 September 1901, his proposers being his father, Wigglesworth, and his partner Niven. At that date he had travelled only in Normandy and in Holland, but soon thereafter he spent two months on a study tour in Italy before being recalled to his father's office in 1902 to assist with the Marischal College extension. The London office was set up initially to enlarge and remodel Hursley Park in Hampshire, which the Coopers had bought in 1902, the work being carried out in association with Duveen, who obtained the boiseries and the Beauvais tapestries. AGR was put in charge of the London office although the division was by no means clear-cut, his father being in London for a few days every fortnight while the son undertook a certain amount of the design work of the Aberdeen office. Partly from the Coopers' influence and partly from sheer ability, the London practice was very successful, at once securing the £300,000 commission for the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Aldwych, followed by a still more prestigious one for Canada House, also part of the Strand-Kingsway improvements, which put the Mackenzies in the same league as J J Burnet. The project was deferred but another for Australia House, also in Aldwych followed a few years later and was built. AGR was then elevated to FRIBA on 3 March 1913, his proposers being Leonard Stokes who had become a close friend and with whose son there was to be a future connection, and Niven and Wigglesworth. By that date Gilbert Marshall Mackenzie was also in the London office. Born in 1890 or 1891 and educated at Charterhouse rather than in Aberdeen, Gilbert was articled to the Aberdeen office in 1909 but left in the same year for the University of Cambridge, probably to read modern languages in preparation for study at the Atelier Gromort in Paris in 1911. He returned to the London office in 1912 without taking the Diplome du Gouvernement, recalled to assist his brother with Australia House, and passed the qualifying exam in the same year without completing any apprenticeship and little more than a year's practical experience in total. He was admitted ARIBA in the same year, his proposers being his father, his brother, and another professional friend of his brother's, Herbert Austen Hall. Shortly thereafter he was taken into partnership, the practice title becoming briefly A Marchall Mackenzie & Sons. The Mackenzies suffered severely in the First World War. The long-deferred Canada House project was cancelled, the Union Club and the Royal College of Physicians being eventually bought for the purpose and the commission given to Septimus Warwick. Gilbert was called up and commissioned in the First Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders in which he reached the rank of Captain. While serving in France he drew and painted life in the trenches. Subsequently he was sent to Mesopotamia where he was killed in action near Kut on 21 April 1916. AGR enlisted as a private in the London Scottish, in the hope that he could transfer to the Seaforths and be with his brother, but was severely wounded and lost most of a leg. He was invalided out and assisted his father with the completion of Australia House, where work had continued throughout the war years. Mackenzie's second son, who had become a solicitor and was a partner in Cooper & Wink and was too old for active service similarly volunteered, but because of his eyesight he had to be content with the Service Corps from which he survived unscathed. Alexander Marshall Mackenzie was elevated to the status of full academician in 1918, and the Aberdeen practice remained as prosperous as ever, but despite the continuing support of the Coopers, the London practice did not recover its pre-war success as Burnet's had done. Although still based in London, by the later 1920s AGR was spending much of his time on the work of the Aberdeen office, where his father was assisted by John Gibb Marr (born 1890), who had originally been articled to Clement George. Marr was taken into partnership on 1 January 1927. Niven and Wigglesworth's practice had also begun to run out of work following the completion of Hambro's Bank in London, and their partnership was dissolved in 1927, partly because Niven had developed other interests. Wigglesworth merged his half of the remaining practice with Mackenzie's. Further consolidation took place in Aberdeen in May 1931 when the Mackenzies merged the Aberdeen practice with that of the cinema and auction mart specialist, Clement George, born 1879 in Macduff, who had been in the office from 1897 to 1907, and had remained a family friend: his senior partner, George Sutherland had died in 1927. The practice now became A Marshall Mackenzie, Son & George. These arrangements were to prove brief. Clement George died on 23 February 1932, followed on 4 May 1933 by Alexander Marshall Mackenzie who had been at the drawing board until within a week of his death, latterly working mostly from Culter House, a great early eighteenth century house with a fine formal garden to which he had moved from the very stylish houses AGR had designed for him at Ladyhill and Loch Coull in 1911. The practice then reverted to its former title of A Marshall Mackenzie & Son. As a result of these deaths AGR determined to strengthen the Aberdeen office, where Marr had had little opportunity for design and still less for the modern design required to keep the practice in business. Leonard Stokes's son David, who had left the Architectural Association in 1930 and set up practice with Peter Fleetwood Hesketh in 1930, had run out of work. His office in Lincoln's Inn was nearby Mackenzie and Wigglesworth's, and shortly after his father's death AGR asked Stokes to take charge of the design work of the Aberdeen office. It was an arrangement on which Marr had not been consulted and with which he may not have been entirely happy: much later he observed that he felt Stokes had been sent up to keep an eye on him. Introducing a London Catholic to Aberdeen society of that time was not without problems, but Stokes found that 'the natives in Aberdeen became friendly in about six months'. Although the Aberdeen office was commissioned to build a large new office for the Halifax Building Society, by 1935 the Mackenzie & Wigglesworth practice in London was at a low ebb: Robert W R Mackenzie (1913-75) of the Perth bleaching (Lumsden & Mackenzie) side of the family was to have joined the office, but in the event there was not enough work to justify him coming. The Wigglesworth and Stokes partnerships were dissolved, AGR returned to Aberdeen and the Stokes 'went back to London without any reluctance.' Culter had been sold but AGR and his wife bought a smaller and completely unspoiled mid-eighteenth-century country house at Bourtie, near Inverurie. It was carefully repaired but not modernised and to the very end of her life Mrs Mackenzie cooked on an open fire. Apart from some country house work, most importantly Candacraig, the business of the post-war practice was mainly conservation work, the National Trust for Scotland being the main client. In 1952 Ian G Lindsay, as Chief Investigator, asked AGR to become a part-time investigator of historic buildings with responsibility for Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and Kincardine, some of the survey work being delegated to a Huntly-born architect he had known in London, Robert J Troup, who, like many other architects at the time, was in need of financial help. Of all the part-time investigators, AGR had the greatest influence on Lindsay's thinking, particularly in respect of group value. He pioneered the concept of conservation areas, listing the fisher towns as single items. AGR Mackenzie and John Gibb Marr remained in partnership until 1960 when AGR retired completely, following a disagreement with Marr, which was regretted on both sides and subsequently made up. Like his father, AGR continued to work up to the time of his death on 20 March 1963, a few weeks after major surgery. He was buried at Bourtie churchyard where a simply inscribed standing stone marks his grave. Marr continued the practice after the dissolution of the partnership in 1960, and it was not until this time that its title was changed to A Marshall Mackenzie & Marr. He closed the practice in 1972, when most of the drawings were dispersed to the firm's clients or to the current owners of the buildings. He retired to Raigmore Tower, Inverness, where he died in 1983.
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Historic Environment Records (HER)