BRAINS: Dingles Department Store/Plymouth by Mario Picariello

BRAINS

DINGLES DEPARTMENT STORE / PLYMOUTH ARCHITECT / STYLE

BRAINS

DIAMOND CLASSICS Published by the Diamond Group Diamond Books Ltd, 100 Stand, London WC2R 0RL, England www.diamond.com First published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton 2010 This edition published 2010 1 Copyright 2010 by Mario Picariello All rights reserved The moral right of the author has been asserted Set in 10/13 pt Baskerville Typeset by Mario Picariello Printed in England by Roland Levinski Press, Plymouth Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

978-0-141-19315-1

DINGLES DEPARTMENT STORE / PLYMOUTH

ARCHITECT / STYLE

Edited by Mario Picariello

Architect / Style / Introduction

Introduction

Dingles went through a great struggle, staying strong during the Blitz and coming out the other end with a grand store, that combined all their previous department stores into one great big dingles department store on Royal Parade, Plymouth. This book is the second in the series celebrating the rise and fall of Dingles and the story of the great journey through time. This is the Dingle architect book, there is also the Dingle family and Dingle department store books part of the set, Bricks, Brains, Tailcoats. Explore the buildings history and the memorial it is to the city of Plymouth. Travel with us from concept to build and opening of this amazing piece of architecture. Thomas Smith Tait (1882 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 1954) was a prominent Scottish Modernist architect. He designed a number of buildings around the world in Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles, notably the Scottish Office Buildings on Calton Hill, Edinburgh, and the pylons for Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Architect / Style / The Early Years

The early years of Tait Thomas Smith Tait (1882 – 1954) was a prominent Scottish Modernist architect. He designed a number of buildings around the world in Art Deco and Streamline Moderne styles, notably the Scottish Office Buildings on Calton Hill, Edinburgh, and the pylons for Sydney Harbour Bridge. Tait was born in Paisley on 18 June 1882, the son of John Tait and his wife Elizabeth Smith. His father was then described as a stonemason but later had a substantial business as a builder.Tait was educated at John Neilson’s Institution and in 1896 he was articled to the Paisley architect James Donald, a former assistant of Alexander Thomson’s, and remained with him as an assistant. From 1900 he attended Paisley Technical School where he won three King’s Prizes for architecture and decorative art. In 1903 he won a free scholarship to study at Glasgow

The Early Years / Architect / Style

School of Art and applied for a job with John James Burnet who engaged him as his personal assistant as he ‘appeared to have the capacity for work’. Somehow he managed to accommodate studying under Eugène Bourdon at Glasgow School of Art with teaching architecture at Paisley Technical School in the years 1904-05. By that date the Office of Works, headed by Lord Windsor as First Commissioner, and the Trustees of the British Museum had selected Burnet to design the new galleries at the museum from a list of seven names submitted by the RIBA; and by 1905 Burnet had developed a masterplan which would have extended the museum on all four sides and laid out a British Museum Avenue on the north axis, a very Parisian concept. To develop this scheme Burnet established a London office in the name of John J Burnet only at 1 Montague Place, a grace-and-favour house rented to him by the museum, which was initially both house and office. Burnet took

Architect / Style / The Early Years

Tait with him, together with another very able assistant, Andrew Bryce, a move which enabled Tait to study at the Royal Academy Schools in London. Also involved in the project was David Theodore Fyfe, a former apprentice of Burnet’s who had become an important scholar in Greek antiquity and had established his own practice in London. Only the Edward VII Galleries, which had been funded by a bequest made in 1899, were actually carried out. Burnet adopted the Ionic order of Smirke’s colonnades in a subtly updated form, but the façade as a whole reflected contemporary French and American ideas drawing some inspiration from Ginain’s Faculté de Médecine in Paris, but more on the scale of Louis Duc’s Palais de Justice, lengthened from nine bays to nineteen. While the British Museum was building Burnet received two major London commissions for commercial buildings. The first of these

Sydney Harbour Bridge Pylons

The Early Years / Architect / Style

Kodak Building on Kingsway, built in 1910-11

was the curved frontage General Buildings in Aldwych, built in 190911 in a simplified version of his eaves galleried Glasgow style with superb sculptural details by Albert Hodge. The second was the Kodak Building on Kingsway, built in 1910-11, where his client, George Eastman was American and unafraid of a modern solution. Several alternative sketch schemes were handed out to the senior draughtsmen in the London office and that developed by Tait was preferred by the client. It followed the familiar Burnet formula of the two-storeyed base but the design of the upper floors, giant pilasters enclosing steel-framed glazing with

Architect / Style / The Early Years

metal spandrel panels, was a drastic simplification of anything Burnet had designed before and the familiar eaves gallery was now replaced by a deep Egyptian cavetto cornice. The basic concept appears to have been drawn from Albert Kahn and Ernest Wilbyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Owen Building at Detroit, built in 1907, which Burnet may have seen on his second visit to the USA in 1908. Although Burnet and Tait did not develop the Kodak bay design further, it was to be the prototype of countless commercial buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in Glasgow. During his time as Burnetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chief assistant Tait travelled in France, Belgium, Holland and Italy, no doubt because he wanted to, but also because it was a necessary part of his CV for becoming an associate of the RIBA. On 26 December 1910 he married Constance Hardy, the daughter of a London stationmaster. A sensitive portrait drawing of

The Early Years / Architect / Style

more serious disagreement when Burnet discovered that Tait had been helping Trehearne

her by Tait shows that she was a very beautiful girl, although she could be a bit indiscreet in later years. They had three sons, of whom the eldest, Gordon, was born on 3 March 1912. In June 1913 Tait sat and passed the RIBA’s qualifying exam and was admitted ARIBA in September 1913, with the influential backing of Burnet, Theodore Fyfe and Herbert Vaughan Lanchester as proposers. By that date the Taits had set up house at 26 Holyoake Walk in Ealing. The completion of the King Edward VII Galleries in 1914 brought Burnet a knighthood and the bronze medal of the Paris Salon. But within the practice itself there had been problems

with the Office of Works and the British Museum Trustees over a baffling leak in the roof - which was eventually traced and rectified - the strength of the floors and most seriously fees; as ever Burnet’s perfectionism had cost money. The year 1912 had also been marred by the first of two serious rows between Burnet and Tait. In July 1912 it was announced that Tait and James Mitchell Whitelaw, a brilliant draughtsman who had joined the office in 1907, had come second in the unofficial ‘Builder’ competition for the completion of the rebuilding of the Regent Street Quadrant in conformity with Richard Norman Shaw’s Piccadilly Hotel: Tait

Architect / Style / The Early Years

had earlier achieved second place in the competition for St Marylebone Town Hall in 1911 in collaboration with an unidentified Sutton. Burnet was not best pleased: his consent to enter had not been sought and more seriously the bay design was based on his Civil Service and Professional Supply and Forsyth department stores. But they survived and after Whitelaw was drowned at Bournemouth in June 1913 the matter was forgotten, Tait organising a memorial volume of Whitelawâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drawings which was eventually published in 1916. Early in the summer of 1914 there was a much more serious disagreement when Burnet discovered that Tait had been helping Trehearne & Norman with their new buildings on Kingsway to augment his income: he had in fact designed their facades. Tait and his wife sailed for New York, arriving on 27 June and staying at the Normandy Hotel, until he found work as an assistant with Donn Barber. Their son Gordon was left at home. Although they sailed on

The Early Years / Architect / Style

different ships, the visit was made in association with Francis Lorne whom he had known as an assistant in the Glasgow office in 1910: Lorne had arrived a day earlier and was used as a forwarding address. Burnet quickly regretted the disagreement and appealed to Tait to return home as junior partner but he declined. When he did return it was as chief draughtsman to Trehearne & Norman on further Kingsway buildings, an appointment which ended in 1915 when he joined the drawing office in the arsenal at Woolwich. By that date Burnet and Tait appear to have been reconciled as Taitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s FRIBA paper records him as assisting Burnet in the years 1915-18, evidently on a part-time basis as Burnet had little work in those years.

Architect / Style / The Early Years

Adelaide House, London

Architect / Style / The Early Years

Adelaide House, London

Architect / Style / Burnet & Tait

Burnet & Tait after the war At the end of the war, seeking to rebuild his office staff to cope with a rapidly increasing workload, Burnet invited Tait to join him as a partner. Tait accepted, as did Burnet’s former office manager David Raeside, the London practice now becoming Sir John Burnet & Partners, although still not completely separate from the Glasgow one. The office was busy over the ensuing years but Burnet’s design role gradually diminished. He was still very much in charge of the work for the Imperial War Graves Commission and at the French classical-modern Vigo House on Regent Street. He also had a considerable influence on Adelaide House, the mullioned grid of which was a post-war development of McGeoch’s even if the details were both more classical and more Egyptic: Burnet had sent Tait out to Port Tewfik to take a look at Egyptian antiquity, sensing that it was about to become fashionable, and Joseph Emberton also made some contribution to its detailing.

Burnet & Tait / Architect / Style

Architect / Style / Burnet & Tait

Burnet and Tait were experimenting for the changes they knew must come in the next few years

But although Burnet received the Royal Gold Medal in 1923 and was elected RA in 1925, he was now much more limited in what he could do and his role became supervision of the office and the contribution of ideas to work in hand. Financial anxiety during the war and after it as a result of the disasters in the Glasgow office aggravated his eczema, forcing him to wear skullcap and gloves, and limiting his ability to draw. The changing responsibilities in the office were reflected in Tait being admitted FRIBA in November 1925. In August 1926 the Second Church of Christ Scientist in Palace Gardens Terrace was published as Taitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work,

but it had in fact been worked up from designs Burnet had made during the First World War. But thereafter Tait took over the design work completely at the Daily Telegraph Building and at Lloyds Bank on Cornhill, even although these still had marked Burnetian elements: only in the partial redesign of Lomax Simpsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Unilever House did Burnet have a direct hand, having been asked to deal with the commission himself. But while these massive classical piles were under construction, Burnet and Tait were experimenting for the changes they knew must come in the next few years. Tait and his wife revisited the United

Daily Telegraph Building, London

Burnet & Tait / Architect / Style

His style was very different from Tait’s avuncular wingcollar image

States in 1925, while Burnet’s role as assessor on the international jury for the League of Nations building in 1927 had given them a unique insight into the most advanced architectural thinking throughout the world. Frequent visits to the continent had also made them aware of the work of Robert Mallet Stephens, André Lurçat, and Le Corbusier in France and the De Stijl group in the Netherlands. In 1927-30 Tait designed an exceptional series of flat-roofed Cubist houses at Silver End, Essex for the steel window manufacturer W F Crittall, The Haven at Newbury, Berkshire for Dr Alan Simmons and West Leaze, Aldbourne

Architect / Style / Burnet & Tait

for Hugh Dalton, the future Chancellor of the Exchequer. Except for Peter Behrens’ New Ways at Northampton (1925) these were the first houses of their kind in Britain. To assist with this change of direction Burnet and Tait engaged three exceptional assistants: Clifford Strange; Franz Stengelhofen, who had studied at Trier in Germany; and Frederick MacManus, a Dubliner with American experience who designed some of the houses at Silver End. These developments were reflected at Tait’s own home. His much improved circumstances enabled him to buy Gates House, Wyldes Close, Hampstead Way, an attractive Arts

and Crafts house built by T Laurence Dale in 1915. In 1930 this was tactfully extended and fitted out with lavish Art Deco chimneypieces and furniture which had been commissioned from 1928 onwards. Raeside died in 1928 and Burnet had a serious illness early the same year. A recurrence ultimately made it necessary for Burnet to retire completely, but he could not afford to. His secretary Helen Lorne - who lived in what had been the Burnets’ flat at Montague Place - solved the problem by persuading her brother Francis Lorne to return from the United States and buy a partnership, his position at Bertram Grosvenor

Unilever House, Blackfriars, London

Burnet & Tait / Architect / Style

Silver End, Essex, Cubist Houses

Architect / Style / Burnet & Tait

Burnet & Tait / Architect / Style

St Andrew’s House, Edinburgh

Goodhue Associates having been badly affected by the financial crash in 1929. Burnet then became a consultant, retaining a significant financial interest in the practice, and appearing only about twice a year in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce for purely business meetings. Tait already knew Lorne from their visit to the United States in 1914 and it is probable that contact was renewed on his second visit to New York in 1925 as Lorne had then just joined Goodhue’s office. The original intention was that Lorne would fulfil Raeside’s role, one for which he was particularly suited as he had been the author of the manual ‘Architectural Office Administration’, published in 1921. He arrived in August 1930 and immediately sought elevation to FRIBA on the strength of his Canadian and American experience, his proposers being Burnet, Robert Atkinson and Edwin Stanley Hall. Tait soon found that he was not going to be another Raeside. His style was very different from Tait’s avuncular

Architect / Style / Burnet & Tait

wing-collar image. He was extremely sharp - ‘make it snappy’ - he wore stylish American clothes and received clients in silk shirts without a jacket, unheard of at the time. His approach to business was also very different. He cultivated publicity and gained an entrée to the Prince of Wales’s circle through Mrs Dudley Ward who became the wife of Lorne’s client the Marques de Casa Maury: he went out and sought work; and he ferreted out the owners of underdeveloped sites, secured their agreement in principle to sell and then set about finding clients for them. He kept the staff to just under twenty (Montague Place

could not accommodate any more) and radically changed it. The more conservative of Burnet and Tait’s assistants were cleared out and the survivors - Bryce and Ferguson - put on overtime at time-and-a-quarter rates. To re-equip the office for the thirties, Lorne brought with him the New York architect Slater-Ellis who had closed his practice after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and recruited an amazing team of politically and architecturally radical colonials and Scottish Americans who brought to a close the formal office protocol of Burnet’s day. These included the New Zealanders Edward Armstrong, Lipscombe and Minson;

Burnet & Tait / Architect / Style

the Australians Oscar Bayne and Henry Pynor; and Lorneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own brother-in-law, Ludovic Gordon Farquhar - once a colleague at Mayers, Murray & Phillip - from the United States. All were men of exceptional ability: of particular interest in terms of experience were Bayne and Pynor who had both worked their way across the United States, the latter having worked for Frank Lloyd Wright and brought with him an important collection of drawings from that office; he also had experience of large-scale office organisation and construction having been in charge of a huge international team of architects and draughtsmen in Russia during the

Architect / Style / Burnet & Tait

period of the Five Year Plan. Gordon Farquhar’s background was even more valuable since he brought to the office experience with the BeauxArts skyscraper builder Raymond M Hood, architect of the Rockefeller Center in New York, features of which were to influence the design of St Andrew’s House. The office was now split into two separate sections, Tait’s and Lorne’s, Tait retaining the older staff and recruiting new staff from Scotland as he needed them, while Lorne took charge of Stengelhofen and the colonials. Denis Bethune Williams provided a common structural engineering service and checked the

Burnet & Tait / Architect / Style

the early 1930s came still more ambitious work of this kind for Sydney Harbour, Cairo and Bangkok

measurements on every drawing which was to leave the office, while Gordon Farquhar and Helen Lorne attended to the accounts and the office administration.These changes were accompanied in that same year by the radical shift in architectural direction for which Tait had been preparing. It was exemplified by the Royal Masonic Hospital at Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith, for which Tait had won the competition in 1929. His design was revolutionary in plan and servicing but was still modified neo-Georgian in elevation with steep dormered roofs. In 1930, although still planned on formal symmetrical lines, it was completely redesigned in a Dutch-American flat-roofed idiom, the reception block having hints of H F Mertens’s works at Rotterdam for Unilever, the practice’s client at Blackfriars Bridge, while the main ward block had a number of features, notably the semi-circular ended wings, which were to appear again at St Andrew’s House. It brought him the RIBA

Architect / Style / Burnet & Tait

Gold Medal for the best building of the year in 1933. Tait never wavered from the path of modernity again. The style of Ravenscourt Park was further developed in his competition designs for Norwich Municipal Buildings and in his scheme for the Brook House site in London’s Park Lane where his client did not secure the site; at the Curzon Cinema in Mayfair for the Marques de Casa Maury, where he made some deft improvements on Lorne and Stengelhofen’s design, adopting the style of the Dutch architect, Dudok; and at the Mount Royal flats on London’s Oxford Street where he and Lorne again drew inspiration from the

Netherlands, for some details perhaps from F A Warner’s Atlanta House in Amsterdam. With the economic difficulties which beset the country from 1931 onwards the firm went into a relative decline in business which was weathered without losing key staff by a 10% wage cut: but even the slump was turned to advantage, Francis Lorne, Gordon Farquhar and Oscar Bayne taking the opportunity to produce the architects’ bible of the 1930s, ‘The Information Book of Sir John Burnet, Tait & Lorne’, published in 1933 which consolidated the firm’s position as the premier British practice of the decade.

Architect / Style / His Later Years

His later years

In the 1930s the practice became increasingly international. This was a trend which had started in 1928 when Burnet and Taitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s excellent professional relationship with Ralph Freeman of Sir Douglas Fox & Partners resulted in the commission for the architectural aspects of the bridge over the River Limpopo in South Africa for the Beit Trustees. In the early 1930s came still more ambitious work of this kind for Sydney Harbour, Cairo and Bangkok, and late in 1935 Burnet Tait & Lorne were commissioned by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer to design the giant headquarters of the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa building at 44 Main Street, Johannesburg. In that year Tait was heavily committed to other projects and by mutual agreement Lorne became partner-in-charge and made several visits to South Africa in 1935 and 1936 to organise the project. Initially at least the design owed much to Tait as its massing and fenestration reflected the Norwich competition design and the original

His Later Years / Architect / Style

proposals for the Calton Road frontage of St Andrew’s House in Edinburgh. The St Andrew’s House project had been commissioned two years earlier than the Johannesburg building but for reasons outwith the practice’s control its construction came a year later. In 1933 the First Commissioner of the Office of Works, Major William OrmsbyGore, formed a selection committee to appoint architects for the new Government buildings in Whitehall and the Scottish Office and National Library buildings in Edinburgh. For the first of these the committee - Sir William Llewellyn, President of the Royal Academy, and the Earl of

Architect / Style / His Later Years

Crawford, Chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission - narrowed the twelve names submitted by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott as President of the RIBA down to three: Arthur Davis, Vincent Harris and Tait. Tait was eliminated as he was expected to get the Scottish Office building and Harris was appointed by Ormsby Goreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s casting vote as he had previously won a competition for it. At the Scottish meeting on 11 December Sir D Y Cameron represented the Royal Fine Art Commission and John Begg the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. As predicted they voted for Tait in preference to Davis. Tait adopted the general

His Later Years / Architect / Style

Selfridges, London

His Later Years / Architect / Style

massing proposed by Sir George Washington Browne when attempting to refine a bald classical scheme by Sir Richard Allison earlier in the same year. For the elevations he developed ideas from two earlier schemes, his competition design for the Municipal Buildings at Norwich (it had been placed second) for the northern and Brooke House, Park Lane (both 1932) for the centre of the south front. In these elevations Dutch, French and American elements were integrated into a unified Beaux-Arts Modern concept which Tait himself described as sculpturesque. After many revisions to accommodate an ever-changing brief the building was erected in 1936-39 under the supervision of Burnet’s relative James Henry Wallace - a Lord Clerk-of-Works as Esmé Gordon described him - based first at 7 St Colme Street and later at 44 Charlotte Square. With Burnet’s retirement the old territorial divisions between Burnet Son & Dick in Glasgow and Burnet Tait & Lorne in London

Architect / Style / His Later Years

came to an end. Tait and Lorne now actively sought work for their Edinburgh office in direct opposition to Norman Dick, securing the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Paisley, housing at Howwood, a bank in Johnstone, and a giant hotel in Glasgowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Buchanan Street which was never built. But a much bigger project was soon to come. In June 1936 the Finance and General Purposes Committee of the Scottish National Development Council was brought into being to plan the Glasgow Empire Exhibition of 1938, largely on the initiative of Sir James Lithgow, Cecil Weir and other leaders of Scottish industry. No time was wasted on competitions; Tait was appointed architect-in-chief to appoint a team and get on with it. It comprised over 100 large structures in Bellahouston Park for which Tait engaged architects who had either a Burnet or an American background, together with the most promising of the younger generation - Basil Spence, Jack Coia, T Waller Marwick, Margaret Brodie and his

Selfridges, London

His Later Years / Architect / Style

Tait’s much admired steel tower, resulted in the offer of a knighthood

own son Gordon Tait. Only the Dominions were allowed to appoint their own architects. Construction was of steel and timber, throughout clad in four-foot-square asbestos panels, the idea being apparently drawn from Mendelsohn and Chermayeff ’s Bexhill Pavilion of 1934, for which Tait had been the assessor. Inspiration was drawn from a wide variety of sources, but most of all from Raymond Hood’s ‘Century of Progress Exhibition’ at Chicago of 1929-33 in which Farquhar had been involved. The success of the project, dominated by Tait’s much admired steel tower, resulted in the offer of a knighthood which Tait initially accepted: unfortunately his wife Constance broke confidentiality at a bridge party. What she said was picked up by a mischievous gossip columnist: the knighthood had to be declined and although a second opportunity arose with the completion of St Andrew’s House it was not offered again. The loss of it did not really trouble Tait, he was not the sort of man to

Architect / Style / His Later Years

whom such things mattered very much, but the affair did cause him some embarrassment. While Tait, Bryce, Ferguson and Wallace were engaged on these Scottish projects, Lorne and Farquhar were building modernist blocks of offices, flats, schools and hospitals in London and the south-east, most of them in some degree developing themes from Tait’s Masonic Hospital at Ravenscourt Park. Whilst Tait made a contribution to some of these, his involvement in others was fairly minimal. By the later 1930s Tait’s relationship with Lorne was sometimes strained, the worst incident being when Lorne took advantage of his absence from the office to sell a maquette sculpture given to Tait by Sir William Reid Dick which he happened to dislike - it had been for Unilever House. The matter was exacerbated by Dick finding it in a dealer’s gallery before Tait could do anything about it. The previously good relationship between Tait and the Lornes never recovered from that incident.

Unilever House, Blackfriars, London

His Later Years / Architect / Style

Taitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s career was cut short by the Second World War. He was appointed Director of Standardisation at the Ministry of Works, rationalising the design and dimensions of army huts from his own experience as architect to the National Camps Corporation just before the war. The fine American Gothic Colonial Office building he designed for the Westminster Hospital site was never proceeded with, although he redesigned it in a more severe classical form after the war. Within the partnership itself there were changes. Lorne married in South Africa in 1938 and again in 1941 after that did not prove a success. Just before Tait

returned to the office in 1942 Lorne put his house at Ascot on the market and moved to Glenfarg House in Perthshire to take charge of the Edinburgh office and remained there, latterly working on the second Anglo-American Corporation building in Johannesburg until he withdrew from the partnership altogether and settled there in the late 1940s, the Burnet practice becoming Sir John Burnet Tait & Partners, later abbreviated to Burnet Tait. Farquhar was called up as a reservist in 1939 and died on 23 December 1945, shortly after returning home, as a result of his experiences in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. The sharp

Architect / Style / His Later Years

decline in business during the war, the death of Farquhar, the withdrawal of Lorneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capital and South African business and the eventual cancellation of the Colonial Office commission strained the practiceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s financial position, a situation resolved by taking on new partners. Taitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eldest son Gordon gradually took over from his father as senior partner, the practice having moved from Montague Place to 10 Bedford Square in 1948; Tait had become consultant rather than partner by the time he died at his the Cottage Hospital Aberfeldy near his Perthshire home, Scotrea in Strathtay, on 18 July 1954, and the practice title changed to Burnet, Tait & Partners (later shortened to Burnet Tait). His funeral took place in London at Golders Green. He was survived by Constance, Gordon and two other sons, Kenneth (died 7 July 1985) who studied architecture at the Architectural Association, but became an assistant director in films and television, and Colin, who was a photographer.

Silver End, Essex, Cubist Houses

His Later Years / Architect / Style

Silver End, Essex, Cubist Houses

His estate amounted to £17,837. Tait’s highly successful career was unusual in that he himself took a low profile. He did not seek committee memberships or any other public appointments because he found them too time-consuming. He spent a lot of time with American and continental books ordered through Tiranti’s, but like Burnet before him he never copied. As his RIBA obituarist - alas untraceable - put it, ‘his nature held no trace of self-conceit or arrogance - and he seemed to think of himself as one of a body of architects who held a common stock of ideas from which anyone could borrow. Thus there never was a Tait manner of design. Each building was a special problem and if … the critics chose to find traces of Egypt, New York or Hilversum in it Tait was not in the least concerned. Nor in the eclectic twenties did anyone else mind very much … the practice of architecture was not a serfdom to creeds.’ The ‘Architectural Review’ observed that ‘architecture is in his debt for a sum

Architect / Style / His Later Years

which cannot be realised by looking at his buildings one by oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. While that is true, each design was endlessly studied and perfected in a haze of cigarette smoke until he was satisfied that the result would be as functionally efficient and as refined as he could make it. In order to reserve as much time as he possibly could for the drawing board at both home and office he allowed himself very few visitors. Before 1930 he left office visitors to Burnet and Raeside and after that to Farquhar - who was extremely good at it - and the most senior staff. Although he could be robust and genial in personality, he was very unassuming, some even finding him rather shy, and commanded huge affection and loyalty among the staff. He neither had a chauffeur-driven RollsRoyce like Burnet, nor did he ever drive himself, preferring to be driven by his sons Gordon and Kenneth in their MG, which they persuaded him to buy after they became a bit worried seeing him standing in the rain at bus stops.

His Later Years / Architect / Style

Burnet Tait & Lorne was arguably the most influential British practice from 1930

Later he bought a large Invicta, but that was for Constanceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s use rather than his own. Unlike Burnet who was a skilful manipulator of committees, he took no active part in the RIBA beyond its golf club; and despite his friendship with Sir William Reid Dick and other academicians, he was never elected to the Royal Academy even although Burnet Tait & Lorne was arguably the most influential British practice from 1930 onwards. Dingles is thought to be the last building Tait was involved in designing before he died a few years after the building was complete.

Architect / Style / His Later Years

Sources: Baxter, J Neil, 1938, Thomas S Tait and the Glasgow Empire Exhibition, no 4, Thirties Society Journal, pp26-30 Baxter, J Neil, 1982, Thomas Tait and the Glasgow Empire Exhibition, 1938, Unpublished MA Hons dissertation, University of Glasgow British Architectural Library, RIBA, 2001, Directory of British Architects 18341914 Caswell (McDowell), Dawn, 1999, The economy of style: Thomas S Tait and the interiors of St Andrews House, vX, Architectural Heritage X 1998, pp74-89

Caswell, Dawn E (McDowell, Dawn E) 1997, Thomas Tait and St Andrews House: A 1930s Scottish Public Interior, Unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Glasgow DNB, Dictionary of National Biography Fox, Thomas N 1987, Francis Lorne, 1889-1963, Thirties Society Journal, no 6 (1987), pp26-31 Grove Dictionary of Art Post Office Directories Sir John Burnet, Tait & Partners 1986, Sir John Burnet, Tait & Partners: celebrating 150 years of excellence in Architecture, Glasgow Walker, David M 1989, St Andrews House: an Edinburgh controversy, 1912-39 Builder

23 July 1954 p126 - obituary

RIBA Journal, August 1954, London: Royal Institute of British Architects, Obituary The Times, 20 July 1954, Obituary British Architectural Library, RIBA, RIBA Biographical Files Professor David M Walker personal archive Professor David M Walker, notes and collection of archive material Personal information from Gordon Tait, Gavin Tait, Russell Tait, Margaret Brash Brodie, EsmĂŠ Gordon, Harold Cullerne Pratt, Sir John Summerson, Edith Burnet Hughes, Frederick MacManus, Stuart Renton and John Watson; additional addresses from research by Iain Paterson RIBA Archive, Victoria & Albert Museum RIBA Nomination Papers A v21 no2440 (microfilm reel 21); F no2346 (box 5)