Alexander Thomson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Alexander Thomson (disambiguation).

Alexander Thomson, c. 1850

Alexander “Greek” Thomson (April 9, 1817, March 22, 1875) was a prominent Glaswegian architect and architectural theorist. Thomson’s work was confined to Glasgow and the Firth of Clyde. Although his work was sometimes published in the architectural press of his day, it was little appreciated outside of his adopted city during his lifetime. It has only been since the 1950s and 60s that his critical reputation has revived -- not least of all in connection with his possible influence on Frank Lloyd Wright.^[1]

Henry-Russell Hitchcock wrote of Thomson in 1966: “Glasgow in the last 150 years has had two of the greatest architects of the Western world. C.R.Mackintosh was not highly productive but his influence in central Europe was comparable to such American architects as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. An even greater and happily more productive architect, though one whose influence can only occasionally be traced in America in Milwaukee and in New York and not at all as far as I know in Europe, was Alexander Thomson.”^[2]

Thomson was born in the village of Balfron in Stirlingshire. The son of a bookkeeper, he was one of seventeen children. Orphaned at 13 he was eventually apprenticed to Glasgow architect Robert Foote, ultimately gaining a place in the office of John Baird as a draughtsman. In 1848 Thomson set up his own practice Baird & Thomson that lasted 9 years. In 1857 he entered into practice with his brother George where he was to enjoy the most productive years of his life. He served as president of both the Glasgow Architectural Society and the Glasgow Institute of Architects. He was an elder of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland and his deep religious convictions informed his work. There is a strong suggestion that he closely identified Solomon’s temple with the plan of the Greek basilica.

He produced a diverse range of buildings including homes, warehouses and churches. Of the latter of these, Hitchcock stated “[Thomson has built] three of the finest Romantic Classical churches in the world”.^[3] Thomson developed his own highly idiosyncratic style from Greek, Egyptian and Levantine sources and freely adapted them to the needs of the modern city. Later in his career he would abandon his eclecticism and adopt the purely Ionic Greek style for which he is best known, as such he is perhaps the last in a continuous tradition of British Greek Revival architects.

Thomson's published writings include the Haldane lectures on the history of architecture (1874) and the Inquiry as to the Appropriateness of the Gothic Style for the Proposed building for the University of Glasgow (1866) which attempted to refute Ruskin and Pugin’s claims for the superiority of Gothic.

Thomson was perhaps the pre-eminent architect of his era in Glasgow, yet his buildings and his reputation have been largely neglected since his death. Of his three most important churches only one is intact, one is demolished and the other a ruin.

[edit] Bibliography

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Alexander Thomson

"Greek" Thomson, Ed. Gavin Stamp and Sam McKinstry, Edinburgh UP,1994
Architecture of Glasgow, Andor Gomme and David Walker, Lund, 1987, 2nd. ed.
Early Victorian Architecture in Britain Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Yale, 1954
The Life and Work of Alexander Thomson, Ronald MacFadzean, London, 1979
Alexander "Greek" Thomson, Gavin Stamp, 1999
The Greek Revival, J Mourdant Crook, 1972.

[edit] Notes

^ Andrew MacMillan in "Greek" Thomson, Stamp et al., p.207
^ Letter by Hitchcock published in the Glasgow Herald, 4 March 1966, on the occasion of the proposed demolition by the City council of the Caledonia Road Church
^ H.R. Hitchcock, Architecture:Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 1963, p.63