Maginnis & Walsh

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Maginnis & Walsh is an architecture firm started by Charles Donagh Maginnis and Timothy Walsh in 1905. It was known for its innovative design of churches in Boston in the first half of the twentieth century. Maginnis was born in Derry, Ireland (now Northern Ireland). He emigrated to Boston at age 18 and got his first job apprenticing for architect Edmund M. Wheelwright as a draftsman. Influenced by the work of modern architect Ralph Adams Cram, Maginnis became a distinguished Gothic architect and an articulate writer and orator on the role of architecture in society.

In the Boston area he built St. Catherine's Church in Somerville, Massachusetts regarded as a masterpiece, and St. Aidan's in Brookline, Massachusetts where he was a parishioner along with the Kennedy family and other prominent Irish-Americans. St. Aidan's, the location of the christening of John F. Kennedy, has since been closed and may be converted into housing in the near future. The firm also designed Our Lady of the Presentation Catholic Church in the Oak Square neighborhood of the Brighton section of Boston. That church was also closed by the Archdiocese of Boston in 2005, but it has not yet been converted to another use. In 1909 Maginnis & Walsh won the bid to build the new campus of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts and he built Emmanuel College in the Fens area of Boston, Massachusettsin 1914. Maginnis also designed the chancel at Trinity Church in Copley Square and the high altar at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. In 1948 Maginnis received the Gold Medal for "outstanding service to American architecture," the highest award in the profession. He died in 1955.

The Maginnis and Walsh collection at the Boston Public Library contains work of the architectural firm from 1913 to 1952.