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Six Villas by James Salmon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Frank A. Walker
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Extract

To suggest that the architectural reputation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh rests on one major building, the Glasgow School of Art, and two remarkable houses, is perhaps glib. Yet Mackintosh's contribution to the urban streetscape was minimal — and this in a city of the most densely agglomerated mercantile facades. Seldom did he find the kind of munificent commercial patronage so frequently enjoyed, for example, by Thompson, Honeyman or Burnet. But while Mackintosh's street buildings have been few and little remarked (pace those who have recently so delightfully restored the Willow Tea Rooms in Sauchiehall Street) a visit to one or other of his country houses has long been something of an architectural pilgrimage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 25 , 1982 , pp. 114 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1982

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References

Notes

1 Neither Salmon nor his partner Gillespie, has been much studied. Easily the best paper is ‘The Partnership of James Salmon and John Gaff Gillespie’, by David Walker ( Service, A., Edwardian Architecture and its Origins, London, 1975)Google Scholar, to whom I am most grateful for help. Salmon’s houses are, however, only briefly dealt with there, in a single paragraph.

2 The various Kilmacolm commissions of Salmon, Son & Gillespie, with the exception of Rowan-treehill, are documented in the Register of New Buildings, County of Renfrew-Lower District, now held in the records of the Building Authority of Renfrew District Council, Paisley.

3 Pevsner, N., The Englishness of English Art (Harmondsworth, 1976), p. 145.Google Scholar

4 For a discussion of the former see Simpson, D., ‘Beautiful Tudor’, The Architectural Review, July 1977, pp. 29–36 Google Scholar; the latter phrase is Pevsner’s, op. cit., p. 195.

5 McNab, W. H., ‘William Leiper, RSA, JP’, obituary article in Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 26 August 1916, p. 304 Google Scholar.

6 The Builders’ journal and Architectural Engineer, 10 April 1907; see also The Studio Year Book (1907), PP. (74–74).

7 Howarth, T., Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Modern Movement, (London, 1977), p. 101 Google Scholar; Howarth wrongly describes this elevation as facing south.

8 The Builders’ Journal and Architectural Engineer, 28 November 1906; 30 January 1907; 25 March 1908.

9 The Builders’ Journal and Architectural Engineer, 27 November 1907. It is perhaps significant that Salmon’s partner J. Gaff Gillespie drew the illustration for this report.

10 The Architectural Review, 1903, pp. 195–96 Google ScholarPubMed.

11 So described on the drawings submitted for Building Warrant, 30 November, 1905, Register of New Buildings, County of Renfrew-Lower District, no. 425.

12 Nicoli, J. B., Domestic Architecture in Scotland, (Aberdeen, 1908), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar, illustrates plans of the completed house together with Salmon’s perspective sketch. See also The Studio Year Book of Decorative Art (London, 1912), p. 65 Google Scholar, for two early photographic views.

13 Walker, D., “The Partnership of James Salmon and John Gaff Gillespie’ in A. Service, op. cit., p. 245 Google Scholar.

14 The Bailie, 23 January 1918, p. 3 Google ScholarPubMed.

15 Venturi, R., Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York, 1968), p. 54.Google Scholar

16 The stepped fenestration of the staircase on the east side of the house was probably not without precedent. In 1906 The Studio published a photograph of a villa at Gutenstein in Lower Austria by Wagner student Wunibald Deininger with exactly this treatment.

17 Quoted in Collins, P., Concrete, The Vision of a New Architecture (London, 1959), p. 83 Google Scholar. Just how absurd Salmon’s interpretation of this relationship could be, however, is shown by his later entry for the Chicago Tribune tower competition; but then, he was not alone in treating this opportunity as an excuse for flights of fancy.

18 Le Corbusier quoted in Jencks, C., Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture (London, 1973), p. 31 Google Scholar.

19 The British Architect, 25 June 1909.

20 Muthesius, H., The English House (London, 1979) (English translation of 1904–05 publication), p. 52.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., p. 54.

22 Ibid.

23 R. Burns, ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’.