Maginnis & Walsh was a Boston-based architecture firm started by Charles Donagh Maginnis and Timothy Francis Walsh in 1905. It was known for its innovative design of churches in Boston in the first half of the 20th century.
Maginnis was born January 7, 1867, in Derry, 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 1948, Maginnis received the AIA Gold Medal for "outstanding service to American architecture," the highest award in the profession. He died in 1955 at the age of 88 in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Timothy Francis Walsh was born in 1868 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He attended The English High School in Boston, and worked as a draftsman for Peabody and Stearns from 1887 to 1893, when he left to study in Europe. Walsh returned to Boston in 1895 and went into business as Walsh & Kearns. He worked as a solo practitioner in 1896 and 1897, and 1898 went into partnership with Charles Donagh Maginnis and Matthew Sullivan. He died on July 7, 1934, at the age of 66 in North Scituate, Massachusetts.[1]
Matthew Sullivan was born in Boston and trained in the office of Edmund M. Wheelwright, Boston City Architect (1891-1894). Sullivan succeeded Wheelwright as City Architect and served in that position from 1895 to 1901, when he became a junior partner in the firm of Maginnis, Walsh and Sullivan, which was widely known for its ecclesiastical work. He withdrew from that partnership to carry on work independently in 1906.
Between the firm's founding in 1898 and the death of Timothy Walsh in 1934, the firm is credited with over 115 ecclesiastical works. The Maginnis and Walsh collection at the Boston Public Library contains work of the architectural firm from 1913 to 1952.
Eugene F. Kennedy Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on January 31, 1904, to Eugene F. Kennedy Sr. and Anna T. Lee. The family had moved to the Boston area by 1910. In 1924, he was awarded the Rotch Traveling Scholarship, established by architect Arthur Rotch to provide an American student of architecture a minimum of eight months study and travel abroad.[2] Kennedy joined M&W in 1926, and married Carol Gertrude Fox (1903-1975) in 1928. He became a senior partner in the firm in 1941, which became known as Maginnis and Walsh and Kennedy. Kennedy died November 7, 1986, in Jamaica Plain, Boston.[3]
St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Whitinsville, Massachusetts, Diocese of Worcester (1898). (very influential, referred to as the 'Concord Bridge' of Catholic church architecture, Maginnis' first church).[4]
St. John the Evangelist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts: The church was built in 1904, largely built by Irish immigrants. House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill, was a lifelong parishioner.[5] Modeled after a 12th-century Lombardo-Romanesque basilica, of four gold medals awarded to Maginnis, Walsh and Sullivan from the American Institute of Architects, one was for St. John's. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Los Angeles: The Mission Revival style church was built in 1904. The Los Angeles Times, said, "In its character this church unites itself with the days of the humble followers of St. Francis, as it is the same form and the same faith, is to a great degree of the same style of architecture and is carried on by the same authority as that of the olden days."[6]
Now a neighborhood of Boston, Brighton was a farming community just northwest of the city. The farms became estates, the estates came into the possession of religious institutes. M&W had a number of commissions in Brighton.
The Convent of the Sisters of the Cenacle in Brighton was built in 1911. The building now houses the EF Language Institute.
In 1908, the Passionist Fathers purchased the David Nevins Estate in Brighton and built St. Gabriel's Monastery. In 1927, M&W was engaged to design a church to replace the chapel.[9] St. Gabriel's is in the Renaissance Revival architecture style, constructed of buff-colored brick with cast stone accents and red mission tile roof. Due to personnel shortages, the monastery closed in 1978; St. Gabriel's Parish Church in 2006.[10] In 2017 plans were approved to convert the monastery property into a combination of condominiums and apartments, largely geared to graduate students. The plan also has an affordable housing component. St. Gabriel's Church is to be retained and renovated as a community center.
In the Boston area, the firm built St. Catherine of Genoa Church on Spring Hill in Somerville, Massachusetts, regarded as a masterpiece. St. Catherine's, was begun in 1907 and completed in 1921. In July 2019, St. Catherine's. St. Ann's, and St. Thomas merged to form Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin Parish; masses are still scheduled at St. Catherine's.[11]
In 1914, the firm designed the administration building of Emmanuel College. Located in the Fens area of Boston, it was founded by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and opened in 1919 as the first women's Catholic college in New England. For thirty years, it was the only building on campus.[12]
The firm also designed St. Edward's church in Brockton, Massachusetts, in 1914.[13] St. Edward's Church was founded in 1915, and merged with St. Nicholas Church in Abington, Massachusetts, in 2003, with the combined parish being renamed St. Edith Stein. St. Edith Stein parish bears striking resemblance to Ascension of Our Lord Church in Montreal, Canada, which is another church designed by the firm.[14][15][circular reference]
The Church of Ascension of Our Lord was built between 1927 and 1928, for the English-speaking Roman Catholic population in Westmount municipality of Montreal, Canada, on land originally belonging to the Grey Nuns. It was designed by Maginnis & Walsh of Boston, with Edward J. Turcotte of Montreal as Associate Architect. Its architect, Maginnis & Walsh was “based in Boston and was considered the foremost specialist in Catholic ecclesiastical architecture of the period. The church is built on a monumental scale. Although its architectural style looks to the Gothic churches of Europe, its construction was modern for the period: a steel frame, encased in brick or concrete and clad in Montreal limestone, with Berea sandstone trim. The plan is a conventional Latin cross, the intersection of the nave and the transepts marked by an imposing bell tower. The front façade, facing Sherbrooke Street, is dominated by a gabled wall, flanked by shallow buttresses. Three lancet windows surmount a secondary, projecting gable, which contains the central entrance.”[16] Ascension of Our Lord Church's design may be based on or influenced by the firm's 1914 design of St. Edward's Church (now St. Edith Stein Church) in Brockton, MA.[14][15][circular reference]
In 1929 the firm designed Our Lady of Sorrows Church in South Orange, New Jersey, in the French Gothic style, to replace the 1889 St Mary's.[17]
Maginnis & Walsh won the bid to build the new campus of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Designed by Maginnis, in 1908, the Boston College campus is a seminal example of Collegiate Gothic architecture. Combining Gothic Revival architecture with principles of Beaux-Arts planning, Maginnis proposed a vast complex of academic buildings set in a cruciform plan. The design suggested an enormous outdoor cathedral, with the long entry drive at the "nave," the main quadrangle at the "apse" and secondary quadrangles at the "transepts."
Maginnis's design broke from the traditional Oxbridge models that had inspired it, and that had until then characterized Gothic architecture on American campuses. At the "crossing", Maginnis placed the university's main building. Using stone quarried on the site, the building was constructed at the highest point on Chestnut Hill, commanding a view of the surrounding landscape and the city to the east. In its unprecedented scale, Gasson Tower was conceived not as the belfry of a singular building, but as the crowning campanile of Maginnis' new "city upon a hill". Dominated by a soaring 200-foot bell tower, Recitation Hall was known simply as the "Tower Building" when it finally opened in 1913. Gasson Hall is credited for the typology of dominant Gothic towers in subsequent campus designs, including those at Princeton University (Cleveland Tower, 1913–1917), Yale University (Harkness Tower, 1917–1921), and Duke University (Chapel Tower, 1930–1935).
Although Maginnis' ambitious Gothic project never saw full completion due to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, its central portion was built according to plan and forms the core of what is now Boston College's middle campus. According to Boston College historian, Fr. Charles F. Donovan, Gasson Hall (1913), the signature building of Boston College, St. Mary's Hall and Chapel (1917), Devlin Hall (1924), and Bapst Library (commissioned 1922, completed 1928), called the "finest example of Collegiate Gothic architecture in America"), are the "original architectural gems" of the campus.[18]
In 1926, the Devlin Hall science building won the Harleston Parker Medal for "most beautiful building in Boston". M&W also built Fulton Hall (1948), Lyons Hall (1951), St. Thomas More Hall (1954 -demolished 2014), and Campion (1955).[19]
The firm also built St. Aidan's Church in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1911, where Maginnis was a parishioner and where former U.S. President John F. Kennedy was christened; St. Aidan's, has since been closed and converted to housing.
Maginnis and Walsh and Kennedy (1941–1956)
Maginnis designed the bronze doors at St. Patrick's Cathedral to replace the original wooden ones. Each 16 1/2-foot by 5 1/2-foot door weighs 9,200 pounds and is decorated with sculptures of saints created by John Angel. The doors were blessed by Cardinal Spellman and opened for the first time just before Christmas 1949. In 2013, the doors underwent a major conservation and restoration.[20]
Maginnis and Walsh were the original architects for St. Julia Church, in Weston, Massachusetts, in 1919. The firm returned in 1961 to design an addition to the back of St. Julia Church to increase seating capacity.[21]
References to "Children's Hospital" are found in "[Boston] City Auditor's of the Receipts and Expenses" Reports (1912–1913, 1913–1914, 1914–1915); and the "Documents City of Boston, For The Year 1914."
Uncertain if this facility is within the "Boston Consumptives Hospital" campus or a separate facility altogether.
Ralph Adams Cram was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partnerships in which he worked. Cram was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
Joseph Aloysius Hansom was a British architect working principally in the Gothic Revival style. He invented the Hansom cab and founded the eminent architectural journal The Builder in 1843.
John Francis Bentley was an English ecclesiastical architect whose most famous work is the Westminster Cathedral in London, England, built in a style heavily influenced by Byzantine architecture.
Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for college and high school buildings in the United States and Canada, and to a certain extent Europe. A form of historicist architecture, it took its inspiration from English Tudor and Gothic buildings. It has returned in the 21st century in the form of prominent new buildings at schools and universities including Cornell, Princeton, Vanderbilt, Washington University, and Yale.
Charles Donagh Maginnis was an Irish-American architect. He emigrated to Boston at age 18, trained as an architect and went on to form the firm Maginnis & Walsh, designing ecclesiastical and campus buildings across America. From 1937 to 1939, Maginnis held the office of President of the American Institute of Architects.
Romanesque Revival is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to feature more simplified arches and windows than their historic counterparts.
Edward Welby Pugin was an English architect, the eldest son of architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and Louisa Barton and part of the Pugin & Pugin family of church architects. His father was an architect and designer of Neo-Gothic architecture, and after his death in 1852 Edward took up his practice. At the time of his own early death in 1875, Pugin had designed and completed more than one hundred Catholic churches.
Patrick Charles Keely was an Irish-American architect based in Brooklyn, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island. He was a prolific designer of nearly 600 churches and hundreds of other institutional buildings for the Roman Catholic Church or Roman Catholic patrons in the eastern United States and Canada, particularly in New York City, Boston and Chicago in the later half of the 19th century. He designed every 19th-century Catholic cathedral in New England. Several other church and institutional architects began their careers in his firm.
Patrick W. Ford (1847–1900) was an Irish-American architect who, along with Patrick C. Keely of Brooklyn and James Murphy of Providence, Rhode Island designed many Roman Catholic churches built in the eastern part of United States through the latter half of the 19th century.
Edward T. P. Graham (1872–1964) was an American architect best known for his design of Roman Catholic churches in Boston, Massachusetts and throughout the Midwest.
Matthew Sullivan was an American architect whose practice specialized in ecclesiastical design.
Cram and Ferguson Architects is an architecture firm based in Concord, Massachusetts. The company was founded as a partnership in 1889 by the "preeminent American Ecclesiastical Gothicist" Ralph Adams Cram and Charles Francis Wentworth. In 1890 they were joined by Bertram Goodhue, who was made a partner in 1895.
The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, colloquially known as Saint Mary's Cathedral, is a historic church located in Fall River, Massachusetts. It is the cathedral and a parish church in the Diocese of Fall River. Built from 1852 to 1856, the cathedral and adjacent rectory were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, as St. Mary's Cathedral and Rectory. It is the oldest extant church building in the city of Fall River, and was one of the city's first Catholic parishes. The cathedral is dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus under the title of Our Lady of the Assumption.
Joseph William McCarthy, AIA, was an architect in the early 20th century most famous for his work on buildings for the Roman Catholic Church. He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on June 22, 1884, and attended Holy Innocents School in New York City until the 8th grade. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, and graduated from St. Gabriel High School in 1901 before entering the architecture firm of Daniel Burnham, a noted Chicago architect for whom he worked eight years. He then worked for two years with British-born Chicago church architect J.E.O. Pridmore before opening his own practice in 1911.
Robert J. Reiley, AIA, (1878–1961) was an American architect practicing in New York City in the early and mid twentieth century. He was particularly known as a designer of Catholic churches, schools, and hospitals in the Northeast USA.
Ambrose J. Murphy (1869–1949) was an American architect whose practice was based in Providence Rhode Island. He was a specialist in ecclesiastical work and, in a career that spanned over 40 years, designed many buildings for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence Rhode Island and Fall River Massachusetts.
Gonippo Raggi was an Italian artist who provided murals for many churches and church institutions in the United States.
Ethan Anthony is an American architect, author, and academic. As president of Cram and Ferguson Architects LLC, Anthony focuses on the design of the new Traditional American church architecture. During the last three decades, Anthony has designed numerous new traditional churches and interiors and has gained a national reputation for his work in liturgical architecture. His liturgical work can now be found in fifteen states.
Timothy Francis Walsh was an American architect and partner in the firm Maginnis, Walsh and Sullivan and Maginnis & Walsh who designed more than 115 ecclesiastical buildings and numerous university buildings over the course of his career.
↑ "Is Dedicated To St. Thomas: Solemnities of Opening of Fine New Church; Gathering of Catholics on Pico Heights". Los Angeles Times. February 20, 1905.
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