John Bradshaw Gass

John Bradshaw Gass (18 June 1855 to 3 July 1939) British Architect and Artist. Gass was a nephew of J. J. Bradshaw, the founder of Bradshaw Gass & Hope. He received the Ashbury Prize for Civil Engineering at Owens College (later Manchester University). He assisted Sir Ernest George in London before, in 1880, becoming a pupil of his uncle in Bolton. When Gass became a partner, in 1882, the firm adopted the style Bradshaw & Gass.

Like Sir Edwin Lutyens, another Traditionalist and pupil of Ernest George, Gass designed country houses in period and vernacular styles. Gass designed the Methodist College (1917-25) at Medak, India, which, like Lutyens’ work at New Delhi, is organised in the Grand Manner around a central axis.

Gass was a keen watercolour artist and first exhibited his work at the Royal Academy in 1879. In later life, when he had less architectural input at Bradshaw Gass & Hope, Gass frequently travelled and filled more than twenty albums with his sketches of North Africa and Asia.

References

* James R. Adamson, “John Bradshaw Gass” [obituary] , "RIBA Journal", 46 (1939), pp. 952-3.
* A. Stuart Gray, (1985) "Edwardian Architecture, A Biographical Dictionary", ISBN 0 7156 2141 6.
* Austen Redman (2007), "Bolton Civic Centre and the Classical Revival Style of Bradshaw Gass & Hope" in Clare Hartwell & Terry Wyke (editors), "Making Manchester", Lancashire & Cheshire Antiquarian Society, ISBN 978-0-900942-01-3