James Gandon

James Gandon (1743 – 1823) is today recognised as one of the leading architects to have worked in Ireland in the late 18th century and early 19th century. His better known works include The Custom House, the Four Courts and lastly King's Inns in Dublin.

Early life

Gandon, born in 1743 in London, was of French Huguenot descent. From 1749 he was educated at Shipley's Drawing Academy; [This prestigious school founded by William Shipley later became the London Art School.] here Gandon studied the classics, mathematics, arts and architecture. On leaving the drawing academy he was articled to study architecture in the office of Sir William Chambers, Chambers was an advocate of the neoclassical evolution of Palladian architecture, although he later made designs in the Gothic Revival style. However, it was Chambers's palladian and neoclassical concepts which most influenced the young Gandon.

In 1765, Gandon left William Chambers to begin practice on his own. His first commission was on Sir Samuel Hillier's Wolverhampton estate. Gandon's new practice, whilst successful, always remained small. Circa 1769 he entered an architectural competition to design the new Royal Exchange in Dublin. The plan chosen was by Thomas Cooley. However, Gandon's design was selected as second, hence, this competition brought him to the attention of the politicians planning to redesign Dublin. During the following years in England, Gandon was responsible for the design of the County Hall in Nottingham. Between 1769 and 1771, he collaborated with J Woolfe on 2 additional volumes of Vitruvius Britannicus, a book of plans and drawings of Palladian revival buildings by such architects as Inigo Jones and Colen Campbell. During his English career he was awarded the Gold medal for architecture by the Royal Academy, London in 1768.

Designing The Custom House

Declining an invitation to work in St. Petersburg from a member of the Romanov family, Gandon, aged 38 in 1781, accepted an invitation to Ireland from Lord Carlow and John Beresford to supervise the construction of the new Custom House, Dublin. The original architect Thomas Cooley (who had narrowly beaten Gandon in the competition to design The Royal Exchange) had died and Gandon was chosen to assume complete control for building and revising the plans. It is said that so opposed to the Custom House and its associated taxes were the Irish people that Beresford (the Revenue Commissioner) had to smuggle Gandon into the country, and then keep him hidden in his own home for three months.

This conspicuous commission, however, proved to be the great turning point in Gandon's career. Dublin was to become Gandon's home, and its architecture his "raison d'etre" for the remainder of his life. This city, which in Gandon's lifetime was to grow to become the fifth largest city in Europe, was undergoing vast expansion, mostly following the Palladian and neoclassical designs already popularized in the city by Edward Lovett Pearce and Richard Cassels. Unfortunately though, for Gandon, so hated was the symbolism of the Custom House that the stigma of being its creator was to taint the appreciation of his work throughout his lifetime.

A further reason the new Custom House was unpopular, this time among the city councillors was that it moved the axis of the city. The newly formed Wide Streets Commission employed Gandon to design a new aristocratic enclave in the vicinity of Mountjoy Square and Gardiner Street. The new classical terraces of large residences became the Town houses of members of the newly built and imposing Irish Houses of Parliament situated in College Green south of the river. Gandon also designed Carlisle Bridge (now O'Connell Bridge) over the River Liffey to join the north and south areas of the city.

Other Irish works

Gandon's other works in the city included: The Four Courts, the King's Inns begun in 1795 and completed in 1816 by his pupil Henry Aaron Baker, the Rotunda Assembly rooms, as well as many other buildings in College Green and Trinity College. One of his most prestigious commissions, which came in 1785, was to extend Pearce's monumental Houses of Parliament. He also built the (well known today) curved screen wall which links his extension to Pearce's original building. This building is now the Bank of Ireland. His work was not strictly confined to Dublin though. In 1784 he had designed the new courthouse in Waterford. In addition to Gandon's civic and municipal commissions, he also worked on many private houses, in 1792 he designed Abbeville, Malahide, Dublin for John Beresford.

Criticism and decline

The success of his design and commissions were however not reflected in personal popularity: he attracted huge criticism from his enemies. It was even claimed Gandon was designing buildings to boost his self-esteem. In the 1780s, during the construction of the Four Courts, one broadsheet published daily letters from a correspondent castigating and insulting Gandon and his designs. This further fostered the hate directed against him. In truth Gandon had merely rediscovered what architects from Vitruvius to Thomas Jefferson believed, which was that the Palladian form was eminently suitable for the design of public buildings where huge civic prestige was required.

In 1798, revolution broke out on the streets of Ireland, Gandon, an unpopular figure, hurriedly fled to London. On returning to Dublin he found a much changed city. The Irish Houses of Parliament, which had inspired the great period of development, were closed. The 1801 Act of Union had placed Ireland directly under rule from London. One by one the Anglo-Irish aristocracy left their fine new town houses in the city. As a direct result Dublin declined from being one of the great cities of Europe.

Gandon had married Eleanor Smullen in 1770; sadly, he was widowed shortly after his invitation to Dublin, but while they were in London the couple had six children. James Gandon died in 1823 at his home in Lucan, Dublin, having spent forty-two years in the city. He was buried at Drumcondra. It seems that already by the time of his death his reputation was undergoing a re-evaluation, for his tomb-stone reads: - "Such was the respect in which Gandon was held by his neighbours and friends from around his home in Lucan that they refused carriages and walked the 16 miles to and from Drumcondra on the day of his funeral"."

In the years since his death, Ireland's troubled history has resulted in destruction and damage to much of Gandon's work. The Custom House was shelled in 1921 during the War of Independence and rebuilt using a darker shade of homegrown limestone. The Four Courts was burned by Republican forces during the Civil War in 1922 and, even though it was later rebuilt, much of Gandon's original work is gone and the interior can today only be appreciated from his original drawings. Yet despite this, the stamp of his work is still clearly visible in Georgian Dublin today.

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