Folk make many attempts to get closer to architecture– taking photographs, painstakingly restoring buildings, scouring the archives– yet in the end, we often focus on the creator, since we can apprehend the person more easily than the process of creation.
The story of Pirie and Clyne's partnership draws on the elements of a Victorian melodrama: precocious genius, an influential patron, a creative axis, then a tragically young death which left behind an undocumented legacy. It's also fair to say that if they had been in practice in Edinburgh or Glasgow, their work would have been more widely published, and far better known. As it is, few beyond Aberdeen have heard of the practice's creative force, John Bridgeford Pirie, or know of his masterpieces at No.50 Queen's Road and Queen's Cross Kirk.
Pirie was born in 1851, and his first quality was the gift of timing: he was an aspiring ecclesiastical architect born into a boom of kirk building. The son of a sea captain, he attended Ledingham's Academy in Aberdeen, then served his articles with the practice of local architect Alexander Ellis. In the incestuous world of Scottish architecture, Ellis's partner Robert Wilson had in turn worked for the famous Glasgow architect, "Greek" Thomson. Pirie would later be influenced by Thomson's work, which he came across when he worked for David Bryce, for whom he travelled throughout Scotland to supervise country houses under construction. Pirie's future business partner, Arthur Clyne, became an assistant to the great Andrew Heiton in Perth: Andrew Heiton (father and son) were Perth architects who designed much of Tay Street in their native city, and palaces for nearby Dundee's jute baronsÉ and Heiton senior was a pupil of David Bryce.
In 1877, Pirie set up in practice in his own right in Aberdeen, and his earliest known work is the fountain in Victoria Park, designed before he formed a partnership with Clyne. Following a well-worn path to gaining commissions, Pirie entered design competitions, and the resulting three major kirk commissions made his reputation: the first being Fraserburgh South Kirk, of around 1878; the last being Millbrex Kirk, near Fyvie, of 1881–82, and in between the two, Queen's Cross Kirk in Aberdeen. Queen's Cross was won in competition in 1879, and it's worth noting that Pirie was around 28 years old when he entered the contest: nowadays, this fact alone would mark him out as being exceptional. Architects may make their mark, but it habitually takes thirty or forty years in practice for them to ditch their influences; to recognise the superfluous and then purge it; to find their own voice, then make it say something. There are exceptions to this rule– but not many. Pirie's early work has an assurance which shows that even then his ideas were well developed, underlining his precocious talent.
Aberdeen's Carden Place was feued and laid out in 1860's, with St. Mary's Episcopal Kirk– the cute, polychromatic Tartan Kirkie– designed by Alexander Ellis, being one of the first buildings. However, the new tabernacle for the Free Kirk has an entirely different expression, because it had a different job to do. The scale of Queen's Cross is symbolic of the Free Kirk's challenge to the Established Kirk: coming after the schism of the 1840's, the Free Kirk's building programme was vigorous. The congregation's financial muscle was also an important factor: the kirk was built on a prominent, and therefore, expensive gushet site. The competition brief stipulated that, "the buildings shall be of the best Aberdeen or Kemnay granite," and right enough, the kirk was built using the silver granite from Paradise Hill, which lent itself to the sharpest and most inventive detailing in Aberdeen.
John Morgan was the master mason who carried out the building work at Queen's Cross. His hallmark was to blend the white Kemnay and pink Corrennie granites, as on the western entrance front to the kirk. Morgan acted as both building contractor and developer-client, for whom Pirie & Clyne later built Argyll Place, Hamilton Place and Morgan's own house at No.50 Queen's Road. Interestingly, it seems that Morgan was an inspiration as well as a source of work: his influence on Pirie may even have been greater than Arthur Clyne's, since Morgan introduced Pirie to the writings of John Ruskin, the architectural philosopher who inspired the Arts & Crafts movement. Morgan travelled widely, with his grand tours taking in both Europe and North America: it is known that Pirie joined him on his trips around Britain, although not necessarily to Montreal and Boston.
Art historians may call it French Gothic, but Queen's Cross United Free Kirk is actually a powerful piece of Freestyle architecture of the ilk which emerged in the High Victorian era of the 1880's and 1890's. The strong verticals of the spire, with tall lancet windows in its lower, square section are certainly Gothic; there is a touch of the Classical orders in the tiers of colonnades at the head of the spire; but the details are inspired by plants, with an organic freedom which anticipated Art Nouveau architecture Freestyle is marked by the freedom to interpret everything which has gone before and a creative licence to invent new forms– thus the marked originality of the Kirk Hall to the east which shows clear Art Nouveau characteristics.
The planning and organisation of Pirie's galleried kirks is, literally, orthodox: but the details show a powerful originality. The Art Nouveau aspects of the kirk are perhaps its most unexpected quality: the extraordinary keystones above the side door on Albyn Place, effectively voussoirs with sinuous, interlocking sides, are unlike anything else in Scotland. The quotation carved into the masonry above the door screen on the west front, "God is Light", shows off a particularly fluid style of lettering which is also highly unusual for a Presbyterian kirk. You would expect to see it, instead, on a Parisian Metro station. The muscular, battered walls relate to Scots and Continental prototypes, hinting at the tapering planes of both Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Viennese Secession. The wooden-coffered roof, however, has more traditional Scots precedents, and is certainly of its time.
The new kirk opened in April 1881, by which time Pirie had formed a partnership with Clyne; sadly, its interior has not been preserved: it was gutted on the kirk's centenary and although the iron-framed gallery is still intact, the pews designed by Pirie, the tiled floor, and the timber-lined walls which were once a natural honey colour, have all disappeared. The body of the kirk today is far removed from John Pirie's intentions: it is believed that several of his buildings originally had colourful, painted interiors, with the pinks and golds and blues which also featured in "Greek" Thomson's work.
A mark of Pirie's architectural confidence is the genesis of a consistent and developing language which he applied throughout his career: to Argyll Place and Crescent through 1880–85; Macduff Town Hall of 1884; Hamilton Place from 1884–91, plus No.50 Queens Road, designed in 1885 and completed in 1886. Pirie later came third in competition with his entry for Aberdeen Free Library in 1889, but the house at No.50 was his second masterpiece. This house, which John Morgan built for his family in 1887, became the embodiment of both Pirie and Morgan's ideas on architectural form and detail.
Again, it is not a pure Gothic building, as sometimes described– although it embodies elements of both fairytale castle and Hammer Horror mansion– but a hybrid of Scots Baronial, especially in the pepperpot turret; Franco-Gothic in the arched portal of the entrance; and the Greek orders, in the handling of the east faŤade with its clerestorey windows punched through the masonry to form a lantern at the head of the main stair. The library is the heart of the house, since it contained Morgan's collection of fine bindings: he was a bibliophile, and no doubt, Morgan discussed the thesis of the art and architecture books at length with Pirie.
One quality which sets Pirie's work apart from anything else in Aberdeen is the way he handles scale and proportion. As an example, the Queen's Cross Kirk spire has a colonnade composed of squat, fat columns which look as if they have been deliberately foreshortened, both to toy with the laws of perspective, and to counterpoint the slender proportions of the tower itself. At No.50 Queen's Road, Morgan's House, the pepperpot turret appears far too large for the wall it grows from: yet this disjunction of scale gives it a dynamic, brute power where it could just have looked clumsy or overwhelming. It relies on the rest of the composition to balance its effect. The only other contemporary architects to play this clever game were the Americans Frank Furness and Henry Richardson.
As Salvador Dali pointed out, to be original literally means to return to origins, and Pirie's motifs went straight back to the sources which Art Nouveau would later draw upon. The navel-like patera could be seen as a stylised rose, or sunflower, or perhaps a daffodil. This circular disc with a raised centre appears in almost every one of Pirie's buildings, including No.50 Queen's Road, and even the doors leading from the Queen's Cross porch into the kirk have chamfered edges which are ornamented with tiny paterae. His decorative motifs also extended to the iron sunflowers which crop up in his terraces: both Argyll and Hamilton Terraces have sunflower finials on their roofs, and South Kirk in Fraserburgh has a delicate gallery balustrade of ironwork daffodils.
No.50 was a true one-off which Pirie never surpassed: coming only a few years later, his memorial to James Saint in Allenvale Cemetery was to be Pirie's last work, and according to his obituary, "its execution relieved many an hour of illness, and not improbably, the dying architect may have felt it to be his last work, so made it his best." At a tragically young age, Pirie contracted tuberculosis and died of consumption in 1892: his inspiration was also to play a r™le at the end of his life. As John Morgan said of Pirie in his Memoirs, "He died early in years, yet he left abiding memories of his taste, still, and genius, and it gives some idea of his influence when one finds some of his details all over the town." In fact, Pirie died a poor man– despite having run an apparently successful practice– and he was such a bad risk that he found it impossible to obtain life assurance. He left behind a young widow and five orphaned children for whom John Morgan raised money after Pirie's death.
You can only wonder at what might have been, had Pirie lived longer. Arthur Clyne carried on the practice, but unlike St Palladius' Kirk at Drumtochty– which was built in 1885 and attributed to Clyne, although it arguably owes a great deal to his former partner– his later work looked back to medieval prototypes for inspiration. As is often the case, the two men perhaps took differing roles in the practice: Pirie was the creative engine, Clyne was the job-getter and office manager.
Published only once during his lifetime, in the long defunct Building News, Pirie and Clyne's work has been neglected since then, with one student thesis many years ago being the only research carried out on his buildings. This seems extraordinary, for the simple reason that even architects visiting from other countries immediately recognise something unique. Perhaps Pirie is outside the Scottish mainstream because Victorian Aberdeen is seen as being provincial, and his proto-Art Nouveau is bold and unusual enough to be outwith any defined movement. However, publication is important for your reputation: when you're alive, it leads to new work and peer recognition; but posthumously, you are nobody until someone has published articles and books about you.
In Pirie and Clyne's case, even a small insight can bring you closer to this unique Art Nouveau in granite.
