James Gandon

Training under William Chambers is recorded. Thomas Malton is recorded as having studied under James Gandon. The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are Ireland. Work by James Gandon is recorded in the collections of Yale Center for British Art and Print Collection.

• Name — James Gandon • Born — 20 February 1743 • Birthplace — New Bond Street, London • Died — 24 December 1832 • Place of death — Lucan, Dublin • Resting Place — Drumcondra Church, Drumcondra • Occupation — Architect • Known for — Designing the Four Courts, The Custom House and King's Inns

Gandon was born on 20 February 1742 in New Bond Street, London, at the house of his grandfather Peter Gandon, a French Huguenot refugee. He was the only son of Peter Gandon (b. 1713), a gunmaker, and Jane Burchall (possibly née Wynne). From 1749 he was educated at Shipley's Drawing Academy where he 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 Hellier's estate at the Wodehouse, near Wombourne. Gandon's new practice, whilst successful, always remained small. In about 1769 he entered an architectural competition to design the new Royal Exchange in Dublin. The plan eventually chosen was by Thomas Cooley. However, Gandon's design came second and brought him to the attention of the politicians who were overseeing the large-scale redevelopment of Dublin, one of the largest cities in Europe at the time. 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 John Woolfe on two 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. In 1771 he was paid five guineas ″To making of a design of a Theater at Wynnstay″ He was also paid nine guineas for giving ″36 Lessons in Architecture″ to Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. The Theatre was converted from a huge kitchen which had been built for the stupendous Coming of Age Celebrations of Sir Watkin in that year and was used from 1771 until Sir Watkin died. The British Library has a drawing of the Theatre which was used for an admission ticket for a performance which belonged to King George III.

• Illustration — Gandon's home was located at 7 Mecklenburgh Street, 6th from left in this photo from 1913. • Illustration — James Gandon and Family by Paul Sandby (1780). • Illustration — The south facade of the James Gandon Custom House by night In 1780 Gandon declined an invitation from a member of the Romanov family to work in St. Petersburg but in 1781, at the age of 38, he accepted an invitation to Ireland from Lord Carlow and John Beresford (the Revenue Commissioner for Ireland) to supervise the construction of the new Custom House in Dublin. Thomas Cooley, the original architect on that project, had died and Gandon was chosen to assume complete control. Gandon employed the sculptor Edward Smyth to work on the Custom House and all of his Dublin buildings. The new Custom House was unpopular with Dublin Corporation and some city merchants who complained that it moved the axis of the city, would leave little room for shipping, and it was being built on what at the time was a swamp. It is said that the Irish people were so opposed to the Custom House and its associated taxes that Beresford had to smuggle Gandon into the country and keep him hidden in his own home for the first three months. The project was eventually completed at a cost of £200,000, an enormous sum at the time. • Illustration — The 'House of Lord's Entrance' part of Gandon's extension to Edward Lovett Pearce's Irish Houses of Parliament. The great portico is flanked by a curved screen wall This conspicuous commission proved to be the turning point in Gandon's career and Dublin was to become Gandon's home and its architecture his "raison d'etre" for the remainder of his life. He took a house in Mecklenburgh Street (now Railway Street), that he might be near the residence of John Beresford at Tyrone House, the main proponent for the development of the city. The 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 popularised in the city by Edward Lovett Pearce and Richard Cassels. 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.

• Illustration — The King's Inn, Dublin, 1800–1808, later completed by Francis Johnston Gandon's other works in the city included: • The Four Courts of 1786, • The centre portion of King's Inns Henrietta Street begun in 1795 and completed in 1816 by his pupil Henry Aaron Baker, • The improvement of the Rotunda Assembly rooms 1786. Gandon's least well known building in Dublin is his Royal Military Infirmary of 1787 on Infirmary Road. He worked for the Wide Street Commissioners and designed the facades for the shops at ground floor of D'Olier Street, Burgh Quay and some surrounding streets. One of his most prestigious commissions, which came in 1785, was to extend Pearce's monumental Houses of Parliament, for which he built the (well known today) curved screen wall which links his new corinthian portico for the House of Lords facing College Street to Pearce's original building. This building is now the Bank of Ireland. • Illustration — The Four Courts by James Gandon His work in Ireland was not confined to Dublin, nor to civic and municipal commissions. In 1784 he designed the new courthouse and Gaol in Broad Street (Demolished) in Waterford; and he also worked on many private houses, including Abbeville, Dublin which he designed for John Beresford in 1792, Emsworth, Malahide, County Dublin in 1794 for James Woodmason, a London stationer who became involved in banking in Dublin, and Sandymount or Roslyn Park for the painter William Ashford. In County Laois, he designed Emo Court, County Laois in 1790–96 for the Earl of Portarlington, and also Coolbanagher Church of Ireland Church just outside Emo village. His town planning work included creating a new setting for the Custom House with a curved terrace of townhouses at Beresford Place, Dublin, and the New Geneva town in County Waterford which was never completed. He designed a number of buildings including walled gardens, and farm buildings at Carriglass just outside Longford Town.

James Gandon is recorded as architect and watercolorist. Formation and teaching. He trained under William Chambers. Each of those relationships is stated by the authority record rather than inferred from style.