Gillespie, Kidd & Coia was a Scottish architectural firm famous for their application of modernism in churches and universities, as well as at St Peter's Seminary in Cardross. Though founded in 1927, they are best known for their work in the post-war period. The firm was wound up in 1987.

In 2007, the firm was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at The Lighthouse, Glasgow.

History of the practice

Origins

The Scottish architect James Salmon (1805–1888) established a practice in Glasgow in 1830. John Gaff Gillespie (1870–1926) was hired in 1891, when the practice was known as James Salmon & Son, and was run by the son, William Forrest Salmon. The practice name was changed in 1903 to Salmon & Son & Gillespie, with James Salmon (1873–1924), grandson of the founder, and John Gaff Gillespie as partners. William Alexander Kidd (1879–1928) joined the firm in 1898, becoming a partner, with Gillespie, in 1918 (James Salmon had left the firm in 1913). Kidd became sole partner on Gillespie's death in 1926.

In 1915, the 16-year-old Giacomo Antonio ("Jack") Coia (1898–1981) joined the firm of Gillespie & Kidd as an apprentice. Coia was born in Wolverhampton, England, to Italian parents, and was raised in Glasgow. In 1923, he left for travel to Europe and work in London, returning as a partner in 1927, at Kidd’s request following Gillespie’s death. Kidd himself died in 1928 and Coia thus inherited the practice by then known as Gillespie, Kidd & Coia.

Early years

thumb|right|St. Patrick's church, Orangefield in [[Greenock, built 1934-1935. ]]

At the time Coia took over, the practice had little work. Coia took a teaching position at the Mackintosh School of Architecture within the Glasgow School of Art (GSA), and began to seek new clients. After approaching Donald Mackintosh, the Archbishop of Glasgow, he secured the practice's first commission for a new church in 1931. The Roman Catholic Church would remain the firm's principal client until the early 1970s. In 1938, Thomas Warnett Kennedy became a partner with Coia, contributing to designs for St Peter in Chains, Ardrossan, and the Roman Catholic pavilion for the Glasgow Empire Exhibition.

Post-war period

Gillespie, Kidd & Coia was revived in 1945, although without Kennedy, who later emigrated to Canada. Coia hired 17-year-old Isi Metzstein as an apprentice and continued to design churches and other works for the Roman Catholic Church. The firm's work of this period is considered by architectural historians to be inferior. Rodger describes Coia's difficulty with seeing projects through, which was countered by his "flair for heading an architectural office".

Churches

The firm was already designing churches with a modern influence in the 1930s. with St. Patrick's, Orangefield, Greenock forming an example from 1934-35.

thumb|right|300px|Sacred Heart Church, [[Cumbernauld]]

Scotland is peppered with modernist ecclesiastical architecture, virtually all from the firm of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia. St Mary's, Bo'ness (1962), since demolished; St Joseph's, Faifley, (1964); Our Lady of Good Counsel, Dennistoun, (1965); St Benedict's, Easterhouse, (1965); and St. Paul's, Glenrothes, (1956) were all geometric buildings with sweeping roofs, using new construction techniques, such as glued laminated timber. By contrast, churches including St Charles, North Kelvinside, (1959); St Mary of the Angels, Falkirk, (1960); St Bride's, East Kilbride, (1963), St Patricks, Kilsyth, (1963); and Sacred Heart, Cumbernauld, (1964) were all rectangular, load-bearing brick, or in the case of St Charles', exposed concrete frame with brick curtain-walling. These churches are very plain on the outside, but dramatically lit on the inside.

St Peter's Seminary

St. Peter's Seminary in Cardross, Argyll and Bute is regarded as Gillespie, Kidd & Coia's most significant work. However, since the building's closure in the 1980s it has been in a ruinous state. In January 2019 Ronnie Convery, director of communications of the Archdiocese of Glasgow, said that the building was an "albatross around the neck" of the archdiocese, which had the responsibility to maintain, secure, and insure it, and that they could not sell it, give it away, or demolish it.

Schools and colleges

Gillespie, Kidd & Coia carried out several school commissions, including Roman Catholic schools in Cumbernauld, Bellshill and Glasgow, and the Notre Dame College in Bearsden (1969, partially demolished 2007).

Offices and other works

The firm's most prominent office commission was the BOAC building on Buchanan Street, Glasgow (1970). The firm undertook relatively little residential work, with projects in East Kilbride, Cumbernauld (1961), and Stantonbury, Milton Keynes (1976), as well as sheltered housing in Dumbarton (1967). In 1962, the practice completed Bellshill Maternity Hospital (demolished 2003), winning a Civic Trust Award.

University architecture

From the late 1960s, Gillespie, Kidd & Coia executed three major university projects in England, as well as Bonar Hall at the University of Dundee (1976). The first was The Lawns, a group of student residences in Cottingham, Yorkshire for the University of Hull. It was awarded a RIBA Bronze Regional Award in 1968 and was listed Grade II 1993. From 1971 to 1979 they worked on two extensions to Wadham College, Oxford. These included one large block containing new undergraduate accommodation and a college library, and a smaller addition behind the King's Arms pub. This includes a small music shop for Blackwell's, described as "a refreshing, shocking contribution to the gloomy Oxford backstreet in which it stands" by the Architects' Journal.

Robinson College, Cambridge was their most important building of this phase, and the last major building they designed. Winning a competition in 1974 for the entirely new college, their building is clad almost exclusively in brick, and incorporates existing gardens dating from the 1890s and 1900s. It was listed at Grade II* in 2022.

Notes

Bibliography

  • Diane Watters, Cardross Seminary : Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and the architecture of postwar Catholicism, (Edinburgh: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, 1997).
  • Robert Proctor, "Churches for a Changing Liturgy: Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and the Second Vatican Council", in Architectural History, no. 48 (2005), pp. 291–322.
  • Johnny Rodger (ed.), Gillespie, Kidd & Coia: Architecture 1956–1987 (Glasgow: Lighthouse, 2007), .
  • Gillespie, Kidd & Coia Architecture 1956-1987
  • Gillespie, Kidd & Coia at The Twentieth Century Society
  • Gillespie, Kidd & Coia at e-architect
  • Gillespie, Kidd & Coia: Architecture 1956-1987 exhibition at The Lighthouse
  • Jack Coia's early works