Charles Herbert Reilly
Encyclopedia
Sir Charles Herbert Reilly, (4 March 1874 – 2 February 1948) was an English architect and teacher. After training in two architectural practices in London he took up a part-time lectureship at the University of London
in 1900, and from 1904 to 1933 he headed the Liverpool
School of Architecture, which became world-famous under his leadership. He was largely responsible for establishing university training of architects as an alternative to the old system of apprenticeship.
Reilly was a strong and effective opponent of the Victorian
Neo-Gothic
style, which had dominated British architecture for decades. His dominance also ended the briefer popularity of the Arts and Crafts
and Jugendstil
movements in Britain, earning him the enmity of Charles Rennie Mackintosh
, a local exponent of the latter. For many years Reilly favoured a form of Neo-Classicism
strongly influenced by developments in American architecture. Later in his career, he embraced the principles of the modernist movement, and of town planning for social and aesthetic improvement.
As a practising architect, Reilly was responsible for few well-known buildings. His influence on British architecture came through the work of his pupils, who included Herbert Rowse
, Lionel Budden
, William Holford
and Maxwell Fry
. Among his students were future professors of architecture and heads of architectural colleges in Britain, Canada and Australia; buildings were commissioned from Reilly pupils throughout the British Empire
and beyond.
, London, the son of the architect and surveyor Charles Reilly (1844–1928) and his wife Annie, née, Mee. He was educated at a preparatory school in Hove
between the ages of nine and 13, and then at Merchant Taylors' School, London
and Queens' College, Cambridge
. As an undergraduate he helped to found the Cambridge branch of the Fabian Society
; he retained his left-leaning views all his life. After graduating with a first class degree in mechanical science, he worked for two years as an unpaid draughtsman at his father's office, and then joined the office of John Belcher
as an "improver".
In 1898, Reilly became an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA
). In 1900 he applied for the chair of architecture at King's College, London; he had not seriously expected to be successful and was surprised and pleased to reach the final shortlist of three. The successful candidate, Ravenscroft Elsey Smith, appointed him to a part-time lectureship and introduced him to Stanley Peach, who specialised in designing power stations. Peach and Reilly entered into a joint practice. According to Reilly, Peach was "a good constructor, but diffident about his own powers of design. The result was that he tried far too hard to dress up his engineering buildings, with their fine roofs and great chimneys, with 'architecture' when they would have been much better left alone." Reilly, on the other hand, was more interested in design than in the mechanics of construction.
In 1902, Reilly applied unsuccessfully for the chair of architecture at University College, London. In the same year he entered the open competition for the design of the proposed new Liverpool Cathedral
. He detested the Victorian
Neo-Gothic
style, describing the work of a leading proponent, Alfred Waterhouse
, as having the "colours of mud and blood". His proposed design was in the English Neo-Classical
style, with a large central dome in the tradition of Wren
's St Paul's
. The assessors of the competition were G F Bodley
, a leading exponent of the Gothic style, and Norman Shaw
. Reilly's design was one of eight highly commended entries that failed to gain inclusion in the final shortlist of five; it was the only classical design among them. Giles Gilbert Scott
's Gothic design was the eventual winner, but Reilly had made influential contacts in Liverpool, where much of his career came to be centred.
, set up a degree course in architecture in 1894. The first professor was Frederick Moore Simpson, a proponent of the Arts and Crafts
style of building, which Reilly regarded as "a partial but insufficient remedy for Victorian failure."
In 1904, Reilly was invited to succeed Simpson as Roscoe Professor of Architecture at Liverpool. He held the post for 29 years, retiring in 1933. In 1904 he was lecturing to classes of 11 students, mostly drawn from Liverpool and its environs. He built up the annual intake over the years of his tenure; The Times
obituarist wrote "In the ten years up to the 1914–18 war he made the Liverpool School of Architecture a thriving and influential institution to which students would come from the ends of the earth". Reilly lengthened the course to five years, and secured for his students exemption from the RIBA's intermediate examination, and later (1920) from its final examination also. He founded the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Architecture.
The main building of the university, in which Reilly was at first based, was designed by his bête noir, Waterhouse. Reilly described it as having "glazed tiles the colour of curry powder". He successfully manoeuvred to have his department moved to the spacious Bluecoat Chambers
, an outstanding Georgian
building in the heart of Liverpool.
The building had been in danger of demolition, and in working to save it Reilly found an ally in the philanthropic industrialist William Lever
.
Lever sponsored a fact-finding trip to the U.S. that Reilly made in 1909. New American neo-classic architecture at that time derived in large measure from the École des Beaux-Arts
in Paris; Stamp characterises it as "rooted in in the classical tradition [but] essentially modern." The restrained American style of Beaux-Arts classicism made a deep impression on Reilly, as did the methods of teaching he encountered in American architectural colleges.
on the opposite side of the River Mersey
from Liverpool.
With Lever's encouragement and generous financial backing, Reilly persuaded the University to establish a Department of Civic Design within the School of Architecture. The University authorities accepted Reilly's recommendation that the first Professor of Civic Design should be Stanley Adshead, a fellow-classicist and friend from his days in Belcher's practice. The importance of the work of the Liverpool School was quickly recognised within the architectural profession. Reilly was invited to join the RIBA's Board of Architectural Education in 1906, and he was elected to the Council of the RIBA in 1909.
In 1911, Reilly and Adshead led the opposition to a plan by Norman Shaw and the sculptor W Goscombe John
to remodel the south front of St George's Hall in Liverpool. Shaw and John proposed to install a grandiose flight of entrance steps, flanked by equestrian statues in tribute to the recently-dead King Edward VII
. Reilly regarded the plan as an Edwardian Baroque
subversion of the hall's "pure and sublime neo-classical concept". He remarked sarcastically, "What was the use of a great monumental building if it could not be used as a background to a man on a horse?" Shaw enlisted the support of Aston Webb
, John Belcher, Hamo Thornycroft
and Reginald Blomfield
, but Reilly and Adshead won, and the scheme was abandoned.
Fashion in British architecture changed rapidly in the first quarter of the 20th century. Victorian Gothic was rejected, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh
found his Scottish version of Art Nouveau
outmoded. The architectural historian Gavin Stamp
writes:
Mackintosh blamed Reilly for this: "Nor will there be any daylight until it is impossible for pompous bounders like a well-known (at least well advertised) professor at Liverpool to have any say in architectural education. He is teaching efficiency, but even there he is only a 23rd rater because they do it already better in America." Mackintosh complained of Reilly's buildings with "cows' skulls, ill-formed babies with vegetable tails" and dismissed Reilly as "crushed with official recognition and journalistic approval."
Despite Mackintosh's animadversions, Reilly was willing to find merit in architectural work of other styles than his own. In a 1931 volume, Representative British Architects of the Present Day, he devoted chapters not only to kindred spirits such as Adshead, but to a Gothic revivalist, Walter Tapper
, and an Arts and Crafts advocate, Guy Dawber
; others included were Herbert Baker
, Blomfield, Clough Williams-Ellis
, Edwin Lutyens
, and Scott. The Times Literary Supplement
observed, "No praise can be too high for the way in which the special aptitudes of the particular architects are brought forward and illustrated from their works."
recalled being dismayed in 1928 at seeing classical stone facings being hung on the steel frame of a huge block in London, to which Reilly was consultant architect. Fry embraced modernism, and his former teacher later followed him.
In 1934, another Reilly pupil, William Crabtree
, designed the modernist Peter Jones
building in Sloane Square
, with Reilly as consultant architect. Stamp suggests that Reilly may have have come to regret his exclusive promotion of classicism at Liverpool; he quotes a letter from Reilly to Giles Gilbert Scott in 1942: "The Liverpool fellows in my time did all go through the discipline of classical architecture. Except for the precision of its rules, I wish now it had been Gothic, for Gothic with its constructional basis is much nearer to modern stuff with its steel and ferroconcrete."
Reilly died in London at the age of 73. His wife predeceased him. He was survived by a daughter and a son.
for Architecture in 1943 and in 1944 was knighted
.
As a practising architect, Reilly was responsible for only a handful of buildings. They include cottages at Lower Road, Port Sunlight
for Lever (1905); Liverpool Students' Union (1909); the Church of St Barnabas, Shacklewell
, London (1909); and war memorials at Accrington
(1920) and Durham
(1928). Of these, Reilly's professional colleagues regarded the Students' Union building as his most characteristic work, but he himself preferred St Barnabas, and said that it was "the building I should like to be remembered by, if any."
Reilly was joint architect, with Thomas Hastings
, of Devonshire House
, Piccadilly
, London (1923). He collaborated with his former pupils Lionel Budden
and J. E. Marshall on the Leverhulme Building for the Liverpool School of Architecture (1933) and an extension to the Liverpool Students' Union (1935). He was consultant architect for the new buildings for the Peter Jones and John Lewis
department stores in London, for which the principal architect was Crabtree, another former pupil.
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
in 1900, and from 1904 to 1933 he headed the Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
School of Architecture, which became world-famous under his leadership. He was largely responsible for establishing university training of architects as an alternative to the old system of apprenticeship.
Reilly was a strong and effective opponent of the Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
Neo-Gothic
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
style, which had dominated British architecture for decades. His dominance also ended the briefer popularity of the Arts and Crafts
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
and Jugendstil
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
movements in Britain, earning him the enmity of Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, watercolourist and artist. He was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main representative of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. He had a considerable influence on European design...
, a local exponent of the latter. For many years Reilly favoured a form of Neo-Classicism
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
strongly influenced by developments in American architecture. Later in his career, he embraced the principles of the modernist movement, and of town planning for social and aesthetic improvement.
As a practising architect, Reilly was responsible for few well-known buildings. His influence on British architecture came through the work of his pupils, who included Herbert Rowse
Herbert James Rowse
Herbert James Rowse was a British architect, born in Crosby, Merseyside on the northern outskirts of Liverpool. He graduated from the Liverpool University School of Architecture in 1907 three years after the influential Professor Charles Reilly became Head of the School.Rowse was one of the ...
, Lionel Budden
Lionel Bailey Budden
Lionel Bailey Budden , architect, was Roscoe Professor in Architecture in the Liverpool School of Architecture from 1933. He retired in 1952....
, William Holford
William Holford, Baron Holford
William Graham Holford, Baron Holford was a British architect and town planner.-Biography:He was born in South Africa and educated at Diocesan College, Cape Town. He studied architecture at Liverpool University, where he won the Rome Scholarship in Architecture to the British School at Rome in 1930...
and Maxwell Fry
Maxwell Fry
Edwin Maxwell Fry, CBE, RA, FRIBA, FRTPI, known as Maxwell Fry , was an English modernist architect of the middle and late 20th century, known for his buildings in Britain, Africa and India....
. Among his students were future professors of architecture and heads of architectural colleges in Britain, Canada and Australia; buildings were commissioned from Reilly pupils throughout the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
and beyond.
Early years
Reilly was born in Stoke NewingtonStoke Newington
Stoke Newington is a district in the London Borough of Hackney. It is north-east of Charing Cross.-Boundaries:In modern terms, Stoke Newington can be roughly defined by the N16 postcode area . Its southern boundary with Dalston is quite ill-defined too...
, London, the son of the architect and surveyor Charles Reilly (1844–1928) and his wife Annie, née, Mee. He was educated at a preparatory school in Hove
Hove
Hove is a town on the south coast of England, immediately to the west of its larger neighbour Brighton, with which it forms the unitary authority Brighton and Hove. It forms a single conurbation together with Brighton and some smaller towns and villages running along the coast...
between the ages of nine and 13, and then at Merchant Taylors' School, London
Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood
Merchant Taylors' School is a British independent day school for boys, originally located in the City of London. Since 1933 it has been located at Sandy Lodge in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire ....
and Queens' College, Cambridge
Queens' College, Cambridge
Queens' College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou , and refounded in 1465 by Elizabeth Woodville...
. As an undergraduate he helped to found the Cambridge branch of the Fabian Society
Fabian Society
The Fabian Society is a British socialist movement, whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning late in the 19th century and continuing up to World...
; he retained his left-leaning views all his life. After graduating with a first class degree in mechanical science, he worked for two years as an unpaid draughtsman at his father's office, and then joined the office of John Belcher
John Belcher (architect)
John Belcher was an English architect.Belcher was born in Southwark on 10 July 1841, London. His father of the same name was an established architect. The son was articled with his father, spending two years in France from 1862 where he studied contemporary architecture...
as an "improver".
In 1898, Reilly became an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA
Riba
Riba means one of the senses of "usury" . Riba is forbidden in Islamic economic jurisprudence fiqh and considered as a major sin...
). In 1900 he applied for the chair of architecture at King's College, London; he had not seriously expected to be successful and was surprised and pleased to reach the final shortlist of three. The successful candidate, Ravenscroft Elsey Smith, appointed him to a part-time lectureship and introduced him to Stanley Peach, who specialised in designing power stations. Peach and Reilly entered into a joint practice. According to Reilly, Peach was "a good constructor, but diffident about his own powers of design. The result was that he tried far too hard to dress up his engineering buildings, with their fine roofs and great chimneys, with 'architecture' when they would have been much better left alone." Reilly, on the other hand, was more interested in design than in the mechanics of construction.
In 1902, Reilly applied unsuccessfully for the chair of architecture at University College, London. In the same year he entered the open competition for the design of the proposed new Liverpool Cathedral
Liverpool Cathedral
Liverpool Cathedral is the Church of England cathedral of the Diocese of Liverpool, built on St James's Mount in Liverpool and is the seat of the Bishop of Liverpool. Its official name is the Cathedral Church of Christ in Liverpool but it is dedicated to Christ and the Blessed Virgin...
. He detested the Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
Neo-Gothic
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
style, describing the work of a leading proponent, Alfred Waterhouse
Alfred Waterhouse
Alfred Waterhouse was a British architect, particularly associated with the Victorian Gothic Revival architecture. He is perhaps best known for his design for the Natural History Museum in London, and Manchester Town Hall, although he also built a wide variety of other buildings throughout the...
, as having the "colours of mud and blood". His proposed design was in the English Neo-Classical
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
style, with a large central dome in the tradition of Wren
Christopher Wren
Sir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...
's St Paul's
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
. The assessors of the competition were G F Bodley
George Frederick Bodley
George Frederick Bodley was an English architect working in the Gothic revival style.-Personal life:Bodley was the youngest son of William Hulme Bodley, M.D. of Edinburgh, physician at Hull Royal Infirmary, Kingston upon Hull, who in 1838 retired to his wife's home town, Brighton, Sussex, England....
, a leading exponent of the Gothic style, and Norman Shaw
Richard Norman Shaw
Richard Norman Shaw RA , was an influential Scottish architect from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings.-Life:...
. Reilly's design was one of eight highly commended entries that failed to gain inclusion in the final shortlist of five; it was the only classical design among them. Giles Gilbert Scott
Giles Gilbert Scott
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, OM, FRIBA was an English architect known for his work on such buildings as Liverpool Cathedral and Battersea Power Station and designing the iconic red telephone box....
's Gothic design was the eventual winner, but Reilly had made influential contacts in Liverpool, where much of his career came to be centred.
Liverpool University
In the years before and after the turn of the century, architecture in Britain was dominated by an exclusive set of affluent partnerships. Aspiring architects who could afford to buy an articled pupillage in one of the leading firms had an enormous advantage. In an attempt to offer an alternative route into the profession, the University College of Liverpool, the forerunner of Liverpool UniversityUniversity of Liverpool
The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...
, set up a degree course in architecture in 1894. The first professor was Frederick Moore Simpson, a proponent of the Arts and Crafts
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
style of building, which Reilly regarded as "a partial but insufficient remedy for Victorian failure."
In 1904, Reilly was invited to succeed Simpson as Roscoe Professor of Architecture at Liverpool. He held the post for 29 years, retiring in 1933. In 1904 he was lecturing to classes of 11 students, mostly drawn from Liverpool and its environs. He built up the annual intake over the years of his tenure; The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
obituarist wrote "In the ten years up to the 1914–18 war he made the Liverpool School of Architecture a thriving and influential institution to which students would come from the ends of the earth". Reilly lengthened the course to five years, and secured for his students exemption from the RIBA's intermediate examination, and later (1920) from its final examination also. He founded the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Architecture.
The main building of the university, in which Reilly was at first based, was designed by his bête noir, Waterhouse. Reilly described it as having "glazed tiles the colour of curry powder". He successfully manoeuvred to have his department moved to the spacious Bluecoat Chambers
Bluecoat Chambers
The Bluecoat is an arts centre in School Lane, Liverpool, Merseyside, England and claims to be the oldest arts centre in Great Britain. It is a Grade I listed building and is meant to be the oldest surviving building in central Liverpool The Bluecoat is an arts centre in School Lane, Liverpool,...
, an outstanding Georgian
Georgian architecture
Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...
building in the heart of Liverpool.
The building had been in danger of demolition, and in working to save it Reilly found an ally in the philanthropic industrialist William Lever
William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme
William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme was an English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician....
.
Lever sponsored a fact-finding trip to the U.S. that Reilly made in 1909. New American neo-classic architecture at that time derived in large measure from the École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
in Paris; Stamp characterises it as "rooted in in the classical tradition [but] essentially modern." The restrained American style of Beaux-Arts classicism made a deep impression on Reilly, as did the methods of teaching he encountered in American architectural colleges.
Town planning
Part of Reilly's brief from Lever in his U.S. trip was to study the American approach to the practice and teaching of town planning. Hitherto, little systematic town planning had taken place in English cities; new developments were haphazard and uncoordinated with one another. Lever's view, which Reilly shared, was that planning was simply "architecture on a big scale". Lever had already put his principles into practice, establishing the model village Port SunlightPort Sunlight
Port Sunlight is a model village, suburb and electoral ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England. It is located between Lower Bebington and New Ferry, on the Wirral Peninsula. Between 1894 and 1974 it formed part of Bebington urban district within the county of Cheshire...
on the opposite side of the River Mersey
River Mersey
The River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....
from Liverpool.
With Lever's encouragement and generous financial backing, Reilly persuaded the University to establish a Department of Civic Design within the School of Architecture. The University authorities accepted Reilly's recommendation that the first Professor of Civic Design should be Stanley Adshead, a fellow-classicist and friend from his days in Belcher's practice. The importance of the work of the Liverpool School was quickly recognised within the architectural profession. Reilly was invited to join the RIBA's Board of Architectural Education in 1906, and he was elected to the Council of the RIBA in 1909.
In 1911, Reilly and Adshead led the opposition to a plan by Norman Shaw and the sculptor W Goscombe John
Goscombe John
Sir William Goscombe John R.A. , was a Welsh sculptor.-Biography:He was born in Canton, Cardiff and as a youth assisted his father, Thomas John, a wood carver, in the restoration of Cardiff Castle...
to remodel the south front of St George's Hall in Liverpool. Shaw and John proposed to install a grandiose flight of entrance steps, flanked by equestrian statues in tribute to the recently-dead King Edward VII
Edward VII of the United Kingdom
Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
. Reilly regarded the plan as an Edwardian Baroque
Edwardian Baroque architecture
The term Edwardian Baroque refers to the Neo-Baroque architectural style of many public buildings built in the British Empire during the Edwardian era ....
subversion of the hall's "pure and sublime neo-classical concept". He remarked sarcastically, "What was the use of a great monumental building if it could not be used as a background to a man on a horse?" Shaw enlisted the support of Aston Webb
Aston Webb
Sir Aston Webb, RA, FRIBA was an English architect, active in the late 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century...
, John Belcher, Hamo Thornycroft
Hamo Thornycroft
Sir William "Hamo" Thornycroft, RA was a British sculptor, responsible for several London landmarks.-Biography:...
and Reginald Blomfield
Reginald Blomfield
Sir Reginald Theodore Blomfield was a prolific British architect, garden designer and author of the Victorian and Edwardian period.- Early life and career :...
, but Reilly and Adshead won, and the scheme was abandoned.
Neo-classicism
Although Reilly objected to the more baroque aspects of the Beaux-Arts school, many of his precepts were based on what he believed to be Beaux-Arts principles. Stamp argues that Reilly's concept of Beaux-Arts was filtered through its American practitioners, and put too much emphasis on classical design. The architectural historian Alan Powers writes:Fashion in British architecture changed rapidly in the first quarter of the 20th century. Victorian Gothic was rejected, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, watercolourist and artist. He was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main representative of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. He had a considerable influence on European design...
found his Scottish version of Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
outmoded. The architectural historian Gavin Stamp
Gavin Stamp
Gavin Stamp is a British writer and architectural historian. He is a trustee of the Twentieth Century Society, a registered charity which promotes the appreciation of modern architecture and the conservation of Britain’s architectural heritage...
writes:
Mackintosh blamed Reilly for this: "Nor will there be any daylight until it is impossible for pompous bounders like a well-known (at least well advertised) professor at Liverpool to have any say in architectural education. He is teaching efficiency, but even there he is only a 23rd rater because they do it already better in America." Mackintosh complained of Reilly's buildings with "cows' skulls, ill-formed babies with vegetable tails" and dismissed Reilly as "crushed with official recognition and journalistic approval."
Despite Mackintosh's animadversions, Reilly was willing to find merit in architectural work of other styles than his own. In a 1931 volume, Representative British Architects of the Present Day, he devoted chapters not only to kindred spirits such as Adshead, but to a Gothic revivalist, Walter Tapper
Walter Tapper
Sir Walter Tapper was a British architect known for Gothic Revivalist architecture. On his death in 1935 his son Michael Tapper completed some of his works....
, and an Arts and Crafts advocate, Guy Dawber
Guy Dawber
Sir Edward Guy Dawber, RA, ARA was an English architect working in the late Arts and Crafts style whose work is particularly associated with the Cotswolds....
; others included were Herbert Baker
Herbert Baker
Sir Herbert Baker was a British architect.Baker was the dominant force in South African architecture for two decades, 1892–1912....
, Blomfield, Clough Williams-Ellis
Clough Williams-Ellis
Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis, CBE, MC was an English-born Welsh architect known chiefly as creator of the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales.-Origins, education and early career:...
, Edwin Lutyens
Edwin Lutyens
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, OM, KCIE, PRA, FRIBA was a British architect who is known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era...
, and Scott. The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
observed, "No praise can be too high for the way in which the special aptitudes of the particular architects are brought forward and illustrated from their works."
Later years
By 1938, in the view of The Times Literary Supplement, the Liverpool School of Architecture was "possibly … the most important centre of architectural education in the world." Later in his career, Reilly moved away from an exclusive classicism. Advances in building techniques and materials and the construction of taller and wider buildings in cities made neo-classicism unsustainable. Reilly's pupil Maxwell FryMaxwell Fry
Edwin Maxwell Fry, CBE, RA, FRIBA, FRTPI, known as Maxwell Fry , was an English modernist architect of the middle and late 20th century, known for his buildings in Britain, Africa and India....
recalled being dismayed in 1928 at seeing classical stone facings being hung on the steel frame of a huge block in London, to which Reilly was consultant architect. Fry embraced modernism, and his former teacher later followed him.
In 1934, another Reilly pupil, William Crabtree
William Crabtree (architect)
William Crabtree was an English architect. His reputation rests mainly on his Peter Jones Department Store, Sloane Square and King's Road, Chelsea, London , designed for John Spedan Lewis , the founder of the John Lewis Partnership.-Other works:Crabtree worked in collaboration with Slater &...
, designed the modernist Peter Jones
Peter Jones (department store)
Peter Jones is a large, established and exclusive department store in central London. It is owned by John Lewis Partnership and located in Sloane Square, Chelsea.-History :...
building in Sloane Square
Sloane Square
Sloane Square is a small hard-landscaped square on the boundaries of the fashionable London districts of Knightsbridge, Belgravia and Chelsea, located southwest of Charing Cross, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The square is part of the Hans Town area designed in 1771 by Henry...
, with Reilly as consultant architect. Stamp suggests that Reilly may have have come to regret his exclusive promotion of classicism at Liverpool; he quotes a letter from Reilly to Giles Gilbert Scott in 1942: "The Liverpool fellows in my time did all go through the discipline of classical architecture. Except for the precision of its rules, I wish now it had been Gothic, for Gothic with its constructional basis is much nearer to modern stuff with its steel and ferroconcrete."
Reilly died in London at the age of 73. His wife predeceased him. He was survived by a daughter and a son.
Honours and legacy
Reilly was appointed Member of the Faculty of Architecture at the British School in Rome in 1911, and the following year was made Fellow of the RIBA. In 1925, he was appointed Corresponding Member of the American Institute of Architects. He was appointed Vice-President of the RIBA in 1931. In 1934, after his retirement, he was appointed Emeritus Professor at the University of Liverpool. He was awarded the Royal Gold MedalRoyal Gold Medal
The Royal Gold Medal for architecture is awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects on behalf of the British monarch, in recognition of an individual's or group's substantial contribution to international architecture....
for Architecture in 1943 and in 1944 was knighted
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
.
As a practising architect, Reilly was responsible for only a handful of buildings. They include cottages at Lower Road, Port Sunlight
Port Sunlight
Port Sunlight is a model village, suburb and electoral ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England. It is located between Lower Bebington and New Ferry, on the Wirral Peninsula. Between 1894 and 1974 it formed part of Bebington urban district within the county of Cheshire...
for Lever (1905); Liverpool Students' Union (1909); the Church of St Barnabas, Shacklewell
Shacklewell
Shacklewell is a district within the London Borough of Hackney, roughly North-east of modern-day Dalston, .-History:...
, London (1909); and war memorials at Accrington
Accrington
Accrington is a town in Lancashire, within the borough of Hyndburn. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, north of Manchester city centre and is situated on the mostly culverted River Hyndburn...
(1920) and Durham
Durham
Durham is a city in north east England. It is within the County Durham local government district, and is the county town of the larger ceremonial county...
(1928). Of these, Reilly's professional colleagues regarded the Students' Union building as his most characteristic work, but he himself preferred St Barnabas, and said that it was "the building I should like to be remembered by, if any."
Reilly was joint architect, with Thomas Hastings
Thomas Hastings (architect)
Thomas Hastings was an American architect.- Biography :He was born in New York City to Thomas Samuel Hastings, a Presbyterian minister, and Fanny de Groot. Hastings came from a colonial Yankee background, his ancestor Thomas Hastings having come from the East Anglia region of England to the...
, of Devonshire House
Devonshire House
Devonshire House in Piccadilly was the London residence of the Dukes of Devonshire in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was built for William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire in the Palladian style, to designs by William Kent...
, Piccadilly
Piccadilly
Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...
, London (1923). He collaborated with his former pupils Lionel Budden
Lionel Bailey Budden
Lionel Bailey Budden , architect, was Roscoe Professor in Architecture in the Liverpool School of Architecture from 1933. He retired in 1952....
and J. E. Marshall on the Leverhulme Building for the Liverpool School of Architecture (1933) and an extension to the Liverpool Students' Union (1935). He was consultant architect for the new buildings for the Peter Jones and John Lewis
John Lewis (department store)
-Recent developments:In June 2004, John Lewis announced plans to open its first store in Northern Ireland at the Sprucefield Park development, the province's largest out of town shopping centre, located outside Lisburn and from Belfast. The application was approved in June 2005 and the opening of...
department stores in London, for which the principal architect was Crabtree, another former pupil.