William James Anderson (b. 1863, d. 1900)

William James Anderson was born in Scotland and studied at Glasgow School of Art. In 1887 he won the Alexander Thomson Travelling Scholarship which enabled him to spend five months in Italy in 1888. In 1889 he transferred to William Leiper's office to assist him with the detailing of the Sun Insurance Building.

 

In 1890 Anderson published his Thomson Scholarship drawings as 'Architectural Studies in Italy' and became president of the Glasgow Architectural Association. In the following year he left Leiper's and started his own practice with his younger brother Alexander Ellis Anderson. There was not a lot of business in the first year or so but the Governors of Glasgow School of Art commissioned a series of seven lectures delivered at the Corporation Galleries in 1893-94 on the architecture of the Italian Renaissance as part of a Beaux-Arts inspired 'study the classics' program for its architectural students. Of these lectures five were published as 'The Architecture of the Renaissance in Italy' while the two introductory lectures were developed into a course on the history and development of Greek architecture followed by three lectures on Roman architecture, delivered in 1896-97. These were then put into book form as 'The Architecture of Greece and Rome' which was completed by R Phené Spiers and published in 1902.

 

This resulted in Anderson's appointment as Director of the Architectural Department at Glasgow School of Art in 1894 at the early age of thirty. Anderson's principal client was The Fireproof Building Company. His practice consisted almost entirely of relatively low cost buildings, reflected in the brick 'Queen Anne' of his early buildings at Dundee and the roughcast and rendered concrete of his Glasgow buildings. Although these had refined detailing, Napier House in particular had a tendency to simplified 'modern movement' characteristics with unusual window forms. In 1898 there was a partial collapse of the floors of Napier House that killed five of the men working on it. Anderson suffered a nervous breakdown and committed suicide in 1900.

 

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