Basic Biographical Details Name: | Campbell Douglas & Sellars | Designation: | | Born: | 1871 or 1872 | Died: | Late 1888 or early 1889 | Bio Notes: | Campbell Douglas's practice before 1870 had been chielfly occupied with churches and houses, but in the early 1870s moved into an altogether different league of major commercial projects and public buildings. Douglas's phenomenal success in this field was made possible by the energy and ability of James Sellars, whom he took into partnership from March 1872, if not earlier.
James Sellars was born in the Gorbals on 2 December 1843, the son of a house-factor of the same name. Lindsay Miller, writing in 1888, records that he was articled to Hugh Barclay at the age of 13 in 1857. He remained there until 1864 when he joined the office of James Hamilton who had a significant practice in Belfast as well as in Glasgow, and remained there for three years, marrying his first wife, Mary Campbell, in 1866. Thereafter we read of him pursuing the humdrum life of an assistant in several offices until he joined Campbell Douglas's office in 1870. He earned his partnership by winning the first competition for the Stewart Memorial out of fifty designs submitted in 1870, and 'awoke to find himself famous': and when the result was quashed and the competition re-advertised at half the original outlay he drew even greater attention to himself by winning that competition also on 31 January 1871. In that year he married his second wife, Jeanie Moodie, and he was admitted to the Glasgow Institute of Architects in March 1872, his certificate being signed by Alexander Thomson and John Baird, and in the autumn he took a brief sketching holiday in Paris and Normandy, which he put to good use later. This visit probably related to the presence in the office from 1871 of Charles Alfred Chastel de Boinville, a pupil of A Guyot and an ex-assistant of Geoffroy of Cherbourg who had sought employment in Glasgow in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war. As Chastel de Boinville returned to Paris in 1872 it is possible that Sellars travelled with him. Sellars went abroad only twice: as Lindsay Miller observed 'when young he had not the means, when able no time.'
What Chastel de Boinville specifically contributed to the work of the practice in the year or so he spent with it is difficult to establish now, though it is possible that he had some hand in the spectacular French Gothic spire of the Queen's Park Church; but his presence coincided with a radical change in the stylistic direction of the practice in 1871-73. The Scottish Amicable building and the Claremont Street Wesleyan Church had cinquecento detailing, but at St Andrews Halls a monumental neo Greek was adopted. Superficially the design had much in common with Alexander Thomson's work in its uncompromisingly rectangular shapes and banded masonry but it also had an even more direct relationship to the post-Schinkel Berlin School, while much of the smaller detail was markedly French Beaux-Arts, a tendency still more markedly seen at Finneston Church and the Queen Insurance Building of 1877-80. Parallel developments were to be seen in the work of Hugh and David Barclay with whom Sellars retained close links, and it may be that they were the other Glasgow practice Chastel de Boinville assisted in 1871-72, although Leiper's French Beaux-Arts Partick Burgh hall suggests him as an equally likely candidate.
These developments in the Campbell Douglas & Sellars and Barclay practices ran counter to those elsewhere in Britain, their only parallels being John Honeyman's library and museum in Paisley of 1868 and James Hibbert's Harris Library and Museum at Preston of 1882, and probably it was the esteem in which Thomson was held in Glasgow which made them possible. Also directly related to Sellars's acquaintance with Chastel de Boinville was the French-roofed New Club and his unexecuted design for rebuilding the Trades House of Glasgow which were wholly of French Second empire inspiration and closer in style to London buildings of the same date. The designs submitted in the two Glasgow Municipal Buildings Competitions of 1880-81 were similarly a fairly pure French Beaux-Arts, Sellars's tendencies in that direction probably having been encouraged by the success of the Burnet practice following J J Burnet's return from Paris late in 1877. More individual, though still with French-inspired details, were the Glasgow Herald Building and the giant City of Glasgow Bank buildings of 1878-80 where giant Corinthian orders were combined with pedimented attic features of which were probably of J J Stevenson - E R Robson inspiration. Throughout this period Douglas's design role is unclear, though he probably determined the general direction of the practice while acknowledging that the elevations were the product of Sellars's 'fertile brain and facile pencil', A N Paterson observed that at least in the earlier years of the partnership the drawings bore many annotations in Campbell Douglas's handwriting.
Douglas's practice took a further step in a Beaux-Arts direction when John Keppie, a draughtsman who worked closely with Sellars was encouraged to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Born in 1862, the son of James Keppie a wealthy tobacco importer with houses in Hillhead and Prestwick, Keppie was educated at Ayr Academy. He was articled to Campbell Douglas & Sellars c. 1880 and, unusually, attended classes at the University of Glasgow as well as at Glasgow School of Art. His dossier at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts is missing but he appears to have joined the Atelier Jean Louis Pascal in 1885 and remained there until at least the autumn of 1886 when he travelled in Northern Italy. He was a fine watercolourist and had remarkable success in the Tite prize competitions, winning its silver medals in that year and again in 1887. He returned from Paris to the Campbell Douglas & Sellars office without completing the course in order to assist Sellars with the firm's entry for the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888, the competition for which had been advertised in January 1887 and was won on 31 March 1887 with a weather boarded design with galvanised metal domes in a Moorish, probably basically French colonial, idiom.
In the 1880s Sellars became influenced by the work of Rowand Anderson, probably through Campbell Douglas & Sellars's continuing friendship with George Washington Browne. Interest in the early Renaissance work of Anderson and Browne showed first at the octagonal Free Abbey Church in Dunfermline in 1881 and progressed through Scots Renaissance and Scots Georgian influenced designs to the competition design for Renfrew County Buildings, close in design to Anderson's Edinburgh Medical School, and Anderson's College of Medicine in Glasgow which mixed Early Italian Renaissance and later Scots seventeenth-century motifs, both of 1888.
Sellars's death was a direct consequence of the Glasgow International Exhibition. Campbell Douglas took severely ill and was unable to come downstairs to the office for months. James Barr, Sellars's civil engineer co adjutor recorded that 'twenty-two hours' arduous and unremitting toil was no unusual event'. At the exhibition site a rusty nail pierced his boot causing an injury that failed to clear up and was neglected from want of time. He saw the exhibition through to the opening on 8 May and was offered a knighthood which he declined, probably out of deference to his senior partner, observing that 'he couldn't live up to it': Sellars had in fact always adopted a lower profile than his senior partner, preferring not to become a Fellow of the RIBA along with Douglas when the latter was admitted on 9 June 1879, his proposers being the elder Burnet, Charles Barry Junior and his old colleague R J Johnson. The final accounts occupied Sellars for the whole of the summer and were a struggle against failing health, which a holiday in the West Highlands was too late to improve. He died of blood poisoning at his house, 9 Montgomerie Crescent on 9 October and was buried on the 11th at Lambhill where a very Greek memorial by Keppie marked his grave. A portrait of him by Georgina M Greenlees is in the Glasgow Art Gallery collection.
Sellars's interests were not limited to the practice. He designed a great deal of cast iron work for Macfarlane's Saracen Ironworks, and was secretary of the Architectural Section of the Glasgow Philosophical Society and, along with Honeyman, took a particular interest in the housing of the working classes and the poor, an interest which probably resulted in his several commissions for welfare buildings: he was also at various times Deacon of the Wrights, President of the Glasgow Institute of Architects and a liner in the Dean of Guild Court. Keppie described him as having a 'quaint repartee' something of which was to be seen in the fifty-seven pages of doggerel verse he delivered as the annual report of the 'Hoolecanae' an obscure order of owls of which he was chancellor.
After Sellars's death Campbell Douglas took his chief assistant Alexander B Morrison into partnership as Campbell Douglas & Morrison, but after a few significant competition wins Douglas's practice gradually declined. | Private and Business AddressesThe following private or business addresses are associated with this : | | Address | Type | Date from | Date to | Notes | | 266, St Vincent Street, Glasgow, Scotland | Business | After 1873 | Before 1906 | |
Employment and TrainingEmployees or Pupils
Buildings and DesignsThis was involved with the following buildings or structures from the date specified (click on an item to view details): | | Date started | Building name | Town, district or village | Island | City or county | Country | Notes | | 1868(?) | Mossbank Industrial School | Hogganfield | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1871 | Burnbank UP Church | | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1871 | Stables and workshops | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Begun by Campbell Douglas alone; completed in partnership with Sellars | | 1871 | Stewart Memorial fountain for Wellington Park | Kelvingrove | | Glasgow | Scotland | Won in competition | | After 1871 | Langholm Cottage Hospital | Langholm | | Dumfriesshire | Scotland | Date not known | | c. 1871 | Claremont Street Wesleyan Church | | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1872 | City of Glasgow Assurance Company Headquarters | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Unsuccesful competiton design | | 1872 | Cowcaddens Free Church | Cowcaddens | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1872 | Dysart Free Church | Dysart | | Fife | Scotland | | | 1872 | Glasgow Public Halls | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Cunningham of Liverpool took the design to sketch-plan stage; the degree to which his scheme influenced the final design is not known, but Campbell Douglas was his 'associate' from the beginning | | 1872 | Keil House | Campbeltown | | Argyll | Scotland | Remodelling and large extension | | 1872 | Queen's Park Church | | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1872 | Scottish Amicable Building | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Begun by Campbell Douglas alone, completed by Campbell Douglas & Sellars | | 1873 | Free Church | Neilston | | Renfrewshire | | | | 1873 | St Enoch's Free Church | Partick | | Glasgow | Scotland | Won competition and secured job | | 1874 | Bank of Scotland Buildings | | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1874 | Lenzie UP Church | Lenzie | | Dunbartonshire/Lanarkshire | Scotland | Gothic design - executed | | 1874 | Scotia Music Hall, tenement and shops | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Rebuilding of Black's theatre, £15,000. Known then as the Scotia Variety Theatre, and tenement added in front. | | 1875 | Cupar Free Church | Cupar | | Fife | Scotland | Won competition to secure job | | 1875 | Netherhall | Largs | | Ayrshire | Scotland | | | 1875 | The Merchants' House | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Unsuccessful competition design | | 1875 | Wellington Place Baptist Church | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Competition design - not successful | | After 1875 | Belhaven Mission | | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1876 | Alloway Parish Church | Alloway | | Ayrshire | Scotland | S transept | | 1876 | Blackfriars Park Church | Wester Craigs | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1876 | Hillhead Established Church | Hillhead | | Glasgow | Scotland | Won in limited competition, Sellars was appointed but requested to produce a revised scheme based on Leiper's entry | | After 1876 | Church | Kamesburgh / Port Bannatyne | Bute | Bute | Scotland | | | 1876 or 1877 | Kirkcaldy Free Church | Kirkcaldy | | Fife | Scotland | Unsuccessful competition entry | | 1877 | Ayr Town Hall | Ayr | | Ayrshire | Scotland | Extension to High Street, and alterations - placed third in competition but secured job | | 1877 | Belhaven UP Church | Dowanhill | | Glasgow | Scotland | Won competition to secure job | | 1877 | Kelvinside Academy | Kelvinside | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | June 1877 | Trades House | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Plans for new building submitted for invited competition; subsequently abandoned after failure to reach a decision | | 1877 or c. 1878 | Tower Building | | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1878 | City of Glasgow Bank | | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1878 | Finnieston Free Church | Kelvingrove | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1878 | Her Majesty's Theatre, Gorbals Street | Gorbals | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | c. 1878 | Milton Street School | Cowcaddens | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | c. 1878 | Queen Insurance Building | | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1879 | Anderston Free Church | Hillhead | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1879 | Craigs House | Carmunnock | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1879 | Glasgow Herald Building | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Extensive rebuilding, remodelling back (Buchanan Street) | | 1879 | Glasgow Medical Mission, Calton | Calton | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1879 | Helensburgh Free Church | Helensburgh | | Dunbartonshire | Scotland | Session House | | 1879 | New Club | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Won competition to secure job | | 1880 | Wylie and Lochhead's Factory | Charing Cross | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | c. 1880 | Mission Hospital | | | Safed | Syria | | | 1881 | Free Abbey Church | Dunfermline | | Fife | Scotland | | | 1881 | Sick Children's Hospital | Garnethill | | Glasgow | Scotland | Reconstruction of former mansion to form children's hospital | | 1881 | Spiers Institution | Cowdenbeath | | Fife | Scotland | Design exhibited - unclear whether executed | | 1881 | Woodside Parish Church | Woodside | | Glasgow | Scotland | Competition design - not successful | | 1882 | Pathhead Public Hall | Pathhead, Kirkcaldy | | Fife | Scotland | | | 1882 | Sick Children's Dispensary | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Won competition and secured job - Sellars responsible | | 1882 | Trades House | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Won second competition and secured job for new building on Virginia Street site at rear | | 1882 | Victoria Infirmary | Langside | | Glasgow | Scotland | Won competition - building of first part - admin block and first pavilions | | 1883 | 'A Glasgow Board School' | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Sketch design | | 1883 | Lochgoilhead Free Church | Lochgoilhead | | Argyll | Scotland | | | 1883 | Mugdock House | Mugdock | | Stirlingshire | Scotland | Mansion adjoining 14th-century tower | | 1883 | Sinclairtown Town Hall and library | Sinclairtown, Kirkcaldy | | Fife | Scotland | | | 1883 | Wylie & Lochhead's | | | Glasgow | Scotland | Terra cotta portion | | 1884 | Carnegie Baths | Dunfermline | | Fife | Scotland | Addition of galleries | | 1884 | Glasgow Medical Mission, Gorbals | Gorbals | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1885 | Dysart Town Hall | Dysart | | Fife | Scotland | Added to tolbooth of 1576 | | 1885 | Hartwood Asylum | Shotts | | Lanarkshire | Scotland | Competition design, selected but not successful | | 1885 | Mission Hospital | | | Tiberias | Israel | | | 1885 | Proudfoot Institute | Moffat | | Dumfriesshire | Scotland | | | 1886 | Business Premises, 137-139 Trongate | | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1886 | Gilmerton Convalescent Home | Gilmerton | | Edinburgh | Scotland | | | 1886 | Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888 | Kelvingrove | | Glasgow | Scotland | Won competition to secure job | | 1886 | Ruthwell Parish Church | Ruthwell | | Dumfriesshire | Scotland | Alterations and apse - to house Ruthwell Cross | | c. 1886 | St Andrews Free Church | | | Edinburgh | Scotland | Won competition and secured job | | 1887 | Couper Institute and library | Cathcart | | Glasgow | Scotland | | | 1887 | Speirs School | Beith | | Ayrshire | Scotland | | | 1887 | St Andrew's Scots Church | Bournemouth | | Hampshire | England | | | 1888 | Anderson's College Medical School | Kelvinhaugh | | Glasgow | Scotland | Commenced work, but John Keppie took over after Sellars's death | | 1888 | Baptist Church | Greenock | | Renfrewshire | Scotland | | | 1888 | Hampstead Presbyterian Church | Hampstead | | London | England | | | 1888 | Paisley County Buildings (Sheriff Court), Meeting Room and Offices | Paisley | | Renfrewshire | Scotland | Unsuccessful competition design published | | Late 1800s | Henderson Street Clock | Bridge of Allan | | Stirlingshire | Scotland | 'probably' provided design |
ReferencesBibliographic ReferencesThe following books contain references to this : | | Author(s) | Date | Title | Part | Publisher | Notes | | Walker, David M | 1967 | James Sellars, architect, Glasgow, 2nd December 1843 - 9 October 1888 | XI, no 2 | Scottish Art Review | pp16-19 | | Walker, Frank Arneil | 1986 | South Clyde Estuary: An Illustrated Architectural Guide to Inverclyde and Renfrew | | | p47 |
Periodical ReferencesThe following periodicals contain references to this : | | Periodical Name | Date | Edition | Publisher | Notes | | Builder | 23 April 1910 | | | | | Building News | 7 March 1890 | | | | | Quiz | 6 July 1893 | | | | | RIBA Journal | 11 June 1910 | | London: Royal Institute of British Architects | Obituary pp606-608 | | Scottish Art Review | 1888 | | | Memoir of Sellars by Keppie |
Archive ReferencesThe following archives hold material relating to this : | | Source | Archive Name | Source Catalogue No. | Notes | | British Architectural Library, RIBA | RIBA Biographical Files | | | | RIBA Archive, Victoria & Albert Museum | RIBA Drawings Collection | | | | RIBA Archive, Victoria & Albert Museum | RIBA Nomination Papers | | F v5 p148, microfiche 93/C6 (no list of works) |
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