Basic Biographical Details
| Name: | John Robert Harrison MacDonald |
| Designation: | |
| Born: | 22 May 1907 |
| Died: | 1996 |
| Bio Notes: | John Robert Harrison McDonald was the son of Sir John McDonald (not 'MacDonald', 1874–1964), who was a major building contractor in the Glasgow area before the Second World War. Sir John was the archetypal self-made businessman, rising from humble origins. John McDonald senior had a joiner’s business at 78 Adelphi Street, Gorbals, Glasgow from c 1899. He married Janet Campbell Harrison, daughter of a carpet weaver, in April 1900, and they had two children, Annie Mitchell McDonald (born January 1901), and John Robert Harrison McDonald (born 22 May 1907). In 1910, the office and family home moved to 12 Old Dalmarnock Road, Bridgeton. McDonald built himself ‘Elpalet’, a large modern ‘castellated Gothick’ villa in Carmunnock, with a crenellated roof terrace in 1914-15. The use of flat roofs to increase useable space was a constant theme in McDonald’s buildings. Elpalet’s interior was extraordinarily lavish, boasting a domed entrance hall, heraldic paintings and mosaic floors. McDonald senior had founded the Sunlit Building Company around 1917, making mass-produced prefabricated structures, for the Admiralty, War Office and local government. Sunlit’s logo showed a radiant rising sun, illuminating a flat roofed factory. In 1920, he formed John McDonald (Contractors) Ltd, of Burnside. Both McDonalds recognised the value of advertising and promotion, and took advantage of them throughout their careers, as well as promoting new technologies and materials. Glasgow established a Housing Department under the 1919 Housing Act, which compelled local authorities to provide working class homes. The city boundaries were extended to incorporate greenfield sites, and low-rise ‘four in a block’ flats were built instead of tenements. The principal developments were Mosspark, Riddrie, Knightswood (the largest scheme, on land formerly in Dunbartonshire), Carntyne and Scotstoun. By 1925 Glasgow had over 30,000 applicants for its insufficient council accommodation. McDonald senior constructed hundreds of the ‘Sunlit’-style houses on the council’s peripheral estates. In early 1924, McDonald (Contractors) Ltd were at Knightswood, where they continued working until the early 1930s. In line with the 1920s fashion for physical wellbeing, McDonald claimed that flat-roofs admitted more sunshine at ground level than traditional pitched-roofs, creating extra recreation spaces up above. Rooftop drainage problems were supposedly solved by a fully-sealed, guaranteed roof. McDonald’s favourite cavity walls regulated temperature, and were externally roughcast. The new houses had bay windows, another recurrent motif, as they were more easily adapted to flat roofs. Throughout 1927-9, McDonald’s men worked on Areas No 6, 7 and 9, in Knightswood, where the municipal Housing Dept incorporated green spaces unmatched on later projects. In 1928, McDonald senior was contracted for another 852 flat roofed, patent-built houses there, worth over £300,000. Three new McDonald subsidiaries were created in 1929, namely Glasgow Estates Development Company Ltd, Sunlight Ltd, and Stronghold Ltd (bitumen and tarmac works, using their own products). Various sources suggested Sunlight Ltd was ‘Sunlit Homes Ltd’, but they officially advertised as ‘Sunlight Ltd’, and just produced buildings under the ‘Sunlit’ brand-name, hence the confusion. John R H McDonald junior (1907-1996), had met his future wife, Dorcas Anne Hutcheson, in Glasgow in 1928. She was visiting her uncle and fellow American, (later Sir) Stephen Piggott, the managing director of John Brown & Co, shipbuilders. Dorcas’s father was a wealthy woollen-mill owner in Tennessee, whose sister became Lady Piggott. J R H McDonald was not a trained architect, holding a BSc degree, but he was a member of the Institute of Civil Engineers and several town planning bodies. He visited either the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris in 1925, or the Deutscher Werkbund show in Stuttgart in 1927, which both showcased the work of Le Corbusier, whom he admired. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he also studied modern buildings in Belgium, Holland and Germany and met Dr Josef Frank in Vienna. In May 1929 J R H McDonald sailed to New York, probably on another study tour and visiting his American fiancée, because in May 1931, he published ‘Modern Housing: A Review … at home and abroad, and some practical suggestions’. The book was a thinly-disguised promotion for Sunlit Homes, flat roofs and the McDonalds’ technical patents. He pictured specimen dwellings built of their own precast concrete blocks, with flat roofs. The book reviewed overcrowded conditions in Glasgow and claimed that ‘Housing is the keystone of civilization ... of … public health … traffic congestion … crime and unrest, indeed all the social problems that beset us today’. In support of his extravagant claims McDonald junior marshalled statistics, and cited Josef Hoffman, Le Corbusier, Robert Mallet-Stephens and C R Mackintosh. He examined unemployment in the building industry, as well as ‘best practice’ in municipal housing estates abroad. This included balconies, ‘sun terraces’, and streamlined deco styling. The extreme unsuitability of the Scottish climate to flat roofs did not figure into McDonald’s arguments. One of McDonald senior’s ‘Sunlit’ houses was erected at the 1931 ‘Ideal Homes’ exhibition at the Kelvin Hall, which ‘thus predated Wells Coates’ Ideal Home ‘Sunspan’ House … by two years’. In 1932, Sunlight Ltd offered to construct the design by former Glasgow teacher Mrs Jean Reid which won a Daily Mail contest, but it would appear that this was not built. After the publication of his book, John R H McDonald married his fiancée Dorcas Hutcheson in Chattanooga in February 1932. In November John McDonald senior purchased the 117 acre Kilmardinny estate and mansion in Bearsden, where he later built on the land. The McDonalds were engaged on one of Glasgow’s largest council schemes, at Cardonald in early 1933, where the Western Heritable Investment Co and Glasgow Estates Development Co erected 2512 dwellings. The huge £1million project may have financed the McDonalds’ own lavish family homes in Bearsden. At Kilmardinny, the McDonalds built to their own designs without budgetary restrictions. Five houses in the steeply-sloping Carse View Drive, were in the current International Style, and two were traditional. ‘Green Ridge’ was built for Annie Mitchell McDonald in 1933-4. ‘White Lodge’, in Kilmardinny Crescent, which featured in Country Life in 1935, was J H R McDonald’s own self-designed family home. The magazine described the colour schemes, lighting, and technical innovations in central heating and efficient layout. It still contained two maids’ rooms, and an integral wash house. The large housing developments at ‘Cardonald & Hillington Scheme SW2’, and ‘Carntyne E2’ continued during 1933-5. ‘Glasgow Estates Co’ promoted 4- and 5-apartment terraces at Cardonald with tiled roofs, and timber-gabled bay windows. These were presumably for private rent, as the style was entirely contrary to the McDonald ethos. They also opened sales offices for owner-occupiers in Bearsden, at Douglas Park and Kilmardinny in 1935-7, and opened a show house at Burnbrae Estate, 275 Milngavie Road, Bearsden in 1937. They sold conventional houses at Mosshead Road, Bearsden, and Woodlands Road, Rouken Glen (‘by Thornliebank’) in 1938. Identical semi-detached 2-bed properties with pitched roofs were available in 1939 at Burnside and Bearsden, at ‘£5 down payment and from 19/10- weekly’. Unfortunately, the McDonalds’ non-standard techniques caused problems. They were taken to court by in 1939 by the purchaser of the modernist, flat-roofed ‘bandbox’ called ‘Buckfast’, in Carseview Drive, Bearsden. The buyer paid £1185 in July 1934, but ‘Within months … the house … developed serious damp … spongy cracks developed, fungus grew’, and it became uninhabitable. Despite McDonald blaming condensation, the sheriff found that ‘faults in the [roof] construction’ caused the leaks, and awarded the owner £350 damages. It was in the 1930s that McDonald senior was most influential in public life, and he was knighted in February 1937, for ‘political and public services’. He was vice-president of the Institute of Patentees, to which J H R McDonald also belonged. Sir John was active in various transport professional bodies, and was a member of the Clan McDonald Society in Glasgow, for whom J R H McDonald latterly wrote a book. The new Sir John and Lady McDonald moved out of Elpalet, their original home, in early 1937 for the much grander Victorian Kilmardinny House. J R H sailed to New York in January 1938, with his family of two sons, who were most unusually, both called ‘John’ (although nicknamed Jack, and Iain). A daughter, Dorcas Anne, was later born to them. During the war Sir John McDonald commented on petrol rationing, and raised money for Glasgow’s War Relief Fund. J H R McDonald had evacuated his young family to stay with their Hutcheson grandparents in the USA in June 1940. Being of military age, J R H McDonald remained in Britain, where Stronghold Ltd, their asphalt and bitumen suppliers, continued to retail dovetail waterproof sheeting to government contractors. In June 1944, as part of a restructuring operation, John McDonald (Contractors) Ltd entered voluntary liquidation. In March 1945, before the end of the war, the new incarnation of John McDonald (Contractors) Ltd registered as a private company, with £60,000 in share capital. This was in order to make John R H McDonald the director, and Dorothy Gallacher the new company secretary. McDonald junior shortly afterwards (April 1945) lodged two patent applications for waterproof bituminous sheet roofing, and prefabricated wall-panels. Lady McDonald died at Kilmardinny in June 1954, aged 79. Sir John only waited a very short while before remarrying in early 1955. Christina McLachlan (c1898-1986), 24 years his junior, was his long-time book-keeper and Plewlands company secretary. The Glasgow Estates Development Company were taken to court in February 1955 by tenants protesting against rent rises under the Housing (Repairs and Rents) Scotland Act. The firm owned 1340 dwellings across Glasgow, and used their subsidiary, Sunlight Builders of Bridgeton, when repairs were required at Gauldry Ave, Cardonald. The repairs were allegedly overcharged, and the tenants received compensation. Sir John McDonald died at Kilmardinny House, aged 89, in January 1964. His firms had built around 10,000 houses around Glasgow, innovating materials, production and wall and roof styles. Plewlands Investments, Glasgow Estates Development Co, and John McDonald (Contractors) Ltd were dissolved between 1965 and 1970. Kilmardinny House was sold to Bearsden Burgh Council in May 1968. The second Lady McDonald died at Balfron, Stirlingshire in 1984. She was interviewed by art teacher Robert Lindlay Nelson in the late 1970s as part of his thesis on J R H McDonald’s ‘international’ style houses, and their suitability for the Scottish climate. John R H McDonald returned to the USA after World War II, and lived in Georgia and Pennsylvania with his American wife Dorcas (1908-2001) and three children. McDonald retired to Chattanooga in 1970, where he and his wife became major philanthropists, and were involved in various church, heritage, environmental and educational charities. He died in 1996, and the junior school at McCallie was named in his honour in 1999. Mrs McDonald left most of her $8.7million dollar estate to charitable purposes in 2001, including $1m to her church. Biography by Morag Cross. |
Private and Business Addresses
| The following private or business addresses are associated with this : | |||||
| Address | Type | Date from | Date to | Notes | |
 | Burnside, Glasgow, Scotland | Business | |||
| White Lodge, Bearsden, Glasgow, Scotland | Private | 1934 | ||
Employment and Training
Employers
| The following individuals or organisations employed or trained this (click on an item to view details): | |||||
| Name | Date from | Date to | Position | Notes | |
| John McDonald Contractors (or J M Contractors) | Partner | |||
Buildings and Designs
| This 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 | |
| 1933 | 6 Carse View Drive | Bearsden | Glasgow | Scotland | ||
| 1933 | 7 Carse View Drive | Bearsden | Glasgow | Scotland | ||
| 1933 | Craigmillar, 8 Carse View Drive | Bearsden | Glasgow | Scotland | ||
| 1933 | Glen Haven | Bearsden | Glasgow | Scotland | ||
| 1933 | Green Ridge | Bearsden | Glasgow | Scotland | ||
| 1933 | Highhowe | Bearsden | Glasgow | Scotland | ||
| 1933 | White Lodge | Bearsden | Glasgow | Scotland | According to Country Life article, John R H McDonald designed the house himself. T Harold Hughes may have been consulted. | |
| 1934 | 10 Carse View Drive | Bearsden | Glasgow | Scotland | ||
| 1934 | Overdale | Bearsden | Glasgow | Scotland | ||
| 1936 | 1 Carse View Drive | Bearsden | Glasgow | Scotland | ||
References
Bibliographic References
| The following books contain references to this : | ||||||
| Author(s) | Date | Title | Part | Publisher | Notes | |
| McKean, Charles | 1987 | The Scottish Thirties: An Architectural Introduction | Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press | pp171-3 | |
Archive References
| The following archives hold material relating to this : | ||||
| Source | Archive Name | Source Catalogue No. | Notes | |
| Courtesy of Morag Cross | Information sent to DSA | Sent 2016. | |