Basic Biographical Details
| Name: | T Waller Marwick & Associates |
| Designation: | |
| Born: | Before 1964 |
| Died: | |
| Bio Notes: | Thomas Waller Marwick was the grandson of Edinburgh architect Thomas Purves Marwick, and son of Thomas Craigie Marwick. He was born on either 31 December 1903 (according to his ARIBA nomination paper) or 31 January 1904 (according to his FRIBA nomination paper), was educated at George Watson's College, and served his apprenticeship in his grandfather's and father's firm of T P Marwick & Son from 1923 to 1928, studying at Edinburgh College of Art. In 1928 he made a ten-week tour of the USA and Canada before beginning a course at the Architectural Association in London. He made further travels in 1930, spending two months in southern Spain and France, and passed the qualifying exam in London in 1931. He was admitted ARIBA at the end of that year, his proposers being Howard Morley Robertson, John Jerdan and Verner Owen Rees; by that time he had returned to Edinburgh to join the family firm as an assistant, and he was taken into partnership in 1935. His London background no doubt had a great deal to do with the highly accomplished modernism of the firm's work in the 1930s, culminating in his being invited to undertake a major role in the design of the Glasgow Empire Exhibition of 1938. The sheer quality of the firm's work at that time has been attributed in part to the Rutland prize-winner Philip McManus, who had studied the work of Duiker and Dudok in Holland, and David ('Speedy') Harvey who was a brilliant draughtsman and perspectivist, but McManus left from 1937 to become a planner in Cape Town, South Africa. While Harvey must have borne the main responsibility of the Empire Exhibition, the individual roles of Marwick, McManus and Harvey have still to be satisfactorily sorted out. Whatever the role of the latter the Marwicks must have been committed modernists for such adventurous designs to be accepted by their corporate clients. In the event their modernism cost them the business of the National Bank, which sought a more conservative design from Leslie Grahame-Thomson. Thomas Waller Marwick served as a Major in the Royal Engineers during the Second World War, resuming practice on his own account in 1946. He never married. In his later years, with the original design for the Sun Building modified to its detriment by the City's planning department, he was described by William Dey as a 'funny little man' and by Scott Morton as a 'sulky disappointed sort of chap,' probably because the firm's pre-war success was not recovered in the post-war years as it should have been. By 1964 his practice was known as T Waller Marwick & Associates. He retired c.1966, but he must have been conscious of the importance of what his firm had done as he took the then unusual step of presenting the office drawings to the National Monuments Record in 1969. He died in an Edinburgh nursing home, 15 Blantyre Terrace, on 12 July 1971, leaving an estate of only £698.85, including property. He never married. |
Private and Business Addresses
| The following private or business addresses are associated with this : | |||||
| Address | Type | Date from | Date to | Notes | |
 | 21, Rutland Street, Edinburgh, Scotland | Business | 1964 * | ||
* earliest date known from documented sources.
Employment and Training
Employees or Pupils
| The following individuals were employed or trained by this (click on an item to view details): | |||||
| Name | Date from | Date to | Position | Notes | |
| Thomas Ronald Michael Rowe | 1965 * | Architect | ||
* earliest date known from documented sources.
References
Bibliographic References
| The following books contain references to this : | ||||||
| Author(s) | Date | Title | Part | Publisher | Notes | |
| Municipal Annual | 1964 | Scottish Municipal Annual | 1964-1965 | ||