James Maclaren was born in Dundee on 11 March 1829, the son of William Maclaren and Mary Anderson, and was christened on 22 March. He was articled to David Smith who had succeeded to James Black's practice, but Smith died in 1845 or early 1846 and he completed his apprenticeship with ____ Johnstone who was a land surveyor rather than an architect. Nevertheless he managed to secure a place in the office of David Bryce in Edinburgh from which he won the Soane Medallion in 1848 at the early age of nineteen, the subject being a vast complex of public baths. In 1850 he returned to Dundee to commence practice with his brother William, perhaps at his father's wish. William had been born on 12 May 1831 (christened 22 May); nothing is known of his training. The partnership was very brief: it is not yet known whether William died or followed another profession. In that same year James won the competition for the Peel Monument at Forfar and soon thereafter he was appointed architect and surveyor to the Panmure estate, perhaps through the influence of Bryce: this gave him control over the feuing of Barnhill, Monifieth and Carnoustie, and brought him many domestic commissions, enabling him to marry Jemima Margaret Miller c.1853. By 1854 at the latest he had secured the patronage of the Cox family, and in that same year, although only twenty-five, he was the founder-editor of the Scottish architectural journal, 'The Building Chronicle' which was published in Edinburgh and was an important forum for architectural debate until it ceased publication in 1857.
JAmes Maclarne was the leading architect in mi-Victorian Dundee, designing the former Savings Bank, the offices of Cox Borthers (latterly Sidlaw Industries) and of Din Brothers Buist & Co (now Friarfield House), Lamb's Hotel (later the Alliance Trust headquarters) and the campanile-like Cox's Stack at CAmperdown Works. He designed numerous mansionhouses, notably Clemont Park and Ashludie, now a hospital.
Initially Maclaren's public and commercial architecture derived from Bryce, Graeco-Roman neo-classical for monuments and public buildings and astylar Renaissance for commercial buildings. Influenced perhaps by the stylistic debate in his Building Chronicle he built no baronial houses. The earliest were neo-Jacobean of the Burn school sometimes with curvilinear gables, but from the early 1860s his houses adopted a more freestyle treatment with neo-Jacobean, Second Empire and sometimes completely non-period elements, an idiom also adopted by his nephew and pupil David Maclaren who commenced practice on his own account with James Ireland in 1872. From the later 1870s James Maclaren similarly adopted a more free interpretation of Renaissance for his commercial buildings, a development which may have been associated with George Shaw Aitken, who had been taken on as his chief assistant in 1871 and became his partner in 1873, the practice now assuming the name of Maclaren & Aitken, the office then being within the building Maclaren had built for himself at 10 Bank Street.
Aitken had been born in Edinburgh in 1836, the son of Robert Shaw Aitken, a silversmith in Bread Street, and had been articled to John Dick Peddie c. 1850, remaining with him as an assistant until he joined Maclaren. The partnership was briefly very successful but ended soon after March 1879 as a result of disagreements and litigation over the specification of stone from the Ferrybank estate near Cupar, which had been acquired by Maclaren. It was a fine white sandstone but proved unreliable on exposure to the weather. Aitken thereafter practised on his own account in Dundee for a year or two before moving back to Edinburgh and Maclaren continued on his own with his eldest son George Gordon Maclaren, who had been born 26 June 1855 and apprenticed to his father.
The Ferrybank stone affair adversely affected the practice and George had neither London nor Edinburgh experience. In the early 1880s the patronage of Maclaren's most important client, the Cox family, gradually slipped away to the much more up-to-date John Murray Robertson whose inspiration was partly American, and although the firm still had a very substantial domestic practice from the Panmure estate feus, it had lost the commanding position it had previously enjoyed. Nevertheless Maclaren's position as father of the profession in Dundee was still very much evident when he called a meeting in June 1884 to devise a uniform set of rules for the measurement of the work of the various trades. His efforts led to the Dundee Mode of Measurement in 1898 and ultimately the Scottish National Building Code of 1915. At the June 1884 meeting Charles Ower observed that it was the first time the architects in the area had met professionally and proposed an organisation on the lines of London's Architectural Association. In the same month the Dundee Institute of Architecture Science and Art was founded with James Maclaren as its first president, 1884-86.
James Maclaren died at Ferrybank on 16 June 1893. Prior to his death he appears to have recognised that the practice was becoming out of date as a younger son, John Turnbull Maclaren, born 1864, was sent to an unspecified office in the United States to gain experience, returning on his father's death as a partner. It appears that John Turnbull Maclaren practised briefly as 'J T Maclaren & Son' in the months just after his father's death. He exhibited a design for some work on Lyndhurst at the Glasgow Institute of Architects in 1893 under this name.
George Gordon Maclaren who had set up house in Invermark Terrace, Barnhill, retained his father's management of the Panmure feus for the Dalhousie Trustees and concentrated his interests in Broughty Ferry where he had become a parish councillor and a burgh commissioner, successfully promoting a scheme for a municipal gasworks, though not the scheme for municipal swimming baths and private baths of which he was the principal advocate. Stylistically his work was a pale version of his father's. In 1896 he suffered a heart attack and from the summer of 1898 he was confined to his house. He died on 31 June 1899, survived by a widow Isabella Stenhouse and a young family. He left a moveable estate of £1,633 15s 10d.
John Turnbull Maclaren continued the practice as sole practitioner into the early years to the twentieth century but his American experience was not significantly reflected in the firm's buildings. The more ambitious designs of the later 1890s and early 1900s were known to be the work of Andrew Graham Patrick, born in Perth in 1864. He had been recruited as leading draughtsman from David Smart's office in Perth in 1894. He had attracted the Maclarens' notice by winning an open competition at Port Townsend, USA, but his fiancé had declined to emigrate with him. In 1908 Maclaren took Charles Geddes Soutar into partnership, a move which took the practice back into the premier league, the office now being at 10 Reform Street. Soutar was born in 1878 of a Forfar family and apprenticed to Charles & Leslie Ower, 1892-98, latterly working under William Gillespie Lamond by whom he was profoundly influenced. During this period he took classes at Dundee Technical College, latterly under Patrick Hill Thoms who also had a considerable influence on the development of his domestic style. In 1899 following the break-up of the Charles & Leslie Ower partnership he moved to the office of John Murray Robertson to widen his experience, but returned to Leslie Ower in 1900, remaining with him as assistant until 1902, from which year he practised on his own account with some success. He remained on good terms with Charles Ower, for whom he designed Aystree in 1903. In 1908 he merged his practice with Maclaren's as Maclaren Sons & Soutar. With his white or cream suits and stylish boating hats he brought a breath of fresh air to the practice, which had remained somewhat staid despite the recruitment of Patrick: a staff photograph of that time, now in the RCAHMS, well illustrates the difference between the partners, Maclaren being a portly figure in a sombre city suit.
In 1920 the practice merged with J & F Salmond, a firm of civil engineers, land surveyors and architects based at 6 High Street, the firm now becoming Maclaren Soutar Salmond with John Turnbull Maclaren, Charles Geddes Soutar and William Salmond as partners. In 1921 Maclaren retired and Patrick was taken into partnership, but the name of the firm remained unchanged, the merged firms now moving to 15 South Tay Street.
Maclaren enjoyed a very long retirement, dying at the house he had built for himself, Whinsby, Abercromby Street, Barnhill on 20 March 1948. Although described in his RIAS obituary as 'always easily approachable,' in later years at least he was remembered by the Patrick family as somewhat humourless. He left the then very substantial sum of £75,123, and endowed an RIAS student scholarship.
The Salmond practice had a long if architecturally undistinguished history. It was founded in 1826 by James Sime, Schoolmaster of Strathmartine, as surveyor. In 1853 James Salmond was taken into partnership as Sime & Salmond, but in 1855 Sime died. James was subsequently joined by his brother Frank who had been trained as a civil engineer with the Caledonian Railway under its engineer-in-chief George Graham, becoming a partner under the style of J & F Salmond in 1873. James Salmond retired in 1904 and died in 1905, at which date Frank's son William joined the firm as a partner. Frank Salmond died in 1911 leaving William as sole partner. Their architectural practice prior to the merger had consisted almost exclusively of farm steadings, farmhouses, and farm cottages.
Until 1922 none of the partners had sought membership of the RIBA, but in that year Soutar was admitted Fellow, his proposers being Alexander Nisbet Paterson, William Brown Whitie and Patrick Hill Thoms: Paterson and Whitie he knew through the RIAS of which he was an active member and was to become president in 1936-38.
In 1929 Maclaren Soutar Salmond took over the practice of David Wishart Galloway who had been killed in a motorcycle accident in that year, and for rather more than a decade maintained his office at 2 Market Street, Brechin as a branch, but this was de-merged to A B Roger as an independent practice in the 1940s.
Around 1933 the practice was joined as prospective partner by Thomas Steuart Fothringham, born 5 April 1907, who had been educated at Wellington and had read architecture at Trinity College Cambridge with Ian Gordon Lindsay and R A C Simpson. In the event his association with the practice was relatively short as he inherited the Pourie and Fothringham estates in April 1936 and did not return to the practice after serving as a Major in the Black Watch during the Second World War.
Charles Soutar's interest in the practice did not survive the Second World War either, and without him it went into a gradual decline. Although his practice was not particularly large, Soutar was a prominent figure in Scottish architecture between the wars. He was an outstanding Arts and Crafts architect with wide artistic interests and was remembered by his friends as generous in spirit and of infinite human kindness. Along with his client David Band of Band & Whyte and the schools inspector John Taylor Ewen, he was one of the principal patrons of the Arbroath artist James Waterston Herald. Although a very able designer and a fine draughtsman and watercolourist Patrick was content to take a secondary role in charge of the drawing office, producing beautiful presentation drawings for clients. Soutar became a very active member of the RIBA, and was elected to the Council for 1923-24, 1925-26 and 1935-44, serving as Vice-President from 1939 to 1944. Thomas Forbes Maclennan recalled that at these meetings he remained informal in style to the end, preferring plus fours to a city suit. Soutar moved house to Wheatfields, Forfar in 1941. In 1946 he began to suffer from Alzheimer's disease and had to withdraw from the practice completely. He died on 14 November 1952.
Soutar's architect son David did not remain with the practice, preferring to take a civil service job in Aberdeen. The practice was continued by the ageing Andrew Patrick and by William Salmond whose expertise lay chiefly in valuation. The latter was an old-fashioned gentleman of impressive presence, very tall, infinitely courteous and patient, qualities which served him well as the long-serving chairman of the Dundee rent tribunal. After Andrew Patrick died in 1951 the architectural work was in the hands of the practice's middle-aged chief assistant Stuart O Barron who had become a partner on Soutar's retirement. Salmond remained senior partner until his death on 2 March 1956, Barron thereafter becoming sole partner. He took Ian Imlach into partnership c.1970, but it was too late to save the practice, which closed in 1972. At the date of closure very few of the practice drawings had survived. A card index to them compiled by Soutar during the First World War survives at RCAHMS, but gives no indication of what was built anew, what was altered or which were competition drawings that may not have been successful.