William Forrest Salmon was born in 1843, the first son of architect James Salmon (1805-88) and Helen Russell (1817-81). He was sent to the office of James Smith in or about 1857 to train as an architect. There he became acquainted with William Leiper, William Scott Morton and the decorative artist James Moyr Smith, then engaged on the lavish interior work of Overtoun, Dumbarton. On completing his articles Forrest followed Scott Morton to London, securing a place in the office of George Gilbert Scott. From there he was probably responsible for the design of the polychrome Italian Gothic Anderston Established Church in 1864. He returned to Glasgow in or about 1866 and became a partner in his father's firm in 1867 or 1868 along with James Ritchie who had been a senior assistant in the office since at least 1862, the practice name becoming Salmon Son & Ritchie.
Forrest was admitted FRIBA on 4 December 1876, together with his father, who had become first President of the newly founded Glasgow Institute of Architects in 1868. They were amongst the first recruits in Charles Barry Junior and John Honeyman's campaign to extend the Scottish membership, their third proposer being Thomas Leverton Donaldson who had Ayrshire connections. In the meantime the partnership with Ritchie had been dissolved in 1872, the practice name now becoming James Salmon & Son. On 12 June of that same year William Forrest Salmon married Jessie Alexander (b. 1843) at Dalry House, Edinburgh, the home of William Scott Morton who had married Jessie's elder sister Elizabeth (Eliza) in 1867 when both were schoolteachers in Berwick. They were the daughters of Hugh Alexander (1814-1900), a native of Kilmarnock who had been a gamekeeper to the Earl of Southesk before becoming a tenant first at Duninald and then at Arrat Mill on the Southesk estate.
In his youth Forrest Salmon appears to have had promise as a Gothic designer, notably at Gallowhill House, Paisley (1867), but it was not sustained. Nevertheless the Salmons did succeed in attracting notable pupils in James Marjoribanks MacLaren and George Washington Browne. Like Leiper, Forrest retained his links with London which were greatly strengthened by the Scott Mortons who expanded their business first to the capital and then in 1889 to New York. These links brought the Salmons into an even wider artistic circle, Forrest's sister Helen Russell Salmon marrying the Yorkshire-born animal painter Tom Hunt, and among their many friends was the London Swedish architectural draughtsman Axel Haig who had accompanied Forrest on his first visit to Italy.
James Salmon (Senior) died on 5 June 1888 when walking home after giving one of his celebrated after-dinner speeches, leaving moveable estate of £2,559 19s 11d. Thereafter William Forrest continued the practice under the same name. Eighteen months previously, on 5 January 1887, Forrest's wife Jessie had died suddenly in Edinburgh while staying with the Scott Mortons. She left two sons - James, born on 13 April 1873 at 12 Seton Terrace, Glasgow, and Hugh, born 16 November 1874. James was initially educated privately and sent to Glasgow High School in September 1883, remaining there until 1888 when he joined the family firm for two years. Their upbringing was partly supervised by their father's formidable elder sister Wilhelmina - 'Aunt Mina' - who had looked after her father since her mother's death in 1881. Hugh was tall like his father and grandfather, James was relatively short in stature resulting in the sobriquets of 'Wee Troot' or 'Sardine'.
In 1890 James (Junior) was sent to Leiper's office to complete his apprenticeship, attending the classes at Glasgow School of Art for the unusually extended period of seven years, 1889-95. His aim appears to have been not only to benefit from the teaching of William James Anderson but also to maintain links with the 'New Sculpture' group there, the cosmopolitan Francis Derwent Wood, who had studied in Karlsruhe and Paris, the Dutchman Johan Keller and their Scots student Albert Hodge (who were to have a profound effect on the firm's architecture in the later 1890s and early 1900s). James left Leiper's office in 1894 at the end of his articles. Leiper's influence on Salmon was to remain marked in both commercial and domestic work. As a twenty-first birthday present Forrest sent him on a Grand Tour of the continent which is partly chronicled in watercolours in the Salmon collection, at NMRS, made between April and July of that year. He eventually returned to the family firm in March 1895.
In the meantime, in 1891, Forrest had engaged John Gaff Gillespie (b. 1870), who had been articled to James Milne Monro c. 1884, concurrently attending classes at Glasgow School of Art. Gillespie had won the Glasgow Institute of Architects prize in 1889 jointly with Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and it was this that brought him to the notice of Forrest Salmon. Like Mackintosh at Honeyman & Keppie, Gillespie was given design responsibility very early, notably at the free Flemish Renaissance Scottish Temperance League building in 1893 and the West of Scotland Convalescent Seaside Homes at Dunoon in 1895. In the same year he was made a partner, the everyday work of the practice having grown as a result of Forrest having secured some of the business of the British Linen Bank, whose architects were usually J M Dick Peddie & Washington Browne.
On his return James Salmon Junior worked under his father and Gillespie for rather more than two years, being given much of the design responsibility for Mercantile Chambers on Bothwell Street, a huge project in which the Salmons had a financial interest and in which they were to have their office. James became a partner in 1898, but for the next few years and even beyond the individual design responsibilities of Gillespie and James Junior are not always easy to separate. Their names were not acknowledged in the practice title until November 1903 when the firm became Salmon Son & Gillespie.
By that date there had been domestic changes in the Salmon family. Wilhelmina had remained unmarried and eventually a house at Lochgoilhead, renamed Gowandean, was bought for her and extended in 1897-98, before her father's death. On 11 June 1889 Forrest, remembered in the family as something of a ladies' man, married Agnes Cooper Barry, the daughter of a Forfar grocer who lived with her brother the Reverend James Cooper Barry, a civil engineer who had switched career to become a Free Church minister in 1882 and had obtained the charge of the North Free Church at Dumbarton. Neither Wilhelmina nor Forrest's sons took to Agnes, always referring to her as 'Steppy'. Hugh left home in 1894 to work for his grandfather at Arrat Mill, Brechin, and Auchenblae, Kincardineshire, emigrating to Dunedin in 1898 as wool and seed manager to Wright Stephenson & Company. James remained at home and in 1898 the Salmon family moved to the newly built Rowantreehill at Kilmacolm where they rapidly acquired a significant domestic clientele.
In his later years Forrest became prominent in professional matters as a Governor of Glasgow School of Art, President of the Glasgow Institute of Architects 1892-94, and a member of the RIBA Council. It was probably due to his influence that Gillespie and James Junior were admitted Fellows of the RIBA on 3 December 1906, Gillespie's proposers being Monro, Thomas Lennox Watson, Leiper and Forrest Salmon, and James's Leiper, John James Burnet, Watson and his father. By 1906 both Gillespie and James Junior had travelled extensively. Gillespie's nomination paper records travel in Italy, Spain and Morocco, and that of James Junior travel in Norway, Holland (1904), Romania, Austria and Hungary (1904), France (1894 and 1906), Switzerland (1894), Spain, Italy (1894 and 1904), Greece and Turkey (probably 1904). Sketches and photographs preserved in the Salmon collection at NMRS have left his travels well documented.
By the early 1900s Gillespie and Salmon's styles had begun to diverge, Gillespie's work tending to be a simplified free classic and Salmon's still a sculpturesque art nouveau as seen in the alternative elevational treatments in the competition for the new Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College competition of 1901, both partners adopting a highly simplified arts and crafts style for domestic, cottage hospital and golf clubhouse work. But from 1904 when they received the commission for Lion Chambers both Gillespie and James Junior had become interested in the possibilities of reinforced concrete, working closely with the structural engineer Louis Gustave Mouchel, the British-based representative of Francois Hennebique. Within the firm Forrest seems to have been responsible for the 'scheming out' of commissions, the detailed design work being delegated to Gillespie or to his son James. Forrest was latterly known as the commercial traveller, adept at moving in Parish Council, School Board and clubland circles to obtain directly commissioned work for the practice. The partners spent much of their time on designs for national and local competitions, none of which they succeeded in actually winning until 1908 when William Leiper selected their design for Stirling Municipal Buildings. It was mainly Gillespie's work. Construction was, however, some years away and in the summer of 1911 Forrest began to suffer from cancer. He died at Rowantreehill on 7 October. By his own wish he was buried with his first wife and the Scott Mortons at Merchiston Cemetery, Edinburgh. He left moveable estate of £7,008 11s 4d. Apart from architecture, painting and sculpture his other main interest in life had been golf, which he had played 'since his boyhood'.
While the Finance Act of 1909 had probably affected the prosperity of the practice as it had so many others, Forrest Salmon's will proved the catalyst for the dissolution of the partnership in June 1913. Forrest's will made no provision for James to inherit his share of the practice. It remained part of his trust estate and entitled 'Steppy' to a share of such profits as the firm had at that time. Gillespie now became senior partner and as James Junior had spent all his income on foreign travel and motoring (as a letter to Hugh of 18 August 1910 records) he could not afford to buy out either Gillespie or his stepmother. Gillespie bought out Agnes's interest, retaining the office in Mercantile Chambers, the archive (which was later sent for pulping when his successor Jack Antonio Coia was interned in 1940) and the Stirling commission. James moved out to a rented flat at 48 Jane Street, Blythswood Square which was both home and office, apparently without even a secretary. He retained the commission received in 1909 for the Admiralty Village at Cove Farm, Greenock of which only a few houses had been built in 1910, and was allowed to revive the name of the firm as it had existed prior to 1903, James Salmon & Son, later abbreviated simply to James Salmon FRIBA.