Robert Rowand Anderson was born on 5 April 1834 apparently at Fernieside, Liberton where his parents James Anderson and Margaret Rowand had a cottage in addition to their flat in Hay Street: the elder Anderson was a solicitor dealing mainly with Sheriff Court work and never aspired to membership of the Writers to the Signet. He was their third child. Sent to George Watson's in 1841, he suffered considerable embarrassment when his elder brother was required to leave, an event which may have had a bearing on his sometimes difficult and defensive temperament. In 1845 he began a five-year legal apprenticeship with John Keegan, but managed to attend classes at the Trustees' Academy between 12 October 1849 and 20 May 1850. In 1851 before his apprenticeship was complete, he transferred to his father's firm but the following year he was articled to John Lessels, resuming his classes at the Trustees' Academy in February 1853. There he studied under Alexander Christie and Scott Lauder, came in contact with Robert William Billings as a visiting teacher, and joined the Architectural Institute of Scotland, his student competition drawings for St Margaret's Well, Restalrig being published in the Building Chronicle on 1 January 1856.
At the end of his apprenticeship Anderson supervised the construction of the roof of Old Greyfriars Church for David Cousin, doubtless on the recommendation of Lessels with whom Cousin was to become closely associated. Later in the same year, 1857, he found a place as a salaried assistant in George Gilbert Scott's office at Spring Gardens, Trafalgar Square, working alongside G G Scott, John Oldrid Scott, W H Crossland, Thomas Garner, T G Jackson, R J Johnson, E R Robson and J J Stevenson, forming connections which were to have a significant influence on his own practice in later years. In 1859 at the end of his term with Scott, he undertook a study tour of France and North Italy with the object of publishing a book on the model of Shaw's and Nesfield's and at the end of it he spent a short time in the office of P J H Cuijpers at Roermond. By that date he had apparently acquired the mastery of European languages which was to prove useful later.
On his return to Edinburgh in 1860 he exhibited his drawings of St Antonin and Perugia at the Royal Scottish Academy and lectured on his study tour at the Architectural Institute of Scotland. He advertised his services as an architect from his father's house at 8 Dundas Street, but joined the civilian staff of the Royal Engineers under Colonel Moody at 42 Northumberland Street, where he was allowed to undertake a small private practice. There he designed the memorial to the 78th Highlanders on the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle and was responsible for the reconstruction of Broughty Castle as an artillery fortification as well as supervising the construction of the coastal defence batteries authorised by the War Office after the war scare of 1859. In November 1861 he was appointed to supervise the construction of St James the Less at Leith for G G Scott at 2 guineas a week, an appointment which brought him to the notice of Bishop Terrot.
The summary of Anderson's curriculum vitae in his 1876 nomination papers appears to indicate that Anderson took a break in his service with the Royal Engineers after three-and-a-half years, sometime after his work at St James came to a close in February 1862, in order to resume his studies in France and Italy. His time abroad was given as fourteen months, a period which must include the time spent abroad in 1859.
On his return he resumed at the Royal Engineers Office in Northumberland Street, now as a draughtsman and clerk of works having passed the civil service examination; married Mary Ross, daughter of a Ross-shire tenant farmer at Kinnahaird, Contin on 23 July 1863; and set up home, first at 21 Lothian Street (1864-5) and 16 Comely Bank (1865) and finally at 11 Duncan (now Dundonald) Street in 1865/66. An only daughter, Annie Ross Anderson, was born on 5 June 1864 but died of typhoid at the age of eight on 14 February 1872.
During his second stint with the Royal Engineers, Anderson's experience with Scott and the support of Bishop Terrot brought about a considerable Episcopal church building practice; their preferred architect, John Henderson, had died in 1862, and David Cousin, who had taken over his practice, was a Free Churchman. Late in that same year he secured the commission for Christ Church, Falkirk; on 3 June 1864 he won a limited competition for All Saints' Brougham Place, Edinburgh against another ex-assistant of Scott's, William Hay and William Lambie Moffat; and in October 1866 that for St Andrew's, St Andrews against John Milne, the assessor being G E Street. Earlier in that year he had secured without competition the commission for St John's Alloa and St Michael and all Angels Helensburgh, followed by St James Cupar, commissioned in December. While these churches were primarily indebted to Scott, they also showed an awareness of the work of Street and Brooks and All Saints had a reredos commissioned from Burges. Together with his work for the Engineers they can have allowed little time for preparing his French and Italian studies for publication. The remaining sketches and perspective drawings from his photographs were consequently put in the hands of the Swedish architect Axel Herman Haig to ensure that the publication of 'Examples of the municipal, commercial and street architecture of France and Italy from the 12th to the 15th century' coincided with his formal commencement of independent practice at 43 George Street in 1868. It was published by a London Scot, William Mackenzie, and dedicated to Scott. A further volume on medieval Scottish architecture with etched plates by Haig was begun but abandoned as uneconomic in the early 1870s.
Anderson's launch into general practice began relatively inauspiciously with a free classical tenement and paired terrace houses in Inverleith Terrace, Edinburgh and a Gothic tenement for John M Balfour in Balfour Street, Leith; but in 1871 he was commissioned to restore the late medieval St Vigean's Parish Church near Arbroath through the influence of Bishop Terrot. The following year he won a competition for the Catholic Apostolic Church in Edinburgh. He was elected to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and attendance at its meetings brought him to the notice of Bishop Forbes's cousin, the antiquarian lawyer W F Skene, the Earl of Northesk and most importantly the 3rd Marquess of Bute. Bute was impressed by Anderson's paper on Roslin delivered in 1873 and in the same year he commissioned him to advise on the west range of the monastic buildings of Paisley Abbey, the demolition of which he was trying to prevent. Earlier in that same year Anderson formed a partnership with David Bryce and his nephew John Bryce moving his practice into their office at 131 George Street, but incompatibility resulted in the partnership being dissolved later the same year. Anderson then moved to 44 Northumberland Street, adjacent to the Royal Engineers' office with Archibald Macpherson as chief assistant and prospective partner, but this was not implemented, probably because Macpherson was a Roman Catholic. Anderson then sought election as Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and was admitted on 1 June 1874, his proposers being Scott, Burn and the antiquarian burgh engineer at Dundee, William Mackison, then the only Scottish Fellow resident in Scotland apart from Bryce. At that date he had just won the Edinburgh and Kirkcaldy School Board competitions with Gothic designs very much in Scott's style and had been commissioned by W F Skene, acting on behalf of the Duke of Argyll, to carry out consolidation and restoration work on Iona Abbey and Nunnery: this in turn led to similar but more extensive work in the following year for the Marquess of Lothian at Jedburgh Abbey where he had the advice of Scott.
Although Anderson had no experience of designing public or commercial buildings beyond that obtained when working with Scott, Anderson was included among the six architects invited to compete for Edinburgh University's graduation hall and medical school in September 1874. This he determined to win by making a whirlwind study tour of medical schools and lecture theatres in England, France, Holland and Germany on which his command of languages proved useful. His submission was selected by the ten relevant professors on 29 January 1875 and had been greatly revised and enlarged by June 1877 following the acquisition of more land. Its refined early North Italian Renaissance was unique in the United Kingdom at that time and must reflect a further study tour of which no record survives.
Anderson's success at the medical school probably secured his election as associate of the Royal Scottish Academy at which he had exhibited since 1860 although he did not in fact show it there until the final design had been achieved in 1877. As structural engineer he engaged George M Cunningham of Blyth, Cunningham and Westland: that appears to have resulted in Blyth and Cunningham recommending him in July 1876 as architect for the Caledonian Railway Central Station in Glasgow for which they were the engineers. A study tour of London terminals was made and several schemes were considered, one of them a Gothic design, but it was the early Renaissance version with Italian and French elements and a Scandinavian clock tower which was selected by the Board on 1 May 1877. Anderson's office had to move to larger premises in Wemyss Place to accommodate the increasing numbers of staff required to build the medical school, where work began in 1878, and to design the station. The fee income from these projects made it possible to build two houses at Colinton in 1879, Allermuir for himself and Torduff for the painter Ernest Nicol, who was his tenant. Just slightly later he built a house at Emsallah, Tangier where he entered into a short-lived partnership with his contractor James Thompson.
In December 1877 Mount Stuart was burnt and it was to Anderson rather than Burges that the Butes turned for its replacement, perhaps because the initial intention had been to rebuild the old house in a deepened form. A completely new Gothic house was decided upon by the spring of 1878, but it was on the site of the old that it was actually built in 1880-1885. In design the concept was a secular Gothic architecture based on his studies in France and Italy, first seen in the rejected proposal for Central Station in 1877. The same idiom was adopted for the National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of Antiquities, which although financed by John Ritchie Findlay of the Scotsman newspaper, was strongly influenced by Bute.
By that date there had been considerable changes within the practice. Archibald Macpherson had left in 1876 to take over the practice of the ailing John Paterson, his place being taken by Anderson's pupils John Watson and George Mackie Watson, who were brothers. But in 1879 George Washington Browne, a pupil of Campbell Douglas & Sellars in Glasgow who had spent time in London with J J Stevenson, A W Blomfield and W E Nesfield, joined the firm as principal assistant to help with the completion of the medical school and the building of Central Station. The practice moved yet again to 24 Hill Street, and the partnership of Anderson and Browne was formed in 1881. From the time of Browne's arrival Aesthetic Movement influence in the practice became increasingly marked, particularly in Browne's submission to the Glasgow City Chambers competition in 1880-81 and the Conservative Club in Edinburgh in 1880, the elevation of which had echoes of J J Stevenson's Red House in its general arrangement. Both these designs were predominantly neo-Georgian in character suffused with early Italian Renaissance details. Browne's hand was similarly much in evidence in the Bedford Park-inspired Nile Grove development on the Braid Estate undertaken in association with the builder James Slater. It brought a smaller and more intimate scale with high-quality Aesthetic Movement detail and woodwork to Edinburgh terrace housing.
This change of style and scale was predominantly associated with Browne. In his own domestic work Anderson abandoned Gothic forms for simple Scots 17th-century ones, a development perhaps related to his close friendship with David MacGibbon and Thomas Ross, first seen in 1879 at his own Allermuir. Although relatively small its unturreted forms had much in common with Maitland Wardrop's Kinnordy designed in the same year and both reflected the line of thought developed by J J Stevenson and put in print in his 'House Architecture' of 1880. Whether Anderson was friendly with Maitland Wardrop at that date is not known but after Wardrop died in 1882, followed by his partner Charles Reid in 1883, Wardrop's twenty-seven-year-old son, Hew M Wardrop merged his practice with Anderson and Browne's as Wardrop, Anderson & Browne at the former Wardrop office at 19 St Andrew Square. Browne withdrew from the partnership late in 1885, perhaps because at that date he had relatively few clients of his own. An increasing tendency towards 17th-century Scottish rather than English detail was to be seen at the Normand Memorial Hall in Dysart of 1882, the Ardgowan Esate Office in Greenock and Braeburn House of 1886, reaching its full flowering at the Pearce Institute at Govan in 1892. By that date Anderson was again sole partner, the younger Wardrop having unexpectedly died at Udny on 4 November 1887.
A similar devotion to Scots detail was to be seen in the large parish church he built at Govan in 1882-88. It was designed for the Rev John Macleod who sought to combine the requirements of a large preaching space with a more liturgical form of Presbyterian worship. This building revolutionised Scottish church design. The Italian friars church plan of his Edinburgh Catholic Apostolic Church of a decade earlier was now developed with narrow passage aisles and a double transept, the immediate English antecedents being Pearson's St John's, Red Lion Square (1874-8) and much more clearly John Johnson's St Matthew's, Bayswater (1881-2). The concept was adapted by Anderson himself for a country church at Glencorse (1884) and immediately adopted by Blanc for St Luke's Free Church at Broughty Ferry and by Burnet for Barony, Glasgow (1886). It was subsequently repeated by Anderson himself at St Paul's Greenock (1890). By that date Anderson had adopted late-fourteenth-century English Gothic forms for church work a development first seen at St James Goldenacre in 1885 and probably influenced by the work of Bodley and Garner.
In 1887 Anderson's increasing interest in the style of the late 17th century as a suitable idiom for modern buildings manifested itself in a Wren-inspired competition design for the Imperial Institute in London. It was much admired but was too much ahead of its time to win but the 'Wrenaissance' early Georgian concept was to be developed further in the extensions to Pollok House and the rebuilding of Charleton House, Montrose, both in 1892, and the North British Hotel competition design of 1895. But thereafter Anderson's reputation as an architect for large public projects began to decline and he became increasingly concerned with restoration and architectural education.
In 1887 Anderson was consulted by the Marquess of Lothian on the rebuilding of Holyrood Abbey Church but the project did not materialise at that time as Anderson calculated that approximately £70,000 was required. The restoration of Dunblane Cathedral did however go ahead as it was funded by the Wallaces of Glassingal, the commission coming to Anderson as architect to the Board of Manufactures since the nave was crown property. Although the work did not proceed without storms on matters of principle, a similar commission to rebuild the choir and transepts of Paisley Abbey came to him through the influence of Stirling Maxwell of Pollok in 1898 followed by the rebuilding of the Parish Church at Inchinnan for Lord Blythswood; both these commissions went sour on cost and brought the sobriquet of 'Ruin Anderson' from Lord Blythswood. Although Bute and Stirling Maxwell were to remain loyal, Anderson was increasingly seen as difficult to work with and at St James Goldenacre he was superseded by Burnet in 1902.
In his later years Anderson had an awesome firmness on what he considered to be matters of principle. In 1883 he resigned his associateship of the Royal Scottish Academy after a dispute with its President Sir William Fettes Douglas over the inadequate representation of the architectural profession in its membership in relation to its charter: Edinburgh University made up for the loss by giving him the degree of LLD in 1884, after which he was generally known as Dr Anderson with an increasing use of his middle name. In 1886 he was in correspondence with the Royal Institute of British Architects over the conduct of the abortive competition for new municipal buildings for Edinburgh and in 1889 lapsed his membership following his complaint about one of his assistants, Thomas Kitsell, submitting an office survey drawing of Paisley for the Silver Medal without his consent.
Anderson's dispute with the Royal Scottish Academy took on a more positive form after the Edinburgh meeting of The National Association for the Advancement of Arts and its application to Industry in 1889. His keynote speech as president of the architectural section seems to have crystallised his ideas. Anderson's had always been an important teaching office; the pupils and assistants who subsequently made their name as architects had included A G Sydney Mitchell (1878-83), Thomas R Kitsell (1878-87), Robert Weir Schultz (1875-84), Victor Horsburgh (1883-87) and Sir Robert Lorimer (1885-89), James Jerdan (1885-90), Frank Troup and William Henry Bidlake (both 1887) with John James Joass (1890-97) and Francis William Deas (1890-96) still to come. In that same year, 1889, Anderson and his allies petitioned the Privy Council against the academy's supplementary charter in relation to its alleged mismanagement, teaching and inadequate representation of architects. When his petition was ignored he organised another from Edinburgh Town Council and persuaded thirty public-spirited individuals to subscribe £1,200 each for his School of Applied Art which had the Beaux-Arts-trained Frank Worthington Simon as professor and George Mackie Watson and another Beaux-Arts-trained architect Stewart Henbest Capper as teachers. It opened in 1892 and from its teaching and scholarships grew the National Art Survey, founded in 1893.
In 1891 the practice had moved to 16 Rutland Square, Anderson buying the adjoining house for his own occupation during the week. Simon's practice had grown to the point where he had to resign his chair in 1897, and in 1899 he and Alexander Hunter Crawford of the biscuit firm were taken into partnership at a time when prospective clients were beginning to become concerned by Anderson's age as much as by his increasingly uncompromising temperament. The partnership was unfortunately dissolved following a lawsuit between the partners in 1902 and matters were not helped by the defection of one of the ablest assistants, James Forbes Smith, to the office of John More Dick Peddie who had taken Browne into partnership some years earlier. Peddie was given the commission for the new College of Art, into which Anderson's School of Applied Art, the Trustees' Academy and the Government School of Design had merged in 1903, Anderson becoming one of its trustees.
Anderson formed a new partnership with his ex-pupil Andrew Forman Balfour Paul, son of the Lord Lyon, in 1904 but the practice never fully recovered. Anderson's principal works after 1900 were university buildings at Edinburgh (1905) and Dundee (1906-10) where the main building was unfortunately not built.
Anderson's later years were rich mainly in honours: in 1896 the Royal Scottish Academy acknowledged his contribution to its supplementary character and education by making him as honorary academician in 1896 and his dispute with the Royal Institute of British Architects was similarly healed in 1903 when he was re-elected as Fellow, his proposers this time being Aston Webb, John Belcher and Thomas Edward Collcutt. He was knighted in 1902 for his work on Balmoral, and in 1916, mainly at the instigation of Sir John Burnet, he was awarded the Royal Gold Medal. He was too ill to go to London to receive it personally. Alexander Lorne Campbell spoke for him and acted on his behalf in re-founding the lapsed Architectural Institute of Scotland as the Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. After Lady Anderson died on 21 January 1921 and Anderson himself on 1 June of the same year, the residue of his moveable estate of £69,787 16s 2d and considerable portfolio of heritable property passed to the Incorporation.