John Bradshaw Gass

John Bradshaw Gass (18 June 1855, Bolton, Lancashire^[1] – 3 July 1939, Horwich, Lancashire)^[2] was an English architect and artist.

Biography[]

Gass was a nephew of J. J. Bradshaw, the founder of Bradshaw Gass & Hope. He received the Ashbury Prize for Civil Engineering at Owens College (later Manchester University). He assisted Sir Ernest George in London, before becoming a pupil of his uncle in Bolton in 1880.

In 1882, when Gass became a partner, the firm adopted the style Bradshaw & Gass.

Like Sir Edwin Lutyens, another traditionalist and pupil of Ernest George, Gass designed country houses in period and vernacular styles.

From 1917 to 1925 Gass designed the Methodist College at Medak in Andhra Pradesh, south India; which, like Lutyens’ work at New Delhi, is organised in the grand manner around a central axis.

Gass was also a keen watercolour artist, and first exhibited his work at the Royal Academy in 1879. In later life, when he had less architectural input at Bradshaw Gass & Hope, he frequently travelled and he filled more than twenty albums with his sketches of North Africa and Asia.

References[]

• James R. Adamson, "John Bradshaw Gass" [obituary], RIBA Journal, 46 (1939), pp. 952–3.
• A. Stuart Gray, (1985) Edwardian Architecture, A Biographical Dictionary, ISBN 0-7156-2141-6.
• Austen Redman (2007), Bolton Civic Centre and the Classical Revival Style of Bradshaw Gass & Hope in Clare Hartwell & Terry Wyke (editors), Making Manchester, Lancashire & Cheshire Antiquarian Society, ISBN 978-0-900942-01-3