MacGILLIVRAY and GRANT

Architect

D MacGILLIVRAY and WH GRANT, met in G RANSOME's office in Cape Town before 1903, forming a partnership in 1903. By 1905 they had offices in Cape Town and Durban and later (about 1908) in Bulawayo. The Durban office was first listed in 1905 in the Natal Almanac, it was not listed after 1908. The partners won the competition for the Southern Life Assurance Building in Durban in 1903, a job which may have led to the formation of the partnership and the opening of a Durban office; they also won the competition for the Municipal Baths (Long St Baths) in Cape Town in 1904. Besides their architectural work, the partners demonstrated an interest in the applied arts and designed faience and terracotta details for buildings which were manufactured by Sage & Company, a well-known London shopfitting business with a factory established in Cape Town around 1903. CH Pearne & Co, Cape Town also handled MacGillivray & Grant's designs through Sage & Co. In 1907 MacGillivray & Grant won the first premium for Bulawayo Town Hall competition. It is possible that MacGillivray moved to Bulawayo to supervise this job; a further number of works by the partners were executed in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe): Town Hall; Empire Theatre; the synagogue and the Bechuanaland Exploration Building in Bulawayo; the Mashonaland Agency Building and the Bechuanaland Trading Association Building in Salisbury. The firm continued as MacGillivray & Grant until about 1926 in both Cape Town and Bulawayo.

MacGillivray & Grant specialized in the strangest of flagpoles, shown on their perspective drawings flying many-tailed pennants. (Picton-Seymour 1977:251)

(AB&E Sep 1922:6 ill; N Almncs 1905-8; Rennie 1978b; SAA&B Dec 1904:42-6; SAAE&S Jnl Nov 1906:27; SAAE&S Jnl Jul 1907:189; SAWW 1931-2, 1935; UNSAL)

All truncated references not fully cited in 'References' are those of Joanna Walker's original text and cited in full in the 'Bibliography' entry of the Lexicon.

List of projects

With photographs
With notes

African Banking Corporation Building (ABC Bank) for W Goldberg: 1906. Durban, KwaZulu-Natal - Architect

Alhambra Theatre: 1912. Cape Town, Western Cape - Architect

Cape Argus Building: 1912. Cape Town, Western Cape - Architect

CH Pearne and Co: 1903. Central, Cape Town, Western Cape - Architect

Hospital Building: pre-1916. Woodstock, Western Cape - Architect

House Sloman - Southolme: 1913. Kalk Bay, Western Cape - Architect

Mowbray School: c1905. Cape Town, Western Cape - Architect *

Municipal Baths Long Street : Turkish Baths: 1908 : 1926. Cape Town, Western Cape - Architect 1926 *

Norwich Union Building: c1905. Cape Town, Western Cape - Architect

Salesian Institute: 1910 : 1936. Cape Town, Western Cape - Architect 1910 *

Southern Life Association: 1903. Durban, KwaZulu-Natal - Architect

Whittington Hotel - City Hall Hotel: 1800s : 1894 : 1911 : c1925. Central, Cape Town, Western Cape - Architect 1911 and c1925 *

Woodstock School: c1905. Woodstock, Western Cape - Architect

Books citing MacGILLIVRAY and GRANT

Crump, Alan & Van Niekerk, Raymund. 1988. Public sculptures & reliefs Cape Town. Cape Town: Clifton Publications. pp 34

Fransen, Hans. 2004. The old buildings of the Cape. A survey of extant architecture from before c1910 in the area of Cape Town - Calvinia - Colesberg - Uitenhage. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers. pp 38, 40

Hillebrand, Melanie. 1975. Aspects of architecture in Natal, 1880-1914. Pietermaritzburg: Unpublished MA. Dept Fine Art and History of Art, University of Natal. pp 173-4

Picton-Seymour, Désirée. 1977. Victorian Buildings in South Africa. Cape Town: AA Balkema. pp 35, 107, 108, 249, 251

Walker, Michael. 2010. A Statement In Stone. Cape Town: Privately published by Michael Walker. pp 69-73