Herbert James Rowse

Herbert James Rowse (10 May 1887 – 22 March 1963) was an English architect. Born in Liverpool and a student of Charles Reilly at the Liverpool University School of Architecture, Rowse opened an architectural practice in the city. Although he designed major buildings for other cities, Rowse is best known for his work in Liverpool, including India Buildings, the entrances to and ventilation towers of the Mersey Tunnel ("Queensway"), and the Philharmonic Hall. He designed in a range of styles, from neoclassical to Art Deco, generally with a strong American influence.

Life and career Rowse was born at 15 Melling Road, Liverpool, the son of James William Rowse, a builder, and his wife, Sarah Ann, née Cammack.

In Nikolaus Pevsner's series of books The Buildings of England he and Richard Pollard comment on "Rowse's two great commercial buildings":

Rowse's contemporary, the architect H S Goodhart-Rendel, commented, "That an Englishman should have produced single-handed a specimen equal to America's best is undoubtedly gratifying, although the flawless magnificence of Martins Bank at Liverpool (1926) may evoke in us admiration untinged with affection."

In 1931 Rowse was appointed architect to the Mersey Tunnel Joint Committee. In a 1996 study of Reilly and his pupils, Joseph Sharples writes:

Rowse modified his style for his work on the tunnel, moving away from the American neo-classicism of India Buildings and the bank premises to "a smooth streamlined style with Art Deco ornaments, also American in inspiration."

In 1932 a young architect, Alwyn Edward Rice, still a pupil of Reilly, designed a speculative modern concert hall as his thesis for his final year at the School of Architecture. The exhibition of his drawings coincided with the destruction by fire of the old Philharmonic Hall in Hope Street. Rowse was commissioned to design a replacement, and he recruited Rice to help him. The building was in Streamline Moderne style. Sharples comments, "the executed design is markedly similar to [Rice's] thesis, both in the massing of the exterior and the arrangement of the auditorium." When the new hall was opened in 1939, The Manchester Guardian commented, "The magnificent compliment Liverpool has paid to the cause of music in England almost takes one's breath away ... a hall of great size, noble proportions, and up-to-date appointments ... ready to take its place among the most eminent homes of musical culture in this or any other country".

Rowse collaborated closely with the sculptor Edmund Thompson, whose work includes the gilded relief panels in the foyers of the Philharmonic Hall, For Rowse's Mersey Tunnel, Thompson, with George T Capstick, designed a relief in Art Deco style showing two winged bulls, "symbolic of swift and heavy traffic". Rowse's Portland stone ventilation towers for the tunnel are also decorated with sculptures by Thompson and Capstick. He advised the Belgian government on post-war reconstruction, and was awarded the Order of Leopold II in 1950. For the British government he designed diplomatic buildings in 1951, built in Delhi and Karachi.

Rowse died at the age of 74 at his home, Chapel House, Puddington, Cheshire. 1937 College of the Pharmaceutical Society, London, 1937–60 UK Pavilion, Empire Exhibition, Glasgow, 1938 Woodchurch Estate, Birkenhead, 1946. Source: Sharples.