John Burnet

John Burnet (27 September 1814 – 15 January 1901) was a Scottish architect who lived and practised in Glasgow. He was born the son of militia officer and trained initially as a carpenter, before becoming a Clerk of Works. He rose to prominence in the mid-1850s.

Burnet designed many of Victorian Glasgow's public buildings, employing a range of styles, including Neoclassical, Gothic, Renaissance, Italianate and Scottish Baronial. He commissioned many sculptors to adorn his buildings, among them John Mossman and John Crawford.

Biography

John Burnet was born at Craighead House, Kirk o' Shotts on 27 September 1814. He was the son of Lieutenant George Burnet, a soldier in the Kirkcudbright and Galloway Militia, and Margaret Wardlaw, who was the daughter of a Dalkeith merchant, John Wardlaw. John Burnet was educated at Dunipace Parish School. He later took an apprenticeship as a carpenter, graduating to architecture and becoming a clerk of works in the Alloa-Clackmannan area.

Burnet was largely self-taught as an architect. He worked for the Architectural Publication Society's Dictionary and through this work he had access to a library of architectural work by Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, Paul Letarouilly and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. It is also known that Burnet travelled and sketched in Germany, France and Italy.

In the mid-1850s John Burnet (senior) rose in prominence with his designs for Glasgow buildings such as the Greek temple-style Elgin Place Church, the Clapperton/Middleton warehouse on Miller Street, and Madeira Court on Argyle Street, which was shows influences of the work of Charles Wilson. He won commissions in the 1860s from Glasgow merchants and shipowners, building large baronial houses for them at Auchendennan, Arden, Kildalton and Kilmahew.

Burnet became an accomplished Gothic designer, which is evident in his designs for Woodlands Church and the Glasgow Stock Exchange. John McIntyre Building, University of Glasgow (1886) Hotel (now Youth Hostel), Lochranza, Arran (1893-94) Gardner Memorial Church of Scotland, Brechin

Other work has been destroyed or demolished, including: Elgin Place Congregational Church, 193-5 Pitt Street (1856, demolished 2004) Eglinton Congregational Church, 341 Eglinton Street (1866, demolished 2000) Western Infirmary, Dumbarton Road, (1874, demolished 1981).

He is buried in the Western Necropolis.