John Macvicar Anderson

Who was John Macvicar Anderson?

John Macvicar Anderson FRSE was a Scottish architect.

He was born in Glasgow in 1835, the son of John Anderson, merchant and the nephew of architect William Burn and his wife, Eliza Macvicar. He was educated at the Collegiate School and the University of Glasgow and then moved to London to complete his articles with his uncle. He was admitted ARIBA on 19 December 1864.

In or about 1868 Burn took him into partnership and when Burn died on 15 February 1870 Anderson took over the practice and Burn's house at 6 Stratton Street Piccadilly. Although he designed the Sailors’ Home in Bombay in 1869, Anderson continued the exclusively country house nature of Burn’s practice but from the early 1880s accepted a wider range of commercial and ecclesiastical business, particularly from Scottish clients, notably St Columba's church in Pont Street, London of which he was a member, the Headquarters of the London Scottish, Christie’s Galleries, King Street, Lloyd’s Bank, Coutts Bank and the British Linen Bank whose Threadneedle Street office he designed as late as 1913. All of these were directly commissioned.

He was President of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1891-94.