Joseph Lea Gleave

Joseph Lea Gleave (born 5 August 1907 in Manchester; died 16 January 1965 in Glasgow) was a British-English architect. In 1931, when he was 23, he won the international architectural competition for the Columbus Lighthouse in Santo Domingo Este, Dominican Republic, a memorial monument that was a tribute to Christopher Columbus.[1][2] Later in his career he became known for the designing of a number of Scottish hospitals.[3]

Joseph Lea Gleave
Born(1907-08-05)5 August 1907
Died16 January 1965(1965-01-16) (aged 57)
OccupationArchitect
PracticeAssociated architectural firm[s]
BuildingsColumbus Lighthouse, Vale of Leven Hospital
ProjectsGlasgow Prestwick Airport

Life

Gleave was the son of a farmer, James Gleave and his wife Hannah née Lea.[3] Between September 1923 to September 1927 he studied on a part-time basis at Manchester School of Architecture.[3] In 1927 he was apprenticed to James Theodore Halliday in Manchester[4] for several months, before moving to work with Francis Jones as assistant, between 1927 and 1928. In the same year Gleave moved employment again to Thomas Cecil Howitt from 1929 to 1930.[3] From February 1930 to May 1931 he assisted with Jones & Dalrymple[5] in Manchester.[3] The following year, Gleave was appointed to Edinburgh College of Art as a senior assistant.[3] In 1935, he was promoted to director of the School of Architecture at the college.[3]

World War II

During the war, he was assigned to the Anti-Aircraft Command and reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.[3]

After the war

After he returned to the department in 1946, he spent a year redesigning the Columbus Memorial and working on Renfrew Airport along with his brother-in-law, the Scottish architect William Kininmonth.[3] In 1948, Gleave became a partner at Keppie Henderson, with the firm being renamed to Keppie Henderson & J L Gleave.[3] Initially focusing on houses and schools, he constructed the new Engineering Building at the University of Glasgow, which lead to additional work, in the construction of hospitals. Between 1951 and 1955, Gleave worked on the development of Vale of Leven Hospital.[6] At the time, his practice was expanding.[3] Know to be eccentric and unpredictable in his approach,[7] with a penchant for late night working, sometimes as late as 4am, his approach led to differences and eventually arguments with the two other partners in the firm, Henderson and Alex Smellie. This led him in early 1958, to establish his own consultancy,[3] known as J L Gleave. Shortly after he worked on commissions for the Queen Mother Hospital in Glasgow and additions to Glasgow Prestwick Airport.[3]

In 1964, he constructed a new science block for the University of Glasgow that was named in honour of Lord John Boyd Orr of Brechin, named as Boyd Orr Building. Orr was a noted biologist and nutritional physiologist, who was Rector between 1945 to 1947 and chancellor from 1946 to 1971.[8]

Death

On 16 January 1965, Gleave died in the Western Infirmary in Glasgow.[3] He has been suffering from cancer for more than a year, but diagnosed in the spring of the year before.[3]

His wife, Margaret Grierson Sutherland survived him.[3] He had two children, a daughter Carolyn, who was an interior designer and a son David.[3] His son David also trained as an architect.[3] He would go on to join his fathers old practice in 1987 that changing name as partners came and went and time went on, eventually becoming Young & Gault.[3]

  • Columbus Lighthouse. Designed by Gleave in 1931 but not completed fully until 1992.
  • Bedford Hospital, Fort William. After 1949
  • University of Glasgow, Quincentenary Memorial Gates. Circa 1950
  • Clydesdale Bank Headquarters, Glasgow. Circa 1951. Alterations.
  • Vale of Leven Hospital in Alexandria. Circa 1951

References
  1. Robert Alexander González (15 January 2011). "In search of Modern Pan-American". Designing Pan-America: U.S. Architectural Visions for the Western Hemisphere. University of Texas Press. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-292-72325-2. Retrieved 18 December 2019.
  2. Dixa Ramírez (24 April 2018). Colonial Phantoms: Belonging and Refusal in the Dominican Americas, from the 19th Century to the Present. NYU Press. p. 120. ISBN 978-1-4798-5045-7. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  3. "Joseph Lea Gleave". Dictionary of Scottish Architects. University of St Andrews, Historic Environment Scotland. Retrieved 18 December 2019.
  4. "James Theodore Halliday". Architects of Greater Manchester 1800-1940. The Manchester Group of the Victorian Society. Retrieved 7 January 2020.
  5. "Jones and Dalrymple". Architects of Greater Manchester 1800-1940. The Manchester Group of the Victorian Society. Retrieved 7 January 2020.
  6. Richardson, Harriet (10 April 2016). "Vale of Leven Hospital, the first new NHS hospital in Britain". Historic Hospitals. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  7. Malcolm Nicolson; John E. E. Fleming (2013). Imaging and Imagining the Fetus: The Development of Obstetric Ultrasound. JHU Press. p. 250. ISBN 978-1-4214-0793-7. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  8. "Boyd Orr Building". The University of Glasgow Story. University of Glasgow. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
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