Esmé Gordon
Gordon worked mostly on ecclesiastical, educational, and commercial buildings: notable designs include the South of Scotland Electricity Board's George Street headquarters and Heriot-Watt University's Department of Brewing and Biochemistry as well as additions to St Giles' Cathedral and Moray House.
Gordon was also a watercolourist, art collector, and author of books on St Giles' Cathedral, church design, and the Royal Scottish Academy.
While at Edinburgh College of Art, he won various minor scholarships that helped him to make sketching tours of England and two month-long trips to Italy in 1931 and 1933.
He was proposed as an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects by John Begg, Alexander Lorne Campbell and Frank Mears and admitted on 2 December 1935.
[6] Gordon also researched the history of the academy, uncovering artefacts such as plans by Thomas Hamilton and a collection of calotypes by David Octavius Hill.
[11] While training with Burnet, Tait, and Lorne, Gordon worked on projects including St Andrew's House and as part of the team that designed the 1938 Empire Exhibition.
[6] He also submitted unsuccessful competition entries for a house for George V's silver jubilee and for buildings at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee.
The most prominent of these are Dalhousie Land (1960), built in a style the authors of the Buildings of Scotland guide to Edinburgh describe as "modern-traditional", and the now-demolished gymnasium (1968).
The gymnasium's attenuated portico is cited by Miles Gledinning, Ranald MacInnes, and Aonghus MacKechnie as a late example of the "severe, usually astylar classicism" popular in eastern Scotland's post-war urban architecture; the authors of the Buildings of Scotland guide to Edinburgh describe the design as "Neo-Fascist".
[11][9] Among Gordon's other educational buildings are Heriot-Watt University's Department of Brewing and Biochemistry, Edinburgh (1960s) and Oxgangs Primary School (1953).
[2][6] Gordon's friends included the painters Denis Peploe and Robin Philipson and the architectural historians Nikolaus Pevsner and John Summerson.
[12] Robert Scott Morton and Anthony Wheeler described Gordon as "enthusiastic, generous and sociable, and an entertaining raconteur".
[1] Jean Jones wrote of Gordon: "Though a lively raconteur with old-fashioned courtesies, his outlook on life - political and otherwise - was more radical than his manner suggested, not least in the way he treated women as equals.
