John Mair (architect)

[3] In 1906 Mair travelled to the United States of America where he studied architecture at the Beaux Arts-influenced University of Pennsylvania, where among his lecturers were Paul Cret and Thomas Nolan.

[2][7] In 1909 he left New York and travelled to London, England for examination prior to being admitted as an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

[6][7] After sitting the exam Mair returned via a building study tour of the United Kingdom, France and Italy to New Zealand.

[8] The church was of Romanesque character, whose design was influenced by the neo-Romanesque work of the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson.

By April 1910 he had moved to Wellington where he established a private practice as both an architect and structural engineer[4] with an office at 16 Stock Exchange Building, Featherston Street.

[4] Mair's strong leadership guided his office through the Depression, the sudden rebuilding demand of the Napier earthquake, and the beginning of World War II.

During the difficult period of the depression Mair supported private architects in cities and towns outside Wellington by allocating government contracts to them.

[13] In 1941 Mair served together with the Acting Prime Minister Walter Nash, Horace Massey (president of the New Zealand Institute of Architects) and J. W. Mawson (Government Town Planner) on the jury to select a design for the clifftop mausoleum and memorial gardens for New Zealand Prime Minister, Michael Savage at Bastion Point, Auckland.

[16] On 29 April 1914, at the age of 37, Mair was married at his parents' house in Liddel Street in Invercargill to Ethel Margaret Snow of Wellington by the Rev.

[17] Sadly within months Ethel contracted tuberculosis and died at the age of 33 in September 1915, leaving Mair to raise their eight-month-old son, John.