Blue Plaque for Scottish Architect, Thomas Smith Tait

Thomas Smith Tait Blue Plaque Architect Thomas Smith Tait (1882 – 1954), one of the most influential inter-war architects, was commemorated with an English Heritage Blue Plaque at Gates House, Wyldes Close, London, NW11. He lived there for more than twenty years and completed some of his most important and respected commissions, including Selfridges, Oxford Street (1926-9), the Daily Telegraph Building, Fleet Street (1927-8) and Unilever House, Blackfriars (1930-3).

Thomas Smith Tait – generally known as Tommy – was born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1882, the son of a master stonemason.  He was educated at Paisley Technical Institute and went on to study art and architecture at the Glasgow School of Art (1903 – 1905), under the tutorship of Eugène Bourdon.  He completed his practical training under John Burnet, who in 1905 was appointed to design the new galleries at the British Museum. Burnet took Tait to his new London offices, where he proved himself an essential member of the team that also developed the design for the technically innovative Kodak Building, Kingsway (1911), which set an important prototype for many commercial buildings of the 1920’s and 1930’s. 

In order to supplement his income following his marriage to Constance Hardy in 1910, Tait took on extra work at a rival practice, Trehearne and Norman, for whom he helped to design a number of large office blocks in the Kingsway-Aldwych redevelopment. This action caused a rift with Burnet, and Tait abruptly left London for New York to work as an assistant with Donn Barber.  The pair, however, did reconcile, and in 1918 Tait returned to the practice as partner, gradually taking over control as Burnet’s health began to fail. 

Tait’s growing reputation attracted international commissions, including the bridges on the Limpopo River, South Africa (1926-9), the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1929-32) and the headquarters of the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa building in Johannesburg (1935). Tait also turned his attention to domestic architecture, and designed an exceptional series of Modernist houses at Silver End in Essex (1927-30), which were amongst the first flat-roofed houses in Britain. Some of these ideas were reflected in the changes he made to his own home, Gates House, Hampstead, where he was living by 1929. This Arts and Crafts house was sensitively extended and fitted out with Art Deco chimneys and furniture.

On Burnet’s retirement in 1930, Tait was joined by Francis Lorne at the practice, and together they pursued a change of architectural direction which was exemplified by the Royal Masonic Hospital at Ravenscourt (1930-3) – a thoroughly modern design that brought Tait the RIBA Gold Medal for the best building of 1933.  Despite the economic downturn of the early 1930’s, the practice used the time created by a relative decline in business to produce the architects’ bible of the period, ‘The Information Book of Sir John Burnet, Tait & Lorne’ (1933).

Tait increasingly worked on Scottish commissions, notably St Andrew’s House, Edinburgh (1934-9), the headquarters of the Scottish Office.  By this time, his reputation was such that he was the natural choice to be appointed architect-in-chief of the Glasgow Empire Exhibition (1938), dominated by the 300 feet high steel tower - the ‘Tower of Empire’.  The exhibition was a huge success, attracting over 12 million visitors.  The advent of the Second World War cut Tait’s career prematurely short, and he served as Director of Standardisation at the Ministry of Works from 1940 to 1942.  He retired from the practice in 1952, leaving his eldest son Gordon in charge, but remained a consultant until his death in 1954 at the age of 72.

Tait enjoyed a highly successful career and was widely respected by his contemporaries both at home and abroad.  He viewed each building that he worked on as a ‘special problem’ with a unique solution, and successfully blended traditionalism with the International style to create a series of highly influential buildings.