Charles Herbert Reilly

Sir Charles Herbert Reilly, (4 March 1874 – 2 February 1948) was an English architect and teacher. After training in two architectural practices in London he took up a part-time lectureship at the University of London in 1900, and from 1904 to 1933 he headed the Liverpool School of Architecture, which became world-famous under his leadership. He was largely responsible for establishing university training of architects as an alternative to the old system of apprenticeship.

Reilly was a strong and effective opponent of the Victorian Neo-Gothic style, which had dominated British architecture for decades. His dominance also ended the briefer popularity of the Arts and Crafts and Jugendstil movements in Britain, earning him the enmity of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a local exponent of the latter. For many years Reilly favoured a form of Neo-Classicism strongly influenced by developments in American architecture. Later in his career, he embraced the principles of the modernist movement, and of town planning for social and aesthetic improvement.

As a practising architect, Reilly was responsible for few well-known buildings. His influence on British architecture came through the work of his pupils, who included Herbert Rowse, Lionel Budden, William Holford and Maxwell Fry. Among his students were future professors of architecture and heads of architectural colleges in Britain, Canada and Australia; buildings were commissioned from Reilly pupils throughout the British Empire and beyond.

Reilly was born on the Seven Sisters Road in Manor House, London, the son of the architect and surveyor Charles Reilly (1844–1928) and his wife Annie, née, Mee. Whilst Reilly was still very young, the family moved to a large Regency period house, just nearby on Woodberry Down. His family remained in the same house for the next two decades He was educated at a preparatory school in Hove between the ages of nine and 13, and then at Merchant Taylors' School, London, and Queens' College, Cambridge. As an undergraduate he helped to found the Cambridge branch of the Fabian Society; he retained his left-leaning views all his life. After graduating with a first class degree in mechanical science, he worked for two years as an unpaid draughtsman at his father's office, and then joined the office of John Belcher as an "improver".

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