Maginnis & Walsh

Maginnis & Walsh was an architecture firm started by Charles Donagh Maginnis and Timothy Walsh in 1905. It was known for its innovative design of churches in Boston in the first half of the twentieth century.

Maginnis was born in Derry, Ireland. He emigrated to Boston at age 18 and got his first job apprenticing for architect Edmund M. Wheelwright as a draftsman. Influenced by the work of modern architect Ralph Adams Cram, Maginnis became a distinguished Gothic architect and an articulate writer and orator on the role of architecture in society.

In the Boston area he built St. Catherine of Genoa Church on Spring Hill in Somerville, Massachusetts, regarded as a masterpiece. St. Catherine's, begun in 1907 and completed in 1921, is still (2010) a working parish. He also built St. Aidan's in Brookline, Massachusetts where he was a parishioner along with the Kennedy family and other prominent Irish-Americans. St. Aidan's, the location of the baptism of John F. Kennedy, has since been closed and may be converted into housing in the near future. The firm also designed Our Lady of the Presentation Catholic Church in the Oak Square neighborhood of the Brighton section of Boston. That church was also closed by the Archdiocese of Boston in 2005, but it has not yet been converted to another use. In 1909 Maginnis & Walsh won the bid to build the new campus of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts and he built Emmanuel College in the Fens area of Boston, Massachusettsin 1914. Maginnis also designed the chancel at Trinity Church in Copley Square, the high altar at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York and the Massachusetts Veterans War Memorial Tower on the summit of Mount Greylock. Also designed by the firm is Our Lady of Sorrows church located in South Orange, New Jersey, which was dedicated in 1931. In 1948 Maginnis received the AIA Gold Medal for "outstanding service to American architecture," the highest award in the profession. He died in 1955.

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