PLAW, JOHN, architect and surveyor; baptized 8 Jan. 1746 in Putney (London), England, son of John Plaw and Mary – ; d. 24 May 1820 in Charlottetown, P.E.I.

John Plaw, one of the first important architects to immigrate to British North America, received training for his chosen career by being apprenticed to Thomas Kaygill, a member of the Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company of London. His term began in September 1759 and lasted until January 1768 when he gained freedom by service. In 1763, while still an apprentice, Plaw had received an architectural award, or premium, given each year by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. His submission was a detailed drawing of the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and provides evidence that he had studied the work of Inigo Jones and the Palladian movement. Plaw’s architectural drawings were accepted for showing in 13 exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts, beginning in 1775. He was a long-time member of the Incorporated Society of Artists and in 1790 was its president.

Although Plaw became an established builder and architect in Westminster, many of his commissions were for country buildings and these became his specialty. His most famous surviving structure is the circular villa on Belle Isle in Lake Windermere built in 1774 for Thomas English, a coffee merchant of London. Several later circular houses were based on this plan, including Ickworth House in Surrey, designed by Francis Sandys, and La Gordanne, a villa in Switzerland on the north shore of Lake Geneva. Another of Plaw’s more significant buildings is the Church of St Mary, Paddington (London), designed in 1788. Justly esteemed in his day, it was included in a book of selected drawings published by the contemporary German architectural historian Christian Ludwig Stieglitz.

Around 1795 Plaw moved to Southampton, attracted there, it, appears, by the prospect of building military barracks; a major source of employment for architects in the second half of the 18th century. He did receive commissions to erect barracks there and on the Isle of Wight. During the 12 years he spent in Southampton he designed houses for a planned residential area called Albion Place and received some work from nearby estate owners.

While still in England Plaw published three books, and through his writings made his main contribution to architecture. Rural architecture; or designs, from the simple cottage to the decorated villa appeared in 1785 and was followed by Ferme ornée; or rural improvements (London, 1795), and Sketches for country houses, villas, and rural dwellings (London, 1800). The first had six reprintings and was widely read by architects, master builders, and members of the gentry in Britain and on the continent. In North America, architects such as Philip Hooker and, later, George Browne* were also familiar with Plaw’s work.

In the early 1800s Plaw apparently became “discouraged and disappointed in his art” and began to seek other opportunities. Possibly drawn by the fact that Prince Edward Island urgently needed public buildings he immigrated there in 1807 with his wife Mary, her sister Betsy Ball, and nephew Joseph Ball. As architect to the Island’s government he submitted plans for a new jail in 1809, several designs for a proposed court-house in 1810, and “sundry plans and designs for roads.” He was also acting surveyor general during Thomas Wright’s absences. Although Plaw’s design for the jail was accepted, the project was abandoned in January 1810 because no builders could be found to undertake it. The following April his plan for a court-house was selected and bids were received in May. Construction began in the spring of 1811. Though unfinished, the building, on Queen Square in Charlottetown, was used for the first time on 15 July 1812 when Chief Justice Caesar Colclough*, after ordering workmen to clean it, invited Bishop Joseph-Octave Plessis* to celebrate mass there. The House of Assembly began using it in August but even then it was not finished. In December 1813 Plaw listed the details yet to be completed, saying that the cost would not exceed £100. The Court House served its intended purpose until 1847 and then became in turn a flour and meal market, a city hall, and a police court before being moved off the square in the winter of 1872–73. It was demolished in 1972.

Plaw visited Halifax, N.S., in 1813 and offered to design public and private buildings. While there he prepared plans for the admiral’s residence. These were accepted locally and tenders were called. His plan for a wooden building, however, was not accepted by the Admiralty in London and a design for a brick building drawn by their own architects was acted upon.

In 1814 Plaw returned to a favourite theme by designing yet another circular building, this one as a store for Waters and Birnie, a London-based firm doing business on Prince Edward Island from 1810 to 1820. It is not known whether the design was ever carried out but the theme was employed again in 1819 when Lieutenant Governor Charles Douglass Smith* obtained plans and estimates from him for a new market-house. The plan was for a 16-sided building surrounded by a colonnade of the Tuscan order and surmounted by a cupola. The market-house was not built until 1823, three years after Plaw’s death, when the plan was retrieved and executed by three prominent Island builders, Isaac Smith, Henry Smith, and Thomas Hodgson.

Plaw was a competent architect who in 1810 had advertised in Charlottetown that he would give evening lessons to “carpenters and others” in the principles of geometry and architectural drawing. It seems probable that his influence spread in this way and that the precision and attention to detail found in the colony’s early houses are due to his example and teaching. Unfortunately, the scarcity of records for the period he lived in America makes it difficult to assess his work. Fur example, until quite recently it was thought that his design for the market-house was the work of Isaac Smith, the Island’s foremost builder and architect from 1830 to 1850. The hope always remains that an existing building in Charlottetown or Halifax may yet be identified as his work, and that the prints, drawings, and plates sold after his death will surface.

Irene L. Rogers