Waterhouse, Alfred (1830–1905). English architect. A master of rational planning, he made his reputation as the designer of several important secular buildings, starting with the Gothic Revival Assize Courts, Manchester (demolished), which he won in competition (1858–9), and gained the approbation of Ruskin. He consolidated his position by almost winning the competition to design the Royal Courts of Justice, London (1866–7—the buildings were erected to designs by Street), and by his success in the competition (1867–8) to design the brilliantly planned Gothic Revival Town Hall in Manchester (1869–77). Waterhouse designed numerous university buildings including the Master's Lodge and Broad-Street Front, Balliol College, Oxford (1866–9—Gothic Revival), the French Renaissance Revival Tree Court, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (1868–70), and the Gothic Owen's College (now the University), Manchester (1869–88). Interested in experimentation, he used hard terracottas, bricks, and faïences, as in the Natural History Museum, London (1873–81—much influenced by German (especially Rhineland) Romanesque architecture), the Gothic Prudential Assurance Building, Holborn, London (1878–1906), and the Free Rundbogenstil Congregationalist Churches at Lyndhurst Road, Hampstead (1883), and King's Weigh House, Duke Street, Mayfair, London (1889–91). His National Liberal Club, London (1885–7), was in a mixture of Romanesque and Italian and French Renaissance styles, said at the time to reflect the uneasy pot-pourri of disparate opinions within the Liberal Party. The spectacular Eaton Hall, Cheshire (1870–83), seat of the Dukes of Westminster, was demolished in 1961, and was his largest country-house. He also designed the Tudor Revival Blackmoor House and Gothic Revival Church, Blackmoor, Hants. (1868–72). His son, Paul (1861–1924), studied with him, became his partner in 1891, completed his father's University College Hospital, Gower Street, London, and added the Medical School and Nurses' Home (1905). Paul Waterhouse's other works included the Whitworth Hall, University of Manchester (1902) and New Buildings, College Road, University of Leeds (1907–8). Paul Waterhouse was succeeded in the practice by his son, Michael (1889–1968).

Bibliography

Axon (1878);
C. Cunningham (2001);
C. Cunningham & and Waterhouse (1992);
D&M (1985);
Eastlake (1970);
J. Fawcett (ed.) (1976);
Girouard (1990);
A. S. Gray (1985);
Hitchcock (1977);
Maltby et al . (1983);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Sheppard (ed.) (1975);
Jane Turner (1996);
Waterhouse (1867)