in
Boston In the
Boston area, the firm built St. Catherine of Genoa Church on Spring Hill in
Somerville, Massachusetts, regarded as a masterpiece. St. Catherine's, was begun in 1907 and completed in 1921. In July 2019, St. Catherine's. St. Ann's, and St. Thomas merged to form Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin Parish; masses are still scheduled at St. Catherine's.
St. Mary's School in
Taunton, Massachusetts, built in 1907, is a three-story brick building in Collegiate Gothic style. The
Girls' Latin School, Huntington Avenue Building was built in 1907 in collaboration with Peabody & Stearns and Coolidge & Carlson. In 1914, the firm designed the administration building of
Emmanuel College. Located in the Fens area of Boston, it was founded by the
Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and opened in 1919 as the first women's Catholic college in New England. For thirty years, it was the only building on campus. The firm also designed St. Edward's church in
Brockton, Massachusetts, in 1914. St. Edward's Church was founded in 1915, and merged with St. Nicholas Church in
Abington, Massachusetts, in 2003, with the combined parish being renamed St. Edith Stein. St. Edith Stein parish bears striking resemblance to Ascension of Our Lord Church in
Montreal, Canada, which is another church designed by the firm. The Church of Ascension of Our Lord was built between 1927 and 1928, for the English-speaking Roman Catholic population in Westmount municipality of
Montreal, Canada, on land originally belonging to the Grey Nuns. It was designed by Maginnis & Walsh of
Boston, with Edward J. Turcotte of Montreal as Associate Architect. Its architect, Maginnis & Walsh was “based in Boston and was considered the foremost specialist in Catholic ecclesiastical architecture of the period. The church is built on a monumental scale. Although its architectural style looks to the Gothic churches of Europe, its construction was modern for the period: a steel frame, encased in brick or concrete and clad in Montreal limestone, with Berea sandstone trim. The plan is a conventional Latin cross, the intersection of the nave and the transepts marked by an imposing bell tower. The front façade, facing Sherbrooke Street, is dominated by a gabled wall, flanked by shallow buttresses. Three lancet windows surmount a secondary, projecting gable, which contains the central entrance.” Ascension of Our Lord Church's design may be based on or influenced by the firm's 1914 design of St. Edward's Church (now St. Edith Stein Church) in
Brockton, MA.
Boston College, Chestnut Hill , Seat of Wisdom Maginnis & Walsh won the bid to build the new campus of
Boston College in
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Designed by Maginnis, in 1908, the Boston College campus is a seminal example of
Collegiate Gothic architecture. Combining
Gothic Revival architecture with principles of
Beaux-Arts planning, Maginnis proposed a vast complex of academic buildings set in a
cruciform plan. The design suggested an enormous outdoor cathedral, with the long entry drive at the "nave," the main quadrangle at the "apse" and secondary quadrangles at the "transepts." Maginnis's design broke from the traditional
Oxbridge models that had inspired it, and that had until then characterized Gothic architecture on American campuses. At the "crossing", Maginnis placed the university's main building. Using stone quarried on the site, the building was constructed at the highest point on Chestnut Hill, commanding a view of the surrounding landscape and the city to the east. In its unprecedented scale,
Gasson Tower was conceived not as the
belfry of a singular building, but as the crowning
campanile of Maginnis' new "
city upon a hill". Dominated by a soaring 200-foot bell tower, Recitation Hall was known simply as the "Tower Building" when it finally opened in 1913. Gasson Hall is credited for the typology of dominant Gothic towers in subsequent campus designs, including those at
Princeton University (Cleveland Tower, 1913–1917),
Yale University (Harkness Tower, 1917–1921), and
Duke University (Chapel Tower, 1930–1935). Although Maginnis' ambitious Gothic project never saw full completion due to the
Wall Street Crash of 1929, its central portion was built according to plan and forms the core of what is now
Boston College's middle campus. According to Boston College historian, Fr. Charles F. Donovan, Gasson Hall (1913), the signature building of Boston College, St. Mary's Hall and Chapel (1917), Devlin Hall (1924), and
Bapst Library (commissioned 1922, completed 1928), called the "finest example of Collegiate Gothic architecture in America"), are the "original architectural gems" of the campus. In 1926, the
Devlin Hall science building won the
Harleston Parker Medal for "most beautiful building in Boston". M&W also built Fulton Hall (1948), Lyons Hall (1951), St. Thomas More Hall (1954 -demolished 2014), and Campion (1955). Maginnis also designed the chancel at
Trinity Church in
Copley Square, the high altar at
St. Patrick's Cathedral in
Midtown Manhattan, and the Massachusetts Veterans War Memorial Tower on the summit of
Mount Greylock. The firm also built
St. Aidan's Church in
Brookline, Massachusetts in 1911, where Maginnis was a parishioner and where former U.S. President
John F. Kennedy was christened; St. Aidan's, has since been closed and converted to housing. ==Maginnis and Walsh and Kennedy (1941–1956)==