Gowans had a habit of living in buildings he had built, perhaps receiving a property as part of his fee for many. His homes were: • Gowanbank, his family home near
Armadale • Lynedoch Place, Edinburgh 1840–1848 • 1 Randolph Cliff, Edinburgh (which he built) (1848–1855) • Pittacher House,
Crieff (during his railway project in Perthshire) (1855–1862?) • 34 Rosebank Cottages, Edinburgh (which he built) (1855–1858) • "Rockville", Napier Road, Edinburgh (designed and built for himself) (1858–1885) • 31 Castle Terrace (an office which he built himself) (1875–1888) • 1 Blantyre Terrace (1885–1890)
Rockville Standing on a prominent corner at Spylaw Road and Napier Road in the
Merchiston area of Edinburgh this house has been described as "the strangest house ever built in Edinburgh". Local names for it included "The Pagoda", "The Chinese House", "Tottering Towers" and "Crazy Manor". It was a wild gingerbread house-style affair with a five-storey (64-foot) tower with a viewing platform. Every dormer was in a different pattern and style, every chimney stack was highly elaborate and different from the next. Its gate lodge was like a
Hansel and Gretel house. Both the lodge and house included stones from every quarry in Scotland plus some Chinese stones to reflect its style. It was the "embodiment of a Gothic novel". But Gowans did not see it as frivolous or extravagant: it was built on a grid system with "no desire to create novelty". It was intended to create an economic and aesthetically pleasing result and certainly succeeded. It sat in an acre of ground filled with statues by William Brodie his father-in-law. It had gas lighting in all rooms and elaborate interiors to match its extravagant exterior. Above the kitchen range, it read "Waste not, Want not". It was demolished in 1966 after a public outcry and 2500 signature petition attempted to save it (a rarity in those non-conservation-minded days) and replaced by three blocks of flats completed in 1972 ("The Limes"). All that survives on site is its boundary wall and some gateposts. However, one statue was removed and now sits on the lower path in West
Princes Street Gardens: "The Genius of Architecture crowned by the Theory and Practice of Art".
Gowanbank In 1842-62, James Gowans re-modelled a plain, c.1820 farmhouse belonging to his mason-father, Walter Gowans. He extended it into a tight U-plan and transformed its character. A plain roof is modulated by rows of hungry corbels, tall ashlar chimney stacks and a gradual change in stone from coarse masonry to random rubble. More interesting are the steading, cartshed, dairy and cottage, in more mature Gowans style; panelled façade, the rubble completely variegated, different coloured, each stone in its allotted bed. Chimneys are random rubble within panelling. The house at the east end of the byre bears the inscription Heb 111:4 - For every house is built by some man; but he that built all things is God. Eccles, 11:4 1 August 1862. Gowans' rigorous 2 ft module underpins everything. The house became the farmhouse to a farm of declining viability. By the 1990s, the house was poorly maintained and the steading buildings were abandoned. West Lothian Council's newly-established Lowland Crofting scheme provided a solution, with permission for eleven new houses at Craigengall at the other end of the farm, granted on condition the house and steading buildings were released for restoration and a third of the farmland put into woods walks and wildlife for community benefit. Compare also Blackburn House. The steading buildings were restored in the 1990s as five houses by local architects William A Cadell & Douglas Davidson. ==List of Works==