page_title: Ebenezer James MacRae
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Ebenezer James MacRae / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Built in 1794 during the French Revolutionary Wars, Piershill Barracks stood just east of Jock's Lodge on the Edinburgh-Portobello Road. Early Victorian maps show it standing in isolation in a surrounding landscape of farmland. It was the largest of Edinburgh's barracks before the building of Redford at Colinton shortly before the Great War. When demolished in 1938, stone from its buildings was re-used for the council houses that now occupy the site. The structure in the foreground shows a vestige of the north-west corner tower of the front wall of the barracks.
context_page_description: Ebenezer James MacRae was a Scottish architect serving as City Architect for Edinburgh for most of his active life.
context_section_description: He was the son of Rev Alexander MacRae of the Free Church of Scotland. To family and friends he was generally known as Ben MacRae. He studied architecture under Archibald MacPherson from 1899 to 1907, remaining good friends until death. He trained at both Heriot-Watt College, the University of Edinburgh and later Edinburgh College of Art. He did various sketching tours around the country in his twenties: York, England (1902 and 1904), Melrose (1904), Belgium (1905), Cambridge (1907), Lincoln (1907), Northamptonshire (1907), and Oxford (1907).
  In 1908 he trained further, under John Kinross. Late in 1908 he got a post as an assistant in the City Architect's Department of the then Edinburgh Corporation, serving under James Anderson Williamson.
  He qualified as an architect in 1914. He served in the Royal Engineers during World War I then returned to Edinburgh as Depute City Architect. In 1925 he was promoted to City Architect, a role he held until retiral in 1946. In 1926 he took over the Director of Housing post from the retiring City Engineer Adam Horsburgh Campbell. From this date onwards the main thrust of his workload would be the provision of high-quality social housing with good space standards and light levels. His team provided around 12,000 houses in the city, many of which in central locations to save tenants travel costs. His housing work is discussed in Volume 13 (2017) of the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. In 1936, the young William Gordon Dey worked under MacRae undertaking the city survey of the Canongate.
  In the mid 1940s he compiled "The Royal Mile" and "The Heritage of Greater Edinburgh": studies of the Old Town and remainder of the city. This document was one of the first to identify buildings worthy of preservation, including several within the Edinburgh New Town and Edinburgh Old Town. It formed the basis of later works such as The Abercromby Plan. A keen historian it is likely that he was instrumental in erecting the first series of historic plaques in Edinburgh: a series of bronze plaques along the Royal Mile explaining various Closes.
  His final years as City Architect were relatively unproductive since most public building works ceased during World War II, an exception being the completion of West Pilton to a much depleted specification.
  MacRae was noted for his championing of the tenement and for his sensitive infill developments within the Old Town and central Edinburgh.  These were designed in a weak C17th Scots style, faced in stone with slate roofs. Elsewhere he built traditional housing in rendered brick, again with slate roofing. He never used concrete block and his department only built one housing development in facing brick, Granton Mains Crescent (1935).
  In 1934 he toured Europe as part of a delegation from the Department of Health. The result was the influential 'Report on Working Class housing on the Continent' (1935), also known as the Highton Report.
  After retirement he moved out of the city to live at Taprobane in Ratho where he lived with his wife Dorothy Craigie, affectionately known as Mopsy.
  His hobbies included ornithology, photography and watercolour painting.
  He died at the Deaconess Hospital in the Pleasance Edinburgh after a short illness. He was cremated at Warriston Crematorium on 22 January 1951 and his ashes were scattered in the Garden of Remembrance there. A memorial plaque to his memory stands in the south arcade of the crematorium.
caption: Piershill
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