McCLEAN, Arthur (1779 - 1864), a builder and architect who was active in Ireland from 1810 and, after 1825, in eastern Upper Canada. Born at Belturbet, Co. Cavan, Ireland on 9 December 1779, he was raised in Ulster province, and at the age of about fourteen years he went to Dublin to enroll at the Royal Dublin Society’s School for Drawing in Architecture and was admitted as a student there on 5 December 1793. A family diary, written by his son Rev. Booker McClean in 1855 during a trip to his home town in Ireland, confirms the involvement of his father in the construction of (and in the designing of) a fine Georgian style Market House at Ballyjamesduff, Ireland (1813), and in the preparation of a Gothic design for the church at the village of Virginia, Ireland (1819).
McClean brought his family to Upper Canada in 1825 and, within a year of his arrival, he had received commissions to prepare plans for St. James Church in Maitland, Ont., for which he was given a payment of £3.00 for his drawings. His name may also be linked to a total of four separate designs for churches in Ontario. One of the distinguishing features of these ecclesiastical works was his use of a symmetrical plan with a square tower topped by a stepped, crenulated parapet and the absence of any additional spire above the tower.
McClean died in Brockville, Ont. on 1 December 1864 at eighty-five years of age, and was buried at St. Peter’s cemetery there. A photographic portrait of McClean taken c. 1860 can be found in the publication entitled, Maitland ‘A Very Neat Village Indeed‘, by Stephen A. Otto, 1985, 105. A brief entry on McLean appears in the Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720-1940 [online], entry for MacLean, Arthur.
(works in Ireland)
BALLYJAMESDUFF, IRELAND, Market House, 1813 (McClean Family Diary, 1855, in the possession of the family; inf. Stephen A. Otto, Toronto; Charles E.B. Brett, Court Houses and Market Houses of the Province of Ulster, 1973, 53, 57, illus., but lacking attribution)
VIRGINIA, LURGAN PARISH, CO. CAVAN, IRELAND, Roman Catholic Church, 1818 (McClean Family Diary, 1855, in the possession of the family; inf. Stephen A. Otto, Toronto)
KELLS, CO. MEATH, IRELAND, Town Gaol, 1820. He is almost certainly the same architect named “Arthur MacLean” who was asked to prepare plans and specifications for a Gaol in the town of Kells in 1820 (Ireland - County Meath, Grand Jury Presentments, Summer 1820), but it appears that the project was not built.
(works in Upper Canada)
MAITLAND, ONT., St. James Anglican Church, 1826-27 (Queen’s University Archives, Kingston, Solomon Jones Papers, invoice for architectural plans dated 26 April 1825; Stephen A. Otto, Maitland ‘A Very Neat Village Indeed‘, 1985, 47-8, illus.; 107, illus.)
BROCKVILLE, ONT., St. Peter’s Anglican Church, begun 1826; completed 1830 (St. Peter’s - Tale of a Parish 1814-1969, 10)
BEVERLEY, ONT [now Delta, Ont.], St. Paul’s Anglican Church, begun 1811 for the local Baptist sect, and completed by the Anglican sect in 1826-27 to the designs of McClean (inf. Stephen A. Otto, Toronto)
BURRITT’S RAPIDS, ONT., Christ Church [Anglican], 1831-32 (Barbara Humphreys, “Architectural Heritage of the Rideau Corridor” in Parks Canada, Canadian Historic Sites - Occasional Papers in Archaeology & History, Vol. 10, 1974, 51, illus., but lacking attribution to the architect; Peter Richardson & Douglas Richardson, Canadian Churches: An Architectural History, 2007. 185, 199, illus.)