SOUTHCOTT, James Thomas (1824-1898), an architect and builder active in St. John’s, Newfoundland where he worked in collaboration with his older brother John Southcott. (see list of works under John & James T. Southcott). Together, they operated their business as “J. & J.T. Southcott, Architects, Carpenters and Builders” from 1864 or earlier (Hutchinson’s Newfoundland Directory for 1864-65, 202-03, with advert.).
He was the uncle of John Thomas Southcott, also an architect, and it was the Southcott family of St. John’s, Nfld. who were singularly responsible for introducing the fashionable Second Empire style of architecture to commercial and residential buildings in Newfoundland after 1870. Born in Exeter, Devon County, England on 10 May 1824, he was among a substantial number of builders and tradesmen who came to St. John's to help rebuild the city after the Great Fire there on 9 June 1846. Unlike most who later left, the Southcott family remained for the next fifty years, and their distinctive style of residential row housing is instantly recognizable. Examples of their work can still be found on Le Marchant Road, Circular Road, Rennie's Mill Road, Devon Row, Duckworth Street, and on Gower Street, where they form one of the most impressive urban streetscapes in St. John's. Their influence in the development of a unique style of Newfoundland architecture cannot be underestimated, as other builders and contractors attempted to replicate some of the style and form of their own row housing developments. With the death of James T. in 1898, a new and younger generation of architects began to exert their own influence, introducing designs in the Queen Anne style, and in the Colonial Revival style.
Southcott died at “Exon“, his country residence on the Long Point Road in St. John‘s, Nfld. on 19 April 1898 (obit. Evening Telegram [St. John’s], 19 April 1898, 4; Evening Herald [St. John’s], 19 April 1898, 3; St. John’s Daily News, 20 April 1898, 3; biog. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, xii, 1990, 981-82; inf. Shane O’Dea, The Domestic Architecture of Old St. John’s, 1974, 19-21, illus.)
(works by James T. Southcott)
ST. JOHN'S, NFLD., large residence for Henry J. Stabb, Cochrane Street at Military Road, 1890 (Daily Colonist [St. John's], 12 Aug. 1890, 4, extensive architectural descrip.)
ST. JOHN'S, NFLD., a row of four tenement houses on Gower Street, each 3 storeys high with Mansard roofs, 1890 (Daily Colonist [St. John's], 12 Aug. 1890, 4, descrip.)