Mulholland, William Ringland | Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada

MULHOLLAND, William Ringland (c. 1826-1891) was born in northern Ireland and came to Nova Scotia before 1850. He was married in Pictou on 20 July 1850 and later held the position of Professor of Mathmatics at the Pictou Academy. He was 'an experienced School House architect' who prepared a series of prototypical plans for six different wood frame schools to be erected in more than seven hundred locations throughout the province. His proposals were published in 1864 under the title "Plans of Houses for Common School and Academies", and as such it served as one of the first architectural pattern books to be published in Canada in the 19th century. The collection of plans for one room, two room and four room school houses survive and are now held in the Drawings Collection of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. Mulholland continued to live and work in Truro until after 1882 when he left Canada and moved to Kansas City, Missouri. There, he was listed as a draughtsman for the architect Asa B. Cross (Hoye's Directory of Kansas City, 1885, p. 422). By 1889 he appears to have opened an office in Kansas City as an architect. Mulholland then moved to nearby Omaha, Nebraska in 1890 or in 1891, and died in Omaha in 1891. He was later buried in the Anglican Church cemetery in Truro in March 1892 (Truro Daily News, 14 March 1892, 1; biography in M. Rosinski, Architects of Nova Scotia: A Biographical Dictionary, 1994, 134; inf. from Garry Shutlak, PANS, Halifax).

(attributed) TRURO, N.S., Normal School, 1854 (N.S., Journals of the House of Assembly, 1857, Appendix 57; L. Maitland, Neoclassical Architecture in Canada, 1984, 70, illus. but lacking attribution)
SHERBROOKE, N.S., Standard School Plan No. 4, 1867 (E. Pacey & A. Comiter, Landmarks: Historic Buildings of Nova Scotia, 1994, 92-4, illus.)
TRURO, N.S., Pleasant Street Methodist Church, 1871; spire burned 1897 (Evening Mail [Halifax], 18 Oct. 1897, 7)
TRURO, N.S., St. John's Anglican Church, begun 1873 by William T. Thomas, with later modification of plans by Mulholland (C. R. Dunphy, The Construction of St. John's Church, Truro, 1973, 11-12, 17)
TRURO, N.S., commercial block for R. Stewart, Prince Street at Ingle Street, 1877 (Colchester Sun [Truro], 11 April 1877, 2, t.c.)