Charles Donagh Maginnis
Award Name : AIA Gold Medal
Year of Award : 1948
Award for : Architecture
Location : Londonderry County Borough, N Ireland, United Kingdom
Charles Donagh Maginnis was an Irish architect. He was born on January 7, 1867 in County Londonderry. He was educated in Dublin, emigrated to Boston at age 18 and got his first job apprenticing for architect Edmund M. Wheelwright as a draftsman. In 1900 he became a member of the Boston Society of Architects, serving as its president from 1924 to 1926. In the Boston area, Maginnis also built the church of St. Catherine of Genoa in Somerville, Massachusetts, St. John The Evangelist in Cambridge and St. Aidan's Church in Brookline, Massachusetts where he was a parishioner along with the Kennedy family and other prominent Irish-Americans. St. Aidan's, the location of the christening of John F. Kennedy, has since been closed and may be converted into housing in the near future. In other parts of the country he designed the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore and the interior of Emmanual Masqueray's Basilica of St Mary in Minneapolis as well as the sacristy and rectory for the Cathedral of St. Paul in Saint Paul. Among his other designs are the chancel at Trinity Church in Boston's Copley Square and the high altar at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. In 1948, he received the AIA Gold Medal.