Stephen Rowland PIERCE
1896 - 1966
Biography
An architect and town planning consultant, Stephen Rowland Pierce was awarded the Rome Scholarship in Architecture in 1921 and studied at the British School at Rome. Much of his architectural work was in the form of civic buildings, often in partnership with the architect Charles Holloway James, such as the town hall of Slough, constructed in 1936, and the Hertford County Hall, built in 1940. His best-known work as an architect, however, is the City Hall in Norwich, designed by Pierce with James and completed in 1938. In the same year Pierce was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and later served as its Vice-President between 1951 and 1955. He also worked in the field of town planning, and published Planning: The Architect’s Handbook, which was issued in several editions. Pierce served as a town planning consultant in Norwich, Southampton, Malta and elsewhere, and taught at the British School in Rome. Pierce owned a large collection of early English drawings and watercolours, dispersed at auction in 1968 and 1971, and in 1958 published an article on the watercolours of Jonathan Skelton in The Walpole Society.
