Biography
James Melvin was an architect who co-founded Gollins Melvin Ward (GMW) in 1947, along with Frank Gollins (1910-1999) and Edmund Ward (1912-1998). Commissions for the practice included the central campus for the University of Sheffield and the international-style twenty-eight storey Commercial Union Tower (now St Helen's), the first building in the City of London to exceed the height of St Paul's Cathedral. He was a Contemporary Art Society Committee Member (1961-9) which led to his involvement in the ground-breaking exhibition British Painting in the Sixties, held at the Tate Gallery and Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1963 and its designated buyer in 1962/63. Melvin's own art collection (some of which sold at auction at Christie's 26 June 2014) demonstrates his discerning eye and appreciation of the sculpture and paintings that were produced by post-war British artists including Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Frank Auerbach and Paul Feiler, and furnished his modernist home at 60 Hornton Street, Kensington, London (demolished in 2019).
