McCarthy, Charles James (C. J. ) (1858–1947), architect, was born on 8 December 1858 in Dublin, the only son of four children of James Joseph McCarthy (qv), architect, and his wife Agnes Mary (née Byrne; 1819–85). Charles served as an apprentice to his father at his office at 183 Great Brunswick Street, moving with him to new premises at 12 Westland Row in 1881. As a young architect, he particularly enjoyed sketching, and in 1881 made all of the drawings upon which the Roman catholic church of Our Lady Star of the Sea, Riverchapel, Co. Wexford, was based, before overseeing its completion after his father's death. On his father's death in 1882, Charles, aged only 24, took over the family firm and ran it for a further eleven years. In 1893 he was appointed Dublin city architect, a position he retained for more than a quarter of a century, designing many important buildings in the city, including public libraries, fire stations, market buildings, technical schools and residential units. His strong ecclesiological background was evident in some of his early municipal designs: for example, the pointed gable wall and tripartite windows on the Carnegie library at Charleville Mall, North Strand (1899), salute the original Gothic styles as found at Gowran Abbey, Co. Kilkenny, and other sites. In his early municipal career he designed 185 dwellings under the housing of the working classes acts, at Blackhall Place and St Joseph's Place (1894–5), before embarking on larger institutional projects such as the Fish Market at Mary's Lane (1900), and the Coroner's Court, Store Street (1901).
In 1901, in recognition of his professional achievements, both with Dublin Corporation and previously, McCarthy was elected president of the newly established Architectural Association of Ireland (AAI). Already a long-standing member of the older Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) since 1884, he took particular delight in his presidency of the newer institution, since he perceived it to be more representative of the younger generation. He made this point explicitly clear in his opening presidential address, when, discussing the merits of the association's younger membership, he told his audience that it was 'the young men – and the young men only – who appeal to the imagination', and to them that the future belongs (Ir. Builder, 24 Oct. 1901, 910). For leisure, he enjoyed occasional cycling tours on the continent with friends and colleagues, often sketching sites of architectural and historical interest. One such tour in Normandy in 1902 became the subject of a lecture he presented to members of the AAI, displaying lantern pictures of drawings made by himself and the president, Frederick George Hicks (qv). The lecture was prefaced as not being a 'learned disquisition on French architecture', but nevertheless exhibited a sound knowledge of, and deep passion for, the subject. As a senior member of the AAI, McCarthy assumed the role of mentor to the junior members, regularly impressing upon them the importance of sketching rapidly, as a means of developing the powers of observation.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Dublin Corporation sanctioned the construction of two new libraries in the city, both to be financed from the Carnegie trust established in 1897. McCarthy was responsible for designing both, at Charleville Mall (1899) and Great Brunswick (Pearse) Street (1909). The latter building is a confident nine-bay, two-storey Georgian revival essay in Mount Charles sandstone, with blue limestone dressings. It displays a classical balustrade parapet and richly carved pediment above piano nobile, and stands in contrast to the former building, a simple single-storey, red-brick composition, with pointed gable ends. Arguably the most striking of McCarthy's later municipal buildings is the technical school at Bolton Street (1909–11). Adopting similar design principles to the Pearse Street library but on a grander scale, this thirteen-bay, three-storey, over-basement front range, with red brick and sandstone dressings, was the second of McCarthy's technical colleges, the first being Kevin Street, completed in 1898 and since demolished. Between 1898 and 1911 he also designed four new fire stations on prominent accessible sites at Buckingham, Dorset, Thomas and Tara streets. While all were faced with local red brick from Portmarnock, it is the two stations at Dorset Street and Tara Street, built between 1901 and 1907, that are most interesting from an architectural perspective. Both buildings feature prominently a Venetian-style watchtower, not dissimilar to designs by McCarthy's father for the church of St Paul of the Cross, Mount Argus, Dublin, and the cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
Between 1901 and 1911 McCarthy designed for Dublin Corporation 174 artisan's dwellings in twenty-five three- and four-storey blocks at Bride's Alley and Ross Road. After the loss of seven lives when two tenement houses collapsed in Church Street in 1913, and the subsequent housing inquiry of 1914, which highlighted the poor quality of housing for Dublin's poor, he turned his attention to an ambitious inner-city slum-clearance plan. Work began on the Fr Mathew Square scheme in 1915, the centrepiece of which was an ornamental square situated on the north-eastern side of Church Street, directly opposite, thus opening the vista towards the magnificent façade of the church of St Mary of the Angels, designed by J. J. McCarthy in 1868. Further slum-clearance work included the development of Ormond Square (1917–21) on the site of the former Ormond Markets. By the time of his retirement in 1921, McCarthy had designed over 1,700 residential units for Dublin Corporation. Together with Professor Patrick Geddes and John Nolen, he also acted as adjudicator for the Dublin improvement plan of 1914, a direct consequence of the 1914 housing enquiry. Following the destruction caused by the 1916 rebellion, he was part of an expert committee set up by Dublin Corporation to make recommendations for the reconstruction of Sackville (O'Connell) Street. Responsibility for coordinating the overall plan was given to McCarthy, and individual architects were required to adhere to standard building heights, cornice lines, types of material, and shop-front design, as set out by the city architect.
McCarthy led a relatively quiet bachelor's life into his forties. In 1901 he shared a home with his twin sister, Emily, an artist, and two live-in servants, at 37 Upper Leeson Street. A decade later he was living at 2 Wilton Place, Ranelagh, still with his sister and two servants. However, on 11 January 1905 in Chelsea he had married Clara Louise Christian (1868–1906), an English landscape artist. She had come to Dublin four years previously, accompanying the writer George Moore (qv), and had donated some works to the projected Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, of which McCarthy, a lover of the arts, was an original subscriber. On 6 June 1906, awaiting the birth of their first child, she had a miscarriage and died suddenly. McCarthy was devastated; a friend noted: 'I never saw a human being suffer so much' (James Duncan to Hugh Lane, 1906, Lane and Shine papers). However, he found happiness once again when in 1915 he married Nina Gertrude Cotton (1877–1962), from Islington, London.
In the sparse literature covering McCarthy's personal life, little reference is made to his political views, unlike those of his father, whose association with the nationalist Young Irelanders was well documented. However, as his son, pupil and eventual successor, Charles appears to have inherited at least some of his father's nationalist views. In his presidential address to the AAI in 1901 he called for a 'school of national architecture' in Ireland, to be founded, not upon state or municipal architecture, but upon ecclesiastical architecture, inspired by the 'simplicity and dignity so characteristic' of Ireland's early Gothic buildings (AAI Green Book, 11). The old abbeys of Cashel, Holy Cross, Cong, and the Black Abbey, Kilkenny, are cited as the most beautiful examples of such buildings, and the language and content of his address reveal a personality well acquainted with Ireland's ancient past.
As a generous man of culture, whose first wife and sister were both artists, McCarthy was much inspired by art, music and poetry. In his will he bequeathed £500 to the Artists' Benevolent Fund, London, and £200 to the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland. He was also a long-time member of the Royal Zoological Society, to which he donated some bird species and left £200. The work of his father was also a great influence and inspiration, and he left £2,000 to UCD to establish a scholarship in his father's memory.
After a prolonged period of illness, McCarthy resigned as city architect in April 1921. Thereafter, he appears to have lived quietly, at addresses including the Onslow Court Hotel, Queen's Gate, London; 10 Grove Court, Drayton Gardens, South Kensington, London; and the St Stephen's Green Club, Dublin. He died at his residence, 49 Drayton Gardens, South Kensington, London, on 16 October 1947, aged 88, survived by his wife, Nina. He was buried in Glasnevin cemetery.