Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Engineer. Daniel Synan, who was born in Co. Cork on 29 January 1865, entered the employment of the Board of Public Works on 11 December 1890.(1) By 1896 he was employed as an assistant surveyor of public buildings (second class), based in Athlone, Co. Westmeath,(2) and by 1900 he had been transferred to Galway.(3) His name has disappeared from the Board's list of surveyors by 1907, but at the time of the 1911 census, he was practising as a civil engineer in Limerick.   He was one of a minority of heads of family who refused to declare the religious affiliation of his family members - himself, his wife, and his twenty-two year old son - on his census return.

Daniel Edward Synan is presumably the same person as the 'Mr Daniel Synan' of Cork, who won second prize in the Irish Builder's gate lodge competition in 1882(4) and third prize in the same journal's competition for a mortuary chapel later the same year.(5) It was alleged by THOMAS J. DUFF  THOMAS J. DUFF that Synan's gate lodge design was copied from one by George Somers Clarke, which had been published in the Building News, for 18 May 1877.(6) 

AAI: elected member, 27 May 1902.(7)

Address:  11 Cathedral Place, Limerick, 1911.



References

Information in this entry not otherwise attributed is from the 1911 census of Ireland, http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ (last visited Oct 2009).

(1) Jones transcripts from Office of Public Works records.
(2) Post Office Dublin Directory (1896), 75.
(3) Post Office Dublin Directory (1900), 75.
(4) IB 24, 15 Jun 1882, 174, illus. in supplement.
(5) IB 24, 15 Oct 1882, 398.
(6) IB 24, 1 Jul 1882, 196.
(7) Irish Times, 28 May 1902.