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Ezra L. Phillips (1870-1937) was born in Gloucester the son of Washington Square residents Nathan Phillips, a flour and provisions merchant, and his wife Maria (Lunt) Phillips. Ezra had an older sister Emma (who married Harry Haskell, son of Leonides Haskell), and a younger brother, N. Carleton Phillips, who became the president of LePage’s Glue and an authority on local Native American history. Ezra became an architect and opened an office on Main St. around 1894 which later became the firm of Phillips and Holloran. His business interests were many and he was variously vice-president of the Gloucester Safe Deposit and Trust Co.; treasurer of the Cape Ann Anchor Works, the Russia Cement Co., the Gloucester Coal and Lumber Co. and the Rockport Granite Co.; director of the Cape Ann Savings Bank and the Cape Ann YMCA which last involvement led to him establishing red triangle activities in Europe during WWI. He was also a deacon of Trinity Congregational Church and a Trustee of both Addison Gilbert Hospital and Ravenswood Park.

Timothy Francis Holloran (1883 - 1966) was born in Gloucester, one of the nine children of Irish immigrants Timothy H. and Mary A. (O’Brien) Holloran. Timothy’s parents had met and married in Somerville, but after his father learned the trade of granite cutting and got employment in the Cape Ann quarries the family moved to Annisquam and then Bay View, where Timothy F. was born. Timothy F. was apprenticed to Ezra Phillips as a draughtsman when he was around eighteen but had achieved the title of architect by 1918 and became a partner in 1926. He designed many of the Bass Rocks “cottages” as well as the Prentiss House at Addison Gilbert Hospital.

Robert T. Holloran (1919 - 2008) was born in Gloucester the son of Timothy F. and Eleanor (Burns) Holloran. He obtained a degree in architecture from Wentworth Institute in Boston and joined his father in his Gloucester based architecture firm. Among the many buildings they designed were the Beeman School, the addition to Gloucester High School, and the Bay View Fire Station. He later joined the Boston firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott and his last job before retirement was as project architect for a complex at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

In 2011, The Cape Ann Museum Library & Archives received an extraordinary gift of over 300 architectural plans from Cindy Holloran, widow of Robert T. Holloran, a Gloucester architect. The plans date from 1864 to 1968 and range from designs for private dwellings like Isaac Patch’s East Gloucester Cottage to municipal buildings such as Maplewood Avenue School. They also include the original 1870 plans for City Hall by Bryant & Rogers which were obtained when alterations to the building were contemplated in the 1920s.

When Ezra Phillips died, all the plans he had so carefully and beautifully created were kept and added to over the years by his partner Timothy Holloran - and later by Mr. Holloran’s son Robert Holloran. None of them ever threw a plan away and the museum, and its visitors, are so much the richer for it.

Series I Architectural Plans

Series II Personal Papers, photographs, etc.

Boxes 1 - 29

Series I Architectural Plans. Arranged by location/street name.

Note: Numbers in right two columns are item location identifiers and signify where they are housed in the archives. They are not street address numbers.