Bernard J. S. Cahill (1866-1944)

Bernard Joseph Stanislaus Cahill was born in London, England in 1866. He is known for his cemetery architecture and for the design of the San Francisco Civic Center. He was also the architect for a number of other commercial buildings, including the Multnomah Hotel in Portland, Oregon and various buildings in Vancouver, B. C.

Cahill arrived in the United States in 1888. He was married to Lida Boardman Hall in 1897, and to Laura Georgiana McClune in 1907. He and his second wife had one son, Bernard James Alban.

At the start of his professional career in 1896, Cahill participated in the Phoebe Hearst competition for the design of the U. C. Berkeley campus. He was elected an Associate Member of the A.I.A. in 1899. He wrote articles for the “California Architect and Building News” and later for “The Architect and Engineer.” An early advocate of city planning, Cahill helped to define the concept of a “civic center” with his 1904 design of the San Francisco Civic Center, which he felt was the basis for the plan adopted by the city in 1912. He continued to be involved in the plan for the city, and wrote letters to the editor and articles expressing his ideas on the proper plan.

A specialist in mausoleum design and mortuary architecture, Cahill designed the catacombs and columbarium for the Cypress Lawn Cemetery, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (San Francisco), Evergreen Memorial Cemetery Memorial Building (Oakland), the St. Mary’s Cemetery mausoleum (Sacramento), and the Diamond Head Memorial Park in Honolulu.

He was listed in the San Francisco city directory under the partnership of Stone and Cahill from 1894-1895, and then starting in 1907 with architects George A.Wright and George Rushforth (in the firm Wright, Rushforth, and Cahill). He subsequently designed buildings (such as the Multnomah Hotel in Portland) as part of the team of Gibson and Cahill.

In addition to designing buildings, Cahill invented the butterfly map, an octahedral system of projection for meteorology, geography, and geophysics. The map was designed to eliminate exaggeration at the top and bottom and distortion at the edges and sides found in traditional maps. The surface of the globe was represented by eight equilateral triangles. Cahill founded “The Cahill World Map Co.,” which sold shares and promoted the map for educational and other uses.