Laurence Aloysius McDonnell [commonly known as Laurence A. McDonnell] was born in Donnybrook, Dublin, in 1857 or 1858 and was articled to John Joseph O’Callaghan (c.1838-1905) in Dublin from c.1880 to 1883. He then worked for Thomas Newenham Deane & Son, representing the practice in Oxford, England for two years. He was next employed as principal assistant in the office of James Franklin Fuller (1835-1924).
McDonnell set up his own practice in ca 1886 at 28 Lower Pembroke Street. In the early 1890s he acquired the patronage of the 7th Earl of Aberdeen and his wife, Lady Aberdeen. She and a committee with which she was involved, commissioned McDonnell to design the Irish Industrial Village for the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893, whilst her husband commissioned him to draw up plans for a large mansion in Scotland from them in Scotland.
In 1910 McDonnell formed a partnership with Alexander William Douglas Reid (c.1884-?), practising as McDonnell & Reid. The partnership was dissolved in c.1914 when Reid enlisted in the Army following the outbreak of World War One. In 1917 McDonnell took his assistant, William Albert Dixon (1892-1978), into partnership as McDonnell & Dixon. Dixon continued to tun the practice as McDonnell & Dixon for many years.
McDonnell was elected a Member of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (MRIAI) in 1893 and a Fellow of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (FRIAI) in 1913. Following the death of McDonnell on 4 December 1925, Dixon continued to run the McDonnell & Dixon practice with the title of the firm unchanged for several years.
Bowe, Nicola Gordon and Cumming, Elizabeth. The Arts and Crafts movement in Dublin and Edinburgh. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1998 [ISBN 0-7165-2579-8]
Who’s Who in Architecture 1914. London: Technical Journals Ltd., 1914