Canadian Architecture

C

British North America

The British took control of New France in 1763 as a result of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The shift to British rule slowly changed the architectural landscape. The British expelled the French from Acadia, renamed it Nova Scotia, and settled it with American colonists who brought their own forms of architecture with them. For example, a two-story house built in 1766 (enlarged 1781) in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, greatly resembled colonial houses in New England. Built for Simeon Perkins, who came from Connecticut, it had an exterior of white clapboard (narrow, overlapping wooden boards), green shutters for the windows, and dormer windows on a pitched roof. This American influence increased in Canada after 1783 with the arrival of British loyalists who were fleeing the newly established United States.

The British governing elite in Canada, by contrast, began to construct government buildings and houses modeled on the neoclassical style popular in England. Province House (1811-1819), the home of the Nova Scotia legislature in Halifax, has the regular, symmetrical features and the classical details of that style, including a Greek temple facade on the front of the building. The Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (1800-1804) in Québec City features a rectangular plan and prominent steeple like that of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, England. British military planners laid out new towns, such as Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario) on a grid plan with long, straight, evenly spaced streets that met at right angles. Toronto, first named York, was founded in 1793 on Lake Ontario and served as the capital of the new British colony of Upper Canada (now Ontario).

As the 19th century progressed, immigrants brought new architectural ideas to Canada, often from Great Britain, sometimes from France or the United States. In 1823 Irish American architect James O’Donnell designed Montréal’s Notre Dame basilica (completed 1829) in the newly fashionable Gothic Revival style, with pointed arches and an ornate interior. It could seat 9,000 people and was the largest church on the North American continent at that time. Most public buildings were neoclassical in style, with porticoes (columned porches), domes, and pediments. Notable buildings in Canada in the neoclassical style include McGill College (1839; now the Arts Building at McGill University) in Montréal, designed by John Ostell, and the Bank of Montréal (1845-1848), designed by John Wells.

By 1850 tastes had begun to change. Architects designed houses and public buildings in a medley of types and styles, from picturesque cottages with pleasing vistas, decorative windows, and verandas to villas in the Italianate style with flat roofs, windows that were rounded at the top, and tall towers. Perhaps the strongest influence on Canadian architecture in the mid-1800s was the Gothic Revival style of England. English writers such as A. W. N. Pugin and John Ruskin urged a return to English architectural styles of the late Middle Ages (1200s to about 1500). They hoped thereby to restore a moral and religious dimension to architecture. English-born architect Frank Wills designed Christ Church Cathedral (1845-1853) in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in the Gothic Revival style to resemble a church in Norfolk, England. The stone church has a central nave with two side aisles, a high central steeple, and a large stained glass window on its east end. A well-known English architect, William Butterfield, collaborated in the design. University College (1856-1859), part of the University of Toronto designed by Frederic W. Cumberland, displays a mixture of medieval revival styles—Gothic and Romanesque—and resembles in style and shape the University Museum in Oxford, England, which was based on Ruskin’s ideas.

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A permanent settlement had been established at Ottawa in 1800, and in 1857 the town became the capital of the British Province of Canada, constituted of Ontario and Québec. In 1859 construction began in Ottawa on Parliament buildings, which followed the ideas of Ruskin and Pugin. (Pugin had designed the interior and exterior decoration for Britain’s Houses of Parliament, which were begun in 1836.) The three Canadian Parliament buildings have rough stone walls and steep roofs that were covered first in slate and later in copper. This complex in the Gothic Revival style consists of a large Centre Block, designed by Thomas Fuller and Chilion Jones, and two smaller blocks, the East and West blocks, both designed by Thomas Stent and Augustus Laver. (The Centre Block burned in 1916 and was replaced by a similar structure.) In front, the buildings face a lawn and at the back they make a picturesque scene of pinnacles (pointed ornaments), gables (triangular wall faces at roof level), and spires high above the Ottawa River. The architecture of the Parliament buildings quickly came to symbolize the new country, which was expanding from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

III

Confederation and After

Modern Canada came into being on July 1, 1867, through the Confederation of Québec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Confederation made them a single country, with its capital in Ottawa. The original provinces were soon joined by Manitoba, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Newfoundland entered the Confederation in 1949.

Completion in 1886 of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which stretched from Montréal to the new city of Vancouver in British Columbia, brought nationwide prosperity to Canada. Montréal and Toronto became large industrial cities. Settlers from Europe flooded the western plains, pushing the First Nations peoples onto reserves and creating new cities such as Winnipeg in Manitoba and Calgary in Alberta. Vancouver grew as the most important port on Canada’s west coast.

A

Nationhood and New Opportunities

Confederation had an immediate effect on architecture. The new national government embarked on a building campaign that included post offices, courthouses, armories, and other public buildings. The Office of the Chief Architect, a branch of the federal Department of Public Works, designed many of these public buildings using elements taken from the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. Such buildings include the Royal Military College of Canada (1876-1878) in Kingston, Ontario, and the Langevin Building (1883-1889) in Ottawa. The idea of a picturesque national architecture soon took hold. One trademark of it was the use of picturesque details, such as the round corner towers popular in the so-called Scottish baronial manner and the turrets (small projecting towers) of French châteaux (castles). Another trademark was the use of a steep roofline covered in oxidized copper, which is green. In time this fashion created a unified architectural landscape in Ottawa and a strong federal image outside Ottawa. The style continues to influence buildings today, as seen in the United States Embassy (2000) in Ottawa, designed by the American firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The building resembles the silhouette of the Parliament’s Centre Block.

The opportunities for building in the new nation attracted many architects from other countries to Canada. New York architect Bruce Price and the New York architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White led a wave of influence from the United States. Price designed Windsor Station (1886-1889), a railroad station in downtown Montréal with massive stonework and rounded arches characteristic of the Romanesque revival that had become popular around that time. McKim, Mead, and White designed impressive buildings in the neoclassical style for the Bank of Montréal in Montréal (1901-1905) and in Winnipeg (1910-1913).

Canadian architects responded to the new building opportunities and the arrival of Americans by traveling, studying, and then rapidly incorporating new construction techniques, such as steel frameworks and reinforced concrete, into their work. In Toronto, architect Edmund Burke designed the Robert Simpson Store (1895), Canada’s first building with an interior steel frame and exterior curtain (non-loadbearing) walls. The rise of banks with nationwide branches, railways that built hotels and stations along their routes, and department store chains led to prosperity for Canadian architectural firms. Darling and Pearson of Toronto designed a number of banks, including the ten-story Union Bank (1904) in Winnipeg, which was western Canada’s first skyscraper, and the Canadian Bank of Commerce (1910-1912), also in Winnipeg. Another Toronto firm, Burke, Horwood and White, designed stores for the Hudson’s Bay Company, a major merchandising enterprise, including a Vancouver branch (1913) encrusted with terra cotta decoration.

By 1914 Canadian architects had achieved success and security unknown a generation before. Architects had organized professional associations, such as the Province of Québec Association of Architects, and a number of Canadian universities had begun to teach architecture: the University of Toronto in 1889, McGill University in Montréal in 1896, and the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg in 1913.

B

Revival Styles

Canadian architecture in the 50 years after the 1867 Confederation was strongly influenced by design techniques and styles that looked to past architecture for ideas and inspiration. During the 1870s the Second Empire style began to replace the Gothic style of the Parliament buildings. The style of the Second Empire, which originated in France during the reign of Napoleon III, featured details from the French Renaissance and mansard roofs, which had two slopes (a gentle and then a steep slope) on each of their four sides. Links to French culture made this style particularly popular in the province of Québec, for example in the National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale, 1878) in Québec City by E. E. Taché and the City Hall (Hôtel de Ville) in Montréal by Henry Maurice Perrault. Built in 1875, the Hôtel de Ville was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1926.

In the mid-1880s a fashion for American architecture brought the style of Boston architect Henry Hobson Richardson north. Known as Richardsonian Romanesque, the style featured massive blocks of rough-hewn stone, large arched entrances, and arched windows. Richard Waite, an architect based in Buffalo, New York, borrowed the style for the Ontario Legislative Building (1886) in Toronto, a massive stone building with corner towers and a triple-arched entrance with three large arched windows on the story above. Toronto architect E. J. Lennox closely modeled the Toronto City Hall (1887-1889) on Richardson’s Allegheny County Courthouse (1885-1888) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Richardsonian Romanesque was also a popular style for commercial and residential buildings, such as the Gooderham House (1889-1892) in Toronto by David Roberts. By 1895 the style had been superseded in city residential neighborhoods by the pointed gables, red brick, and shingled roofs of the Queen Anne revival.

Some architects saw revival styles in Canadian architecture in a context of nationalism and imperialism. At McGill University, architecture professor Percy Nobbs encouraged a national architecture based on Canadian, French, and British historical models. He found good examples in Canada’s fanciful railway hotels loosely based on French châteaux. These hotels included Chateau Frontenac (1892-1893) in Québec City by Bruce Price, Chateau Laurier (1908-1912) in Ottawa by Ross and MacFarlane, and Banff Springs Hotel (1911-1914, addition 1925-1932) in the Canadian Rockies by W. S. Painter and J. W. Orrock. Other architects, in contrast, admired the rigorous design and planning principles taught at the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris. Although the school trained architects in revival styles, it stressed accurate use of the proportions and details of the originals. Among Canadian architects trained in these principles were Edward and William Maxwell in Montréal, who designed the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts (1911), and John Lyle in Toronto, who designed that city’s Union Station (1914). In designing the stone facade and high dome of the Saskatchewan Legislature Building (1908-1912) in Regina, the Maxwell brothers combined French, British, and American architectural ideas into a unified whole.

Many architects avoided debates about style and based their architecture on conventional formulas. On university campuses a style dubbed collegiate Gothic became dominant. Examples include Hart House (1911-1919) at the University of Toronto, designed by the firm of Sproatt and Rolph, and the University of Saskatchewan (1910-1912) in Saskatoon, designed by Brown and Vallance. Gothic was also popular for neighborhood churches, except in Catholic Québec, where Romanesque models were preferred. The Romanesque reflected French fashions, and the Gothic Revival had become associated with English Protestants. During the 1920s the houses of wealthy Canadians presented a bucolic scene of half-timbered gables (derived from medieval English buildings), Georgian parapets (low walls along roofs), and Spanish colonial terraces. In Montréal especially, houses featured steep roofs and stone walls in a revival of early French Canadian architecture.

IV

Modernism

Basic principles of modern architecture—including functional arrangement of forms, technological innovation, and a manufacturing-based construction industry—were in place in Canada by the early 1900s. Many skyscrapers incorporated the ideas of Chicago School architects in expressing a building’s underlying steel framework through narrow piers (vertical structures) between windows on the exterior. Examples include the Electric Chambers (1913) in Winnipeg and the Birks Building (1912-1913) in Vancouver. The use of steel for the long spans of the Québec Bridge (1900-1917) and of concrete in enormous grain elevators demonstrated the potential of modern engineering. Many western prairie towns in Canada had banks built of prefabricated wooden parts, while mail-order houses supplied building parts for houses and commercial buildings in all parts of Canada, especially in the rapidly developing west.

Another feature of modern architecture was its simplicity and lack of decoration. Early signs of this simplicity appear in the work of Toronto architect Eden Smith. Although his Saint Thomas’s Church (1896) in Toronto has the shape of a Gothic parish church, it has little decoration apart from the textures of its materials—brick, stone, and polished wood. His Studio Building (1913) in Toronto features large, factory-type windows set in plain brick walls. Smith’s emphasis on plain materials and surfaces places him in the Arts and Crafts movement that originated in England in the late 1800s. In Ottawa, Francis Sullivan designed a series of houses that imitated those of his teacher, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright—for example, the E. P. Connors House (1914-1915). In Victoria, Samuel Maclure gained success with houses set in rugged landscapes and featuring natural materials, double-height living spaces, and cross-shaped floor plans—for example, his Biggerstaff-Wilson House (1905-1906).

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