women who followed her. They were among the first women to become architects in Canada.
Although this book focuses on the early women graduates in Architecture at the University of Toronto, three distinguished architects who were trained elsewhere should be mentioned: Catherine Chard Wisnicki, Phyllis Lambert and Blanche Lemco van Ginkel. Above and beyond their design work, these three women have made outstanding contributions to education within the profession.
Catherine Chard Wisnicki was the first woman to graduate in Architecture from McGill, in 1943. She was an active participant in the development of west coast modernism and taught for over twenty years in the School of Architecture at the University of British Columbia until her retirement in 1986.
Phyllis Lambert holds a master’s degree in Architecture from the Illinois Institute of Technology and had an award-winning architectural practice based in Montreal. In 1979, she founded the Canadian Centre for Architecture, a museum and international centre for architectural research – based on the conviction that architecture is an urgent public concern.
Blanche Lemco van Ginkel graduated from McGill in Architecture in 1945 and completed her master’s degree in City Planning at Harvard five years later. A distinguished educator as well as a successful architect and planner, van Ginkel was Director, then Dean of Architecture at the University of Toronto from 1977 to 1982.
Researched and written by women architects, this book speaks in a collective voice. It is our intention to provide information about the profession of architecture and to follow the part that women have played in it from the early years. That there have been many changes over time is apparent in the final chapter, which presents the work of six women architects working today, selected from across the country.
It has taken us twenty years to publish this book, the same length of time Marjorie Hill had to wait to practice architecture. We bow to her patience and fortitude.
KINGSTON CITY AND MARKET, 1840, George Browen, Architect. Watercolour by Harriet Cartright, 1844.
A SHORT HISTORY OF EARLY WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE
When Marjorie Hill graduated in 1920 as Canada’s “first girl architect,” she was entering a profession that was in its infancy here, having been established only thirty years earlier, in 1890. In the years leading up to that date, when this country was known as British North America, building was done by settlers, carpenters and masons, as well as the military. Over the course of the nineteenth century, railways were laid out, trade increased and settlements grew in size and number. Montreal, Kingston, Toronto and Halifax all became important centres, while the west remained the realm of the fur trade.
In 1853, an extraordinary woman appeared in the west. Mother Joseph travelled with other Sisters of Providence from Montreal to Washington Territory and to Fort Vancouver. Their mission was to establish hospitals and schools, providing care for native children, the elderly and the poor. Providence Academy in Vancouver was completed in 1883, and by that time Mother Joseph had designed, raised funds and supervised the construction of seventeen facilities in the area. The American Institute of Architects later honoured her as the “first architect of the Pacific Northwest.”
The settlements in the east were steadily growing. In 1841, the union of Upper and Lower Canada – Ontario and Quebec – had created the Province of Canada. For three years it was thought that Kingston would serve as the capital, during which time an international competition was announced for the design of a new city hall and market. The call for proposals resulted in thirteen submissions, one of which came from Sarah Turton Glegg, daughter of a building contractor in Kingston and friend of Toronto architect John Howard, who also submitted a proposal. Neither Glegg, about whom nothing more is known, nor Howard was successful; the council chose the design of Montreal and Kingston architect George Browne.
This was a time when architects brought their skills from abroad. In Canada, the only training available was through apprenticeship. When the same George Browne emigrated from Ireland in 1832, he started a school in Quebec City – open only to men – where drafting skills and knowledge could be acquired for $4 a month. Architects prepared drawings, wrote specifications, reviewed construction costs and certified payments. For such services they received a fee of 5 percent, based on the cost of construction. Few architects could afford to do only this and survive financially. Expanding settlements were surrounded by wilderness, however, and there was a continuing need for canals, bridges, roads and railways. An architect could keep busy as a surveyor, builder, developer and engineer.
John Howard understood this. He brought his training as an architect and surveyor from England, arriving in 1832 in Muddy York, which was soon to become Toronto. Howard was, at various times, surveyor, city engineer, public notary and farmer. For twenty-three years, he was the drawing master at Upper Canada College. He also produced architectural drawings for commissions that came his way.
Mechanics Institutes – established by local philanthropists and based on a British model – began to appear, providing the working populace with resources necessary for the study of technical subjects. British and American pattern books containing architectural designs were frequently consulted by those involved with the building trade in Canada; professional journals, illustrating recent work abroad, arrived by ship within weeks of publication in England.
In 1851, the opening of the Crystal Palace in London, England, caused much excitement. Its iron-and-glass construction opened up a world of design possibilities; it could be dismantled and relocated. The building demonstrated the use of new materials, new ideas and new design. Variations on the structure soon began to appear elsewhere. In 1858, the Palace of Industry was constructed in Toronto in three months, using iron, wood and glass that had been fabricated locally. After the close of the trade exposition, the Palace of Industry was dismantled and then rebuilt, with a third floor added, in Exhibition Park not far from its original location. This grand new structure was called the Crystal Palace, and opened the first Toronto Exhibition in September 1879. Regrettably, it was destroyed by fire in 1906.
CRYSTAL PALACE, London, England, 1850–1851, designed by Joseph Paxton; CRYSTAL PALACE, Exhibition Park, Toronto, 1879, Strickland and Symons, Architects.
The Industrial Age was well under way. Railway expansion required iron foundries, locomotive shops and rolling mills. Burgeoning industry and commerce called for new types of buildings: factories, railway stations, hotels and office buildings. The office building had a natural walk-up limit of four to six storeys, but by 1856, with advances in building technology, the creation of new materials and the invention of the Otis elevator, that limit could be extended. In Canada, this taller type of building, with its system of cast-iron columns, beams and masonry walls, first appeared in 1888: the ten-storey Montreal headquarters of New York Life Assurance, designed by Babb, Cook and Willard, Architects, of New York.
In 1860, structural steel became available, and somewhat later reinforced concrete, well suited to large-scale structures, bridges and dams, came into common use. These new systems of building, new techniques of construction and unfamiliar building materials, not to mention competition from American firms, put great stress on practicing architects in Canada.
New York architect Bruce Price, who had been commissioned to design Windsor Station in Montreal, soon became the favourite architect of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Other Price commissions include the original Banff Springs Hotel and the Château Frontenac in Quebec City. Richard Waite, a Buffalo architect, worked north of the border as well, designing buildings
