Gebrüder Thonet.
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, Ottawa, Ontario, 1916–1927, Pearson & Marchand, Architects; EDMONTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, Edmonton, Alberta, 1923, G.M. MacDonald and H.A. MacDonald and H.A. Magoon, Architects; PLAN OF THE GARDEN VILLAGE FOR DOMINION STEEL PRODUCTS CO., Of Brantford, Ontario, 1923, Gray, Architect, AIA.
STATISTICS 1921 POPULATION OF CANADA 8,787,949 Population of U.S. 105,710,620 In the 1920s the urban population in Canada surpassed that of the rural areas. Architecture graduates in Canada 3 WOMEN 135 men
BOOKSJalna by Mazo de la Roche; The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot; Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne.
FILMSThe Gold Rush, starring Charlie Chaplin; The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson; Nanook of the North, the first feature-length documentary.
RADIO Sports; Will Rogers; the Metropolitan Opera.
MUSIC Bessie Smith records the blues; Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong joins King Oliver’s jazz band; George Gershwin composes Rhapsody in Blue.
ART Emily Carr exhibits at the National Gallery and begins an association with the Group of Seven.
ARCHITECTURE
In Canada in the 1920s, Beaux-Arts Neoclass.mapicism and the Gothic Revival continued to dominate architectural design, especially for public buildings such as Union Station in Toronto, the Edmonton Public Library, and the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. This was all about to change.
The modernist movement in architecture was initiated by a small group of architects in Europe, among them Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Germany, Le Corbusier in France, and J.J. Oud in Holland. In 1919, Gropius founded the Bauhaus, a design school that sought to relate art and architecture to technology and the practical needs of modern life. In 1923, Le Corbusier wrote Vers une architecture (Towards a New Architecture), advocating functional design, honest use of materials and basic geometric shapes. (In Canada, the igloo would have met these requirements.)
In England, Elisabeth Whitworth Scott won the 1928 international competition for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. It was the first major public building in England to achieve a dignified effect without recourse to historical sources. Women were making an appearance as planners as well; the MIT-educated architect Greta Gray designed a garden village for the workers at Dominion Steel in Brantford, Ontario, as early as 1923.
In Canada, new ideas in design were absorbed slowly, with historical styles continuing to dominate. There were six schools of architecture in Canada at this time. At the University of Toronto, architecture was a four-year course with graduating class.mapes of less than ten students; the degree granted was a Bachelor of Science until 1923, when it became a Bachelor of Architecture. That same year, Eric Arthur joined the staff from England and began to develop the curriculum in a more contemporary direction. In 1928, the course was lengthened to five years.
Marjorie Hill had enrolled in architecture in 1916 at the University of Alberta. When the school closed during the First World War, she transferred to the University of Toronto and set a record in 1920 as the first woman in Canada to graduate with a degree in architecture.
BAUHAUS BUILDING, Dessau, Germany, 1926, workshop wing on the right, Walter Gropius, Architect; SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, 1929–1932, Elisabeth Whitworth Scott, Architect.
B.A. 1916, B.A.Sc. 1920
1916 B.A., University of Alberta.
1916–1918 University of Alberta, first two years in the School of Architecture.
1918–1920 University of Toronto, third and fourth years in the Department of Architecture.
1920 B.A.Sc. (Architecture), University of Toronto. Worked at Eaton’s department store in interior design.
1921 Applied unsuccessfully to register with Alberta Association of Architects. Taught in a rural school in Alberta.
1922 Worked at MacDonald and Magoon, Architects, Edmonton: work included a Carnegie library in Edmonton. Returned to University of Toronto for postgraduate studies in town planning.
1923–1928 Moved to New York for summer design course at Columbia University, followed by work with architects Marcia Mead and Katherine Budd.
1925 Registered, Alberta Association of Architects.
1928–1929 Returned to office of MacDonald and Magoon, Architects, in Edmonton.
1930 No architectural work was available. Marjorie Hill turned to weaving and glove making, teaching these crafts through the Depression.
1936 Moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where she became a master weaver.
1940 Architectural commissions led to part-time practice: residential renovations and conversion of houses to apartments.
1945–1963 Architectural practice continued after the war: houses, motel addition, fellowship hall, hospital.
1945 Elected to Victoria Town Planning Commission.
1953 Registered, Architectural Institute of British Columbia.
“One must have artistic talent, practical experience, professional knowledge, good business sense and executive ability, resourcefulness and a determination to persevere. With these assets, there is no reason why a woman should not be as successful as a man.” (Toronto Stat, June 15,1920)
“The principal product of a handicraft program should be better people … Heredity, attention to diet, no smoking or drinking, lots of music and reading the papers keeps me going.” (Vancouver Sun, May 29, 1984)
CONVOCATION AT UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, 1920. Front page of Toronto Star on June 15, 1920. “Miss E.M. Hill is … the first woman to graduate from the School of Architecture.”
1963 Retired after twenty-eight years of architectural practice. Continued to teach weaving and produce works for sale: “I am fully occupied with congenial and satisfying tasks.”
1985 Marjorie Hill died at the age of eighty-nine in Victoria.
