alt="Fortherecord_squ"/> Adolf Hitler is made chancellor of Germany. He annexes Austria, Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia before invading Poland.
1937 VW PROTOTYPE VEHICE. Volkswagen, the “people’s car,” designed by Ferdinand Porsche.
HARDOY OR BUTTERFLY CHAIR, designed by Jorge Ferrari-Harding for Grupo Austral, 1938.
LIFE
This is a hard-times decade, without unemployment insurance, universal health care or welfare. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is established in 1936: radio offers some escape into the world of entertainers, game shows, soaps and music. Jazz gives way to swing, with the big bands of Guy Lombardo, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.
CAPITOL THEATRE and office building, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1930, Murray Brown, Architect; MARINE BUILDING, Vancouver, 1930, McCarter and Nairne, Architects; RESIDENCE OF LAWREN HARRIS, Toronto, 1933, Alexndra Biriukova, Architect.
STATISTICS 1931 POPULATION OF CANADA 10,376,786 Population of U.S. 122,775,046 Architecture graduates in Canada 16 WOMEN 266 men
BOOKSSuch Is My Beloved by Morley Callaghan; The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
FILMSThe Silent Enemy, a film about the Ojibway of Northern Ontario battling hunger; The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland.
RADIOThe Happy Gang on CBC; Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds.
MUSIC Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians; “Anything Goes” by Cole Porter; “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” by Jay Gorney and E.Y. Harburg.
THEATRE Royal Winnipeg Ballet founded.
ART Canadian Group of Painters (including Lawren Harris, A.J. Casson and A.Y. Jackson) grows out of the Group of Seven.
ARCHITECTURE
The Depression had a devastating effect on the profession in the years leading up to the Second World War. As early as 1931, architectural offices in Canada had reduced their staffs drastically, and many architects were out of work.
In the world of design, modern architecture made a name for itself at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. It became recognized not only in Europe but in the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1932, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibit titled The International Style, which introduced modern architecture to the American public. The next year the Chicago World’s Fair opened, marking a “Century of Progress.” The buildings were described as a shock to the middle-aged, but to the young, a measure of the future. The New York World’s Fair in 1939 gave further impetus to modernism.
In Europe, the Bauhaus, now headed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, moved to Berlin in 1933 but within months was closed by the Nazi government. Its members dispersed but continued to teach, in England and in the United States.
It was also in the 1930s that modernism reached Canada. Commercial and residential work responded more wholeheartedly than corporate and government establishments, where historical styles were still preferred as an expression of power and tradition. Office buildings were becoming higher and higher. The tallest building in the British Empire in 1931 was the Canadian Bank of Commerce tower in Toronto.
The Dominion Housing Act was passed, followed by a nationwide competition for low-cost housing. On the West Coast, innovative residential work was beginning to appear.
In 1939, the University of British Columbia established a school of architecture headed by Fred Lasserre, an advocate of the International Style. Across Canada during the 1930s, a total of 16 women graduated with a degree in architecture from the following schools: University of Alberta, 3; University of Manitoba, 9; University of Toronto, 4.
BOURDON HOUSE, Sillery, Quebec, 1934, Robert Blatter, Architect; CANADIAN BANK OF COMMERCE head office, Toronto, 1931, York & Sawyer, Architects (New York) with Darling & Pearson, Architects (Toronto); THOMSON BUILDING, Timmins, Ontario, 1939, H. Sheppard & G. Masson, Architects, the birthplace of the Thomson newspaper empire.
B.Arch. 1930, M.Arch. 1937
1930 B.Arch., University of Toronto. Toronto Architectural Guild Bronze Medal.
1931 Worked in the office of a German architect in Jerusalem.
1932–1935 Postgraduate studies, School of Architecture, University of Toronto.
1935–1937 Intermittent professional work in the architectural office of P.A. Deacon and Professor Eric Arthur; factory job in a jewellery firm.
1937 M.Arch., University of Toronto – a delay in the granting of her degree was attributed by Davidson to the “radical modern design” of her thesis. Secretary to the first Ontario Committee on Housing. Married Harry Davidson.
1938–1942 Two children born.
1940 on Independent work: architectural negotiator of her husband’s land-development business. Designed two houses in Toronto; designed furniture for family and friends. An ex officio member of the jury for the design of the new city hall. Volunteer research assistant to Eric Arthur during the writing of his book No Mean City.
1986 Beatrice
