Issue 3 - SEXTONdigital

______ . ;,.,.___. ~..-..~'--'
VOLUME I TOME 19 SEPTEMBER 1994 SEPTEMBRE NUMBER I NUMERO 3

Society for the Study of
Architecture in Canada
Societe pour !'etude de
!'architecture au Canada
President I presidente
Diana Thomas
State Historic Preservation Office
Arizona State Parks Department
800 W. Washington, Suite 41S
Phoenix, Arizona 8S007
Past President 1 ancien president
Mark Fram
1S9 Russell Hill Road, No. 101
Toronto, Ontario M4V 2S9
Vice-President I vice-presidente
Dorothy Field
Alberta Culture and Multiculturalism
Old St. Stephen's College, 8820 112 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2P8
Treasurer I tresorier
EdgarTumak
309 Stewart Street, Apt S
Ottawa, Ontario KIN 61

J n This Issue I L e numero de ce mois-ci
The two articles featured in this issue of the
.1. Bulletin demonstrate that the 20th century
covers a lot of architectural territory. In the first
article, architecture looks to the future, unimpeded
by the past; in the second article, architecture draws
from the past to give meaning to the present.
University of British Columbia professor
Rhodri Windsor Liscombe charts new territory with
his explanation of how Modernism came to Canada
in the mid 20th century. In "Modes of Modernizing:
The Acquisition of Modernism in Canada,"
Liscombe focuses on the West Coast, explaining
how Modernism found more ready acceptance there
than in other regions of the country. Based on exhaustive
research and interviews with many of the
premier architects of the era, he submits that their
Modernist convictions were acquired primarily from
three sources: from their formal university training
and in various progressive offices; from theoretical
books; and from professional journals and
magazines. Liscombe explains convincingly how
Modernism came to be embraced by local architects
and adapted to the West Coast milieu.
In "The First Synagogues in Ottawa,"
Hagit Hadaya describes the circumstances which
produced the first generation of synagogues in the
nation's capital. She first outlines the situation of the
immigrants, and their requirements for creating
suitable places of worship. Each of the first four
synagogues is then interpreted as both an architectural
and sociological expression of their faith.
The congregations' attempts to import some of the
reassuring conventions of their Eastern European
homes to Ottawa- in spite of employing non­
Jewish architects- is clearly demonstrated in the
structures they erected.
Two letters round out this Bulletin, both
on the subject of architectural periodicals proffered
in the last issue.
L
es deux articles publics dans ce numero du
Bulletin montrent que le xx• siecle couvre un
large territoire architectural. Dans le premier,
!'architecture se tourne resolument vers le futur, sans
egard au passe; dans le second, au contraire, elle
s'appuie sur ce passe pour donner une signification au
present.
Professeur a !'University of British Columbia,
Rhodri Windsor Liscombe propose de nouvelles voies
d'explication sur !'introduction du modernisme au
Canada au milieu du xx• siecle. Dans "Modes of
Modernizing: The Acquisition of Modernism in
C'.anada", il se penche sur Ia region de Ia c6te ouest, et
demontre comment le modernisme y a ete plus facilemen!
re~u qu'en d'autres lieux au pays. Fondant son
argumentation sur ses recherches exhaustives et sur les
entrevues qu'il a menees avec plusieurs architectes de
cette periocle, il suggere que leurs convictions modernistes
ant ete acquises a partir de trois sources principales: lors
de leur formation universitaire et de leur pratique dans
diverses firmes progressistes; dans des ouvrages
theoriques; dans des revues professionnelles et des
magazines. Convainquant, il explique comment le
modernisme a finalement ete adopte par les architectes
locaux et ada pte aux particularites de Ia c6te ouest.
Dans "The First Synagogues in Ottawa", Hagit
Hadaya decrit les circonstances qui ont mene a
l'etablissement des premieres synagogues dans Ia region
de Ia capitate nationale. Elle s'attarde d'abord a Ia situation
des immigrants et a leurs besoins d'avoir des lieux
de culte appropries. Elle interprete ensuite chacune des
quatre premieres synagogues qui ont ete construites en
tant qu'expression architecturale et sociologique de leur
foi. 11 apparaft evident a Ia lumiere de son analyse que
"in spite of employing non-Jewish architects", les
structures erigees montrent nettement des traits de
!'architecture de !'Europe de l'est, procurant ainsi aux
immigrants un reconfort certain par leur evocation de
leurs lieux d'origine.
Ce Bulletin se termine par Ia publication de
deux lett res port ant sur Ia question des periodiques en
architecture, question deja abordee dans le numero
precedent.
19:3
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 59

Modes of Modernizing:
Modernist Design
BY RHODRI WINDSOR
60 SSAC BULLETIN 19:3

The Acquisition of
in Canada
LISCOMBE
The means by which Canadian- and indeed international-architects
acquired an understanding of
Modernist design is more assumed than researched .,
The issue is highly complex since it embraces a range
of factors from the educational policy or educative
competence of faculty in the schools of architecture, to
the intellectual, technical, and creative competence of
the individual students, to the disparate nature of
Modernist theory and practice. However, the main lines
of that process can be summarized by reference to the
self-directed learning and institutional training undertaken
by those Canadian architects who began
practice on the West Coast during the decade following
the Second World War.
The choice of British Columbia, and especially
Vancouver, as the geographical focus - and to a lesser
extent of residential design as the typological focus- is
determined by the speedier acceptance of Modernist
values there than elsewhere in Canada. 2 This resulted
from the economy and population's considerable
expansion after 1946, and from the fact that for many,
architects included, British Columbia afforded a more
habitable climate and more liberal cultural environment
in which to experiment with progressive design
principles demonstrably relevant to a "baby-boom"
society. 3 The recounted experiences of members of
that generation of architects, a brief analysis of their
work, and an investigation of related documentary
material form the basis of this interim study. 4
Figure 19. Nathan Nemetz residence, Vancouver,
designed in 1948 by John Porter and Catherine Chard
Wisnicki. (Post and Beam [Vancouver: B.C. Lumber
Assn., 1960], cover)
fo r John Bland
19:3
SSAC BULLETIN
61

Figure 1 (above). The B.C. Research Council Building,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, designed by
C.J. Thompson with C. E. Pratt and R.AD. Berwick,
1947. (R. Windsor Liscombe, 1994)
Figure 2 (below). The Hebb Physics Mdition,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, designed by
Richard Archambault under the supervision of Roy
Jessiman, 1956. (R. Windsor Liscombe, 1994)
T:hese sources yield interesting results that challenge aspects of the conventional interpretation
of Western Canadian and Modernist architectural history. Firstly, West Coast
Modernism developed less from regional imperatives than from the local application of essentially
international ideas and imagery during what might be termed the "stoical phase" of
Modernism in British Columbia, between demobilization and the Vancouver recession of
1960-61. That is not to undervalue either the primary influence of site and climate or the
notable talents of native architects, exemplified by naming but five from the period: Bill
Birmingham, C.E. " Ned" Pratt, Fred Hollingsworth, Arthur Erickson, and Barry Downs.
Rather, it is to state that most architects of that generation appreciated the Modernist
interest in accommodating regional and local cultural factors, and believed that the tenets of
international Modernism offered a valid means to express personal and even national
aspirations, as was the case in contemporary Canadian abstract art. 5
Secondly, the comprehension of Modernism by architectural faculty and students
depended as much upon visual as theoretical material. In the same manner, Modernist
theory was less a homogeneously defined set of principles than a diverse body of part-ethical
and part-aesthetic objectives given renewed relevance by post-war Reconstruction. 6 Thirdly,
illustrations of European and American Modernist design in professional and other journals
62
SSAC BULLETIN 19:3

were cited by designers as having influenced them. This not only underscores the continuing
significance of the published image in the currency of architectural practice, but anticipates
the necessary concerns of B.C. architects with geographical setting and the use of local
materials, especially wood. Fourthly, while the contribution of locally-born and -trained architects
was very substantial, the development of West Coast Modernism depended significantly
upon the immigration of architects and ideas inspired by the transatlantic
Modernist movement; British Columbia artist B.C. Binning, for example, became a leading
proponent of Modernism and built his pioneering West Coast Modern house (1940) after
studying with Ozenfant and being enthused by Modernist British and European design_?
Two buildings erected on the fast-growing campus of the University of British
Columbia manifest the broad acceptance of the abstract functionalist values at the core of
early 20th-century Modernism: the B.C. Research Council Building, begun in 1947 to the
designs of C.J. Thompson (until the early 1940s a staunchly Arts-and-Crafts-cum-Gothicist),
assisted by C.E. Pratt and R.A.D. Berwick (figure I); and the Hebb Physics Addition of 1956
by Richard Archambault, working under the supervision of Roy Jessiman as Thompson, Berwick
and Pratt's partner in charge of the university's architecture (figure 2). The exposed reinforced
concrete structure and equally austerely functional brick and steel frame window infill
of the B.C. Research Council Building correspond with the stoical efficiency of between-thewars
Dutch Modernism, epitomized by Brinkman and van der Vlugt's widely-illustrated van
Nelle coffee, tea, and tobacco factory at Rotterdam (1928-30) (figure 3). Similarly, the Hebb
Physics Addition clearly reveals that Archambault and Jessiman had studied such canonic
works as Gropius and Meyer's Fagus shoe-last factory at Alfeld (1911) and had comprehended
the new concepts of design it embodied (figure 4). It is the inspiration, not the imposition,
of Modernist imagery and associated ideology that is readily apparent in these
Canadian university buildings.
The adaptive nature of such West Coast architecture reflects the relatively small
number of Canadian Modernists who, until the mid-1950s, had actually travelled to the
European or North American sources. Among those who had was Archambault. Funded by
the progressively inclined British Pilkington Glass Company, he went to study in Britain and
on the continent in 1956. There had been a few others before the war, notably during the
1930s: University of Toronto School of Architecture graduates Fred Lasserre (graduated
·1934) and J.B. Parkin (graduated 1935), who worked in Britain; Peter Thornton, a native of
Western Canada, who was trained at the Architectural Association in London from 1934 to
1938. Later exceptions included Jessiman and John Porter, on war service, and Arthur Erickson,
intent upon visiting the renowned architecture of the 1951 Festival of Britain in London
but redirected to unlearning some of the Modernist dogma on a two-year tour of the Mediterranean
basin. 8
A majority of architects had not ventured abroad; indeed, they had attended architectural
schools with fundamentally Beaux-Arts typed programmes. Harold Semmens and
Douglas Simpson, the acknowledged leaders of advanced Modernism in Vancouver through
the early 1950s, had graduated just before the outbreak of war from the University of
Manitoba, when it was under the direction of the conservatively-inclined Milton Osborne and
John Russell (himself a graduate of the Beaux-Arts era at M .I.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts).
The annual curricula printed in the university calendars through the 1930s disclose
no real alteration to accommodate Modernist thought or process. 9 Yet, without benefit
of specific Modernist education or exposure, Semmens and Simpson were to be responsible
for such early icons of Vancouver Modernism as the adeptly synthesized Miesian/Corbusian
Marwell Office Building (1950-51), recipient of a 1952 Massey Gold Medal and signal of the
acknowledged pre-eminence of B .C. Modernism in the post-war decade (figure 5). tO
Figure 3 (left). The van Nelle coffee, tea, and tobacco
factory at Rotterdam, designed by Brinkman and van
der Vlugt, 1928-30. (The International Style:
Architecture since 1922 [New York: Museum of
Modern Art, 1932]).
Figure 4 (right). The Fagus shoe-last factory at Alfeld,
designed byGropius and Meyer, 1911. (Art in
America, January/February 1979).
19:3 SSAC BULLETIN
63

Figure 5 (above). Interior view ol the Marwe/1 Office
Building, Vancouver; Semmens and Simpson,
architects, 1950-51. (Journal of the Royal
Architectural Institute of Canada (JRAIC)35, no. 4
[April1958]: 136)
Figure 6 (below). The Buchanan Building, University of
British Columbia, Vancouver, 1955-57; loltan Kiss,
project architect, under the supervision of Roy
Jessiman ol Thompson, Berwick and Pratt. (U.B.C.
Special Collections)
Clearly, Semmens and Simpson had attained beyond the confines of academe a
thorough understanding of Modernist principles fully as accomplished as that of the Hungarian-born
and -trained Zoltan Kiss, who was project architect at Thompson, Berwick and
Pratt under Jessiman for the more derivative Miesian Buchanan Building at U _B.C. (1955-
57) (figure 6)- It was designed nearly six years after Kiss had emigrated from Hungary (and
three years after joining Sharp & Thompson, Berwick, Pratt, that nursery of Vancouver
Modernism), where he trained at the Bauhaus-influenced Technical University of Budapest
(following Peter Kaffka, who also emigrated to Vancouver), and, thereby, was more directly
aware of the extensive Modernist design in central Europe_
However, the correspondence between post-war Vancouver and prewar E uropean
Modernist design is, as indicated by the foregoing, more general than specific, and adaptive
rather than imitative_ In this respect, the young Canadian designers comprehended an essential
principle of the Modernist polemic, for the leading proponents eschewed stylistic
categorization and formulaic doctrine_ "Form is not the aim of our work, but only the result,"
64
SSAC BULLETIN 19:3

Figure 7. St. Cuthbert's Anglican Church, Town of
Mount Royal, Montreal, built 1946-47; Frederic
Lasserre, architect, with Wolfgang Gerson and Rolf
Duschenes, associate architects. (JRAIC 28, no. 1
[January 1951]: 9)
Mies van der Rohe had declared in 1923, while Gropius wrote twelve years later that the
Bauhaus represented " not the invention of a new system of architectural education ... but
rather the relation of architecture to the evolving world which is implied by that system." 11
Clear in their own comprehension of objective and means, Gropius and Mies underestimated
the imitative predilection of architectural practice and the tendency of formal education to
codify and to detach example from principle.
Nevertheless, the comparison between the Marwell office and Buchanan Building
does serve to introduce two factors germane to the theme of how Modernism was learned in
canada. The first is the substantive impact of those trained outside the province, necessarily
in the absence of an architectural school on the West Coast, and of those who emigrated
from overseas or migrated from eastern North America. Of the former, Berwick, Birmingham,
and Pratt, although each B. C.-born, graduated from the University of Toronto, respectively
in 1935, 1938, and 1939. Here they had been initiated into some Modernist lore by Eric
Arthur, who, after 1935, led the reform-or modernization-of architectural education in
canada, despite never being appointed head. C.B.K. Van Norman moved to B.C. in 1935
upon graduating from the University of Manitoba ahead of Semmens, Simpson, and, in 1954,
Jessiman. No less remarkable were the alumni of McGill (where Lasserre taught briefly in
1945-46): catherine Chard (Wisnicki), 1943; Duncan McNab, 1941; John Porter, 1941; M.C.
Utley and Arthur Erickson, 1951; and H. Peter Oberlander, 1945.
Oberlander also studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, as did Geoffrey
Massey and Abraham Rogatnick, two more easterners who, like the artist Lawren Harris,
were in the words of Erickson "seekers of a new life.'' 12 Oberlander, furthermore, had
been among those who quitted National Socialist Germany yet were interned in canada,
together with Wolfgang Gerson and Rolf Duschenes; in 1944, they teamed up with Lasserre
to design the pioneering Modernist St. Cuthbert's Anglican Church, erected in the Town of
Mount Royal, Montreal (figure 7). In company with Oberlander, Gerson would embark
upon a distinguished teaching career at the universities of Manitoba, from 1946 to 1956, and
British Columbia, there becoming a colleague of both Oberlander and Lasserre. 13
Also from European and/or British training-Gerson attended the Architectural
Association in London between 1936 and 1939---came Francis Donaldson, Kenneth
Gardner, Michael Garrett, Asbjord Gathe, Gerald Hamilton, Warnett Kennedy, Christopher
Owtram, John Peeps, Wilfrid Ussner, and Harold Weinrich. An equally incomplete list of
engineer-designers would include John Read, Paul Wisnicki, and, most importantly, given
their respective contributions to such major commissions as the B.C. Electric head office
(1955-57) and main branch of the Vancouver Public Library (1956-57), Otto Safir and Per
Kristoffersen (ligures 8, 9, and cover). Several, like Garrett, were drawn by the reputation of
19:3 SSAC BULLETIN
65

Figure 8 (right). The main branch of the Vancouver
Public Library, 1956-57; Semmens and Simpson,
architects; Per Ktistoffersen, engineer. (JRAIC 35, no.
4 [April1958}: 141)
Figure 9 (below right). B.C. Electric Building, 1955-57;
Thompson, Berwick and Pratt, architects; Otto Safir,
engineer. (JRAIC 35, no. 4 [April 1958}: 121}
66 SSAC BULLETIN 19:3

B.C. architecture or, like Wells Coates, University of B.C. engineering graduate and founding
Modernist, by specific projects such as Alcan's new town at Kitimat in northern B.C., originally
thought (by Massey for one) to promise comparison with the German Siedlung, Le
Corbusier's Ville Radieuse (1933/35), and contemporary British New Towns. 14
The second factor germane to how Modernism was learned in Canada is the importance
of the McGill connection, both professionally and historically. It was not merely the
long-term consequence of Lasserre's acceptance of the post of head of the School of Architecture,
founded at the University of B.C. in 1946-47. 15 Nor was it simply the fact that Erickson
and other McGill graduates would put their training under John Bland to signal effect. 16
It was also because Chard, McNab, and Porter had participated in the 1938 student mutiny at
McGill didactic, institutional training or, less frequently, articling with a firm (the genesis,
in the office of Sharp & Thompson, Berwick, Pratt, of both Hollingsworth and
Ron Thorn);
> literary, chiefly the theoretical or historio-critical books;
> and professiona~ the journals and magazines covering current practice.
In 1937-38, as already stated, the didactic remained academic, essentially Beaux-Arts, with
the partial exception of the University of Toronto. Even Peter Thornton at the A.A. had
been required to memorize celebrated historical edifices in plan, section, and detail. Although
befriended by Marcel Breuer briefly in England before joining Gropius at Harvard in 1937,
Thornton updated traditional English framing in his thesis project design to formulate the
quasi-Modernist post-and-beam system he would utilize in the house he designed for his
mother at Caulfield, West Vancouver, upon returning to B.C. in 1938. 20
After the academic year 1940-41, Bland, aided by the place of the McGill school in
the Faculty of Engineering and encouraged by the university president, Dr. Cyril James,
moved somewhat more speedily than Eric Arthur toward a Bauhaus-informed five-year architectural
curriculum, to be adapted by Lasserre and later by John Russell. Bland retrospectively
summarized the contents and objectives of the curriculum in an article printed in
the July 1960 issue of the Journal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (to which I
have added comments):
We give them fundamental mathematics and physics for analytical work and for training their minds. We give them
rather a lot of history of architecture to show them the solid remains of the civilizations that have produced our
thought and feeling [note the emphasis on broad cultural rather than archaeological study}. We teach them to draw
[Arthur Lismer and Gordon Webber (a pupil of Moholy-Nagy at the Chicago Bauhaus) both taught a compressed version
of the "Vorkurs" through the 1950s} and we teach practice in building construction because above all we believe ar·
chitecture is fundamentally good building {the early post·war faculty included such admirers of Le Corbusier as Watson
Balharrie and Hazen Size} .... We teach that design evolves from construction, exploring how space can be built for
human use and finally how space can not only be built well to meet social needs usefully [sociology was inserted into
the programme from 1943} but also meaningfully which is perhaps the real creed of architectureU
Therein Bland neatly defined the Modernist ethos as understood by the post-war generation
of B.C. architects, according to their published or spoken views.
19:3 SSAC BULLETIN 67

Figure 10 (above). Side view of Wembley Swimming
Pool, designed by Owen Williams, 1936. (Architectural
Review, 1938)
Figure 11 (right). The house designed by Serge
Chermayeff near Rugby, England, completed in 1936.
(JRAIC 13, no. 4 [Apri/1936}: 73)
Yet, this is to beg a host of questions which are, and were, implicit in the other
primary means of learning about Modernism available to that generation: the published
theoretical and polemical literature. The diversity contained deeper within a superficially
homogeneous Modernist theory is reflected in the divergent architectural interpretation of
Modernism, even in the relatively small temporal and geographical confines of the post-war
decade in B.C. One explanation, which tended to perpetuate allegiance to the balder
aphorisms and motifs, is the noticeable imprecision about effects, not less than methods, in
the language of Modernist theory. An obvious example is the profession's advocacy of internationalism
and the architect's pre-eminent place in fabricating a new societi simultaneously
with the endorsement of democratic humanism and regional consciousness. 2
Those philosophically unresolved polarities were just as evident in 1937-38, if excused
as being the inevitable concomitant of the reforming dynamic. With Eric Arthur (by
now established as editor of the R.A.I.C. Journal and professor of architectural design at the
University of Toronto), Modernist ideology and design received increasing exposure, though
not entirely clear explication. Thus, in the June 1938 Journal, Arthur reQrinted l..asserre's article
entitled "Modern Architecture: The New Aesthetics and Cement." 23 In it, I..asserre drew
chiefly upon his experience in the office of Berthold Lubetkin's Tecton firm, and as layout
designer for the M.A.R.S. (Modern Architecture Research Group) 24 exhibition in London
that year. While l..asserre argued that Modernism comprised a set of principles and a process
of design rather than a style-being concentrated upon the satisfaction of practical,
economic, and cultural function through the integration of industry and technology-he also
declared, with particular reference to a side view of Owen Williams' 1936 Wembley Swimming
Pool, that it embraced the "Drama and excitemen~roduced by the introduction of new
forms and the association of new materials" (figure 10).
A comparable superficial cohesion masking an underlying ideological division exists
between the most widely used Modernist texts, the 1927 English translation of Le Cor busier's
1923 Vers une architecture, Bruno Taut's Modern Architecture of 1927, Walter Gropius's The
new Architecture and the Bauhaus of 1935, and Siegfried Giedion's Space, Time and Architecture
of 1941. It also exists within their texts, particularly in Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture.
Corbusier's argument-albeit relevant to this country by virtue of its often
overlooked Canadian content: an ubiquitous grain elevator from Fort William and a view
along the deck of the Canadian Pacific Empress of France-is riddled with veritable Blakean
aphorisms and discourses as much upon mythic, even mystical, as mechanistic or materialist
values. Hence, the association of his deeply humanistic and complex concept of design with
such deliberately contracted phrases as "A house is a machine for living in," and the general
over-simplification of the Modernist argument for the humanization of technology by its aesthetic
integration into contemporary conditions of living.
Seasoned supporters (in the intellectual or practical sense) of Modernism contributed
to the confusion of its aims, perhaps the most celebrated being Henry-Russell
Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, who mounted the 1932 exhibition The International Style:
68
SSAC BULLETIN 19:3

Figure 12. Ernst Plischke's villa on the shores of Lake
Alter, Austria, 1936. (l'Architecture d'auiourd 'hui,
mars 1937)
Architecture since 1922 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.Z 6 They cast the movement
in terms of a style, seeking to circumvent opposition to the exhibition from the professional
and dilettante establishments. Consequently, they ignored the considerable differences
of conception, intention, and execution between buildings selected for exhibition or illustration,
implying that, say, Ludvik and Kysela's Bata Shoe Store, Prague, 1929, or Mies's
Tugendhat house, Brno, 1931, embodied their tripartite definition of Modernism: "volume
rather than mass ... re~ularity rather than axial symmetry ... (and the proscription of] arbitrarily
applied decoration." 7
Mies might quip in later years, "I read a few good books- and that's about it," but
the diffuse nature of the book literature explains why Catherine Chard Wisnicki and no
doubt most of her peers instead learned much if not most about Modernism from the
magazines. 28 To her, the best was L 'Architecture d'aujourd'hui, though, as a student, she also
regularly perused theAmericanArchitect and Architecture and its successor, theArchitectural
Record, the British Architectural Review, and, once resident in B.C., the much admired
Californian Arts and Architecture.
Through 1937-38 those magazines and the R.A.l.C. Journal-from 1938, "current
magazines" were required reading in Eric Arthur's Elements of Architectural Form coursedid
present a comprehensive picture, or series of images, of Modernist design. According to
Chard Wisnicki, the magazines facilitated her understanding of a number of Modernist
objectives. One she described as the intellectual challenge thrown down by Le Corbusier to
fabricate a relevant form for the epoch, and his sense of the profound meaning that could be
imported through the disposition of space. Another was the goal of an integrated welding of
material, structure, and purpose desired by Gropius and Mies. A third was the formal and
structural logic and the variety of space and scale achieved by the Dutch Modernists. And a
fourth aim was the transformation of functional and technological factors into humanistic
and naturalized buildings attained by Alvar Aalto. The photographs in the magazines were
not infrequently both striking and evocative of the attitudes and aspirations that had determined
their appearance.
Each of these issues seems to be present in the photograph of the presciently militaristic
geometrical-functional house (much admired by Jessiman when a student) which Serge Chermayeff
had completed outside Rugby in 1936, published by Eric Arthur in a 1938 R.A.I.C. Journal
(figure 11 ); the use of presciently avers to the material and ideological ground-clearing for
Modernism begun by the First and finished by the Second World War. Interestingly, Chermayeffs
all-timber house at Halland, Sussex (1937-38}-essentially post-and-beam or proto-West Coast
Modernist-was illustrated in J. McAndrew and E. Mock's popular Museum of Modern Art
booklet What i5 Modem Architecture? (1946), as well as in J.M. Richard's An Introduction to
ModemArchitec11.u-e ( 1940), which became required summer reading at McGill from 1942. An
even more powerful image of the stoical formalism and technological functionalism of mid-
1930s Modernism was Chermayeffs I.C.l. Laboratory at Blackley, Manchester, England, extensively
reported in the March 1938 issue of Architectural Review.
19:3 SSAC BULLETIN
69

:-=-~-~~

Figure 18 (above). House at Richmond Shore,
California; William Wurster, architect, 1937.
(Architectural Record 83, no. 1 [January 1938))
Figure 20 (top left). The Oberlander residence,
Vancouver, 1958; H. Peter Oberlander and Leon G.
Oirassar, architects. (Western Homes and Living,
August 1960, 21)
Figure 21 (middle left). The McNab residence, West
Vancouver, 1957; Duncan McNab, architect. (JRAIC
35, no. 4 [April1958): 126)
Figure 22 (bottom left). The Wolfgang Gerson
residence, West Vancouver, 1958; Wolfgang Gerson,
architect. (Western Homes and Living, August 1960,
21)
19:3 SSAC BULLETIN
71

Gropius and Fry's timber house at Shipbourne, England, reported in the February 1938
Architectural Review (figure 17). The procedures and product for a Modernist idiom attuned
to the Pacific Northwest were vividly explicated by the photographs of contemporary California
houses placed in L 'Architecture d'aujourd'hui and Architectural Record. The stunning
triptych of houses published on one page of the January 1938 Record epitomized the celebration
of the symbiotic unification of Modernist practice and natural setting achieved by
Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler, and William Wurster (figure 18)? 1
The prestige of West Coast United States architects, especially Neutra, Wurster,
Pietro Belluschi, John Funk, and Raphael Soriano (regularly illustrated in Arts and Architecture),
would compound through the 1950s. 32 Nevertheless, for Western Canadian Modernists
the legacy of the transatlantic inspiration upon the formative process of Modernization
just prior to the Second World War was significant. It is apparent in the Nathan Nemetz
house, designed in 1948 by Porter and Chard Wisnicki (replacing the too-demanding Frank
Lloyd Wright). 33 The shed roof spanning the living room and master bedroom, placed in
front of the cross-axial rear service and bedroom wing in order to capitalize on the location,
realigns the site slope to launch the gaze through the Mies-cum-Neutra glass walls across
English Bay to the sublime North Shore mountains (figure 19; see pages 60-1).
THE USE OF NATURAL YET ECONOMICAL MATERIALS and the embrace of setting at the
Nemetz house, plus the efficient and habitable plan, demonstrate the essential breadth of
Modernist intent. They even foreshadow Ron Thorn's comment "The landscape must win in
the end." 34 And the legacy of transatlantic Modernism persisted in the conceptually consistent
houses on diverse sites designed for themselves by Oberlander (1958) in Vancouver, and
by McNab (1957) and Gerson (1958) in West Vancouver (figures 20, 21, 22). These houses
variously exhibit the architectural and ideological stimuli of international Modernism to which
a graduate of the University of Toronto School of Architecture humorously alluded in his
brief fictitious valedictory for Torontonensis of 1939:
... came to varsity from London, resigning from Tecton Partnership with Lubctkin. Concrete Technician, Einstein
Observat01y, Erich Mendelsohn Arch., Collaborator. Lectured on International Des ign at Gropius' Bauhaus, Dessau,
two years. Head draftsm an for Le Corbusier, Paris, six years 35
72
SSAC BULLETIN 19:3

Endnotes
For example, the question is not discussed in the valuable
study of Modernist design in Toronto compiled
by Detlef Mertins, Marc Baraness, Ruth Cawker,
Brigitte Shim, and George Kapelos, Toronto Modem:
Architecture 1945-1965 (Toronto: Bureau of Architecture
and Urbanism and Coach House Press, 1987).
The standard literature on Modernism, epitomized by
the excellent books of William J.R. Curtis and
Kenneth Frampton, respectively Modem Architecture
Since 1900, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Phaidon, 1991) and
Modem Architecture: A Critical History (Toronto:
Oxford University Press, 1980), is equally bereft of
such an analysis. Some discussion of the broader issue
of changes in professional and popular taste appears
in Paul Greenhalgh, ed., Modernism in Design (London:
Reaktion, 1990). The author is grateful to the
archivists and librarians at the universities of British
Columbia, Calgary, Manitoba, and Toronto for their
assistance. A special debt of gratitude is owed to
Kathy Zimon, Catherine Fraser, and Ouita Murray of
the Canadian Architectural Archives at Calgary. Part
of this research was funded under a grant from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada.
2 The emergence of Modernism in Vancouver has been
charted brieny by Harold Kalman, most recently in
the third edition of Exploring Vancouver (Vancouver:
UBC Press, 1993) written with Ron Phillips and
Robin Ward, and by Douglas Shadbolt in "Post-war
Architecture in Vancouver," in Vancouver, Art and
A rtists, 1931-1983, L. Rombout. ed. (Va ncouver:
Vancouver Art Gallery, 1983): 108- 11 9. The existence
of a distin ct regional domesti c Modernism is
proposed by Sherry McKay, "Western Livin g, Western
Homes," SSACBulletin 14, no. 3 (September 1989):
65-74. The broader innuences upon B.C. architecture
• arc outlined in Janine Bond, University EndoM•nent
Lands Architecture 1940-1969 (Vancouver: Heritage
Vancouver Society, 1993).
3 These developments are summarized in Patricia E.
Roy, Vancouver, An Rlustrated History (Toronto: J.
Lorimer, 1980) and G raeme Wynn and Timothy Oke,
eds., Vancouver and its Region (Vancouver: UBC
Press, 1992). The socio-cultural context is recounted
by A Bat kind, "On Ferment and Golden Ages," and
by Arthur Erickson, "To Understand the City we
Make," in Vancouver Forum 1: Old Powers, New
Forces, Max Wyman, ed. (Vancouver: Douglas &
Mcintyre, 1992): 63-79, 146-159. A connuence of
broader, chieny professional, social and Modernist
architectural values is argued by this author in
"Schools for the 'Brave New World': The School
Architecture of Thompson, Berwick and Pratt," B.C.
Studies 90 (Summer 1991): 25-39, and "The Culture
of Modernism: Vancouver's Public Libraries 1947-
1957," Architecture + Culhtre: The Proceedings of the
lntenrational Research Symposium at Carleton University
(Ottawa: Carleton University, 1992): 358-36 1.
4 The author has discussed this period with the maj ority
of the living members of the post-wa r generation who
practised out of Vanco uver, as well as those involved
in co nstruction and lumber manufa cture, toward a n
exhibition, Vancouver: The Spirit of Modernism, organized
under the auspices of the Ca nadian Centre for
Architecture, to open in 1996.
5 Modernist concern with regional and ethni c fa ctors
was increasingly voiced at the post-war conferences of
C. I.A.M., as recounted inS. Giedion, A Decade of
New Architecture (New York, 1954), 1-2. Nevertheless,
it is worth recalling Lubetkin's 195 1 comment abo ut
the Spa G reen Estate, London. 1949: "For too long.
architectural solutions were regarded in terms of
abstract principles, with formal expression left to itself
as a fun ctional resultant. The principles of composition,
the emotional impact of the visual were brushed
aside as irreleva nt. Yet this is the very material with
which the architect operates .... " Quoted in Anthony
Jackson, The Politics of Architecture: A History of
Modem Architecture in Britain (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1970), 170. For B.C. Binning. Modernism
was altogether more positive. In "The ~rtist and
the Architect," Journal of the Royal Architectural Institute
of Canada [JRA/Cj 27, no. 9 (September 1950):
320-21 , he wrote: "As for Canada, generally speaking
it is only since the war that Artist and Architect have
felt the need for new forms to express the new thought
and feeling within our country." That dimension is
studied in Denise Leclerc, The Crisis of Abstraction in
Canada: The 1950s (Ottawa: National Gallery of
Canada, 1992).
6 An obvious example of the ideological diversity within
Modernist thought can be found in the contrasting
views on the architect and society propounded by
Karel Tiege and by Le Corbusier; see Jean-Louis
Cohen, Le Corbusier and the Mystique of the USSR·
Theories and Projects for Moscow, 1928-1932 (Princeton,
N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1991). In "The
Case for a Theory of Modern Architecture," R.I.B.A.
Joumal64 (June 1957): 307-18, John Summerson
questioned the existence of a distinct Modernist
theory. However, to most students from this period,
Modernism seemed to afford a pragmatic and
efficient approach to contemporary design problems.
That interpretation is corroborated by the first issues
of the University of Manitoba School of Architecture
student magazine TecsandDecs. E.W. G lenesk (with
a typical assumption of theoretical clarity) wrote on
the development of twentieth century architectural
design in the 1948 issue: "Modern design provides
integration of our mode of life with the planning of a
building. integration between architects, artist. and
sculptor. Modern design is clean, honest. devoid of
falsity and imitation, is fun ctional, bea utiful, organic
and integrated." The 1949 issue, moreover, underscores
the general absence, among the first generation
of Canadian Modernists at least. of intellectual obsequiousness;
under a caricature of Le Corbusier's
domestic architecture is the caption: "L.E. Koroyousae.
Architect-Knailem Inc. Builders. Home of the Year."
7 Biography in Leclerc, 87-88; see also Shad bolt, 108-
110.
8 Nevertheless, Erickson would comment of the house
he designed with Geoffrey Massey in 1955 for Ruth
Killam in West Vancouver (Massey Silver Medal,
1956): "Our design was a blend of Bauhaus form al
concepts with West Coast sensibility to wood construction.
" Catalogue, Arthur Erickson Exhi bition,
Vancouver Art Gallery, 1966 (copy in the Canadian
Architectural Archives, University of Calgary).
9 Omitting the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Montreal, which
maintained the Fren ch Beaux Arts system well into
the 1950s, the university ca lendars demonstrate that
the study of Modernist the01y and design was introduced
ea rliest at Toronto (from about 1933. according
to Bill Bi rmingham), but wi thout the more genera l
change in academic initiated at McGill from 1940-41.
The situation did not alter at Manitoba until after
1946, when John Russell (appointed Head only in
1948) was joined by Modernists such as Wolfgang
Gerson. Architecture was, for ex.1mple, still described
as a "fine art" until 1945 -46, when the architect was
defined as a "planner and builder ... providing for
human fun ction." In terms of text books, Manitoba
continued to recommend Bannister Fletcher's A History
of Architeclure otrthe Cotnparative Method until 1954,
when it was replaced by Talbot Hamlin's Architeclrue
Through tlreAges (New York: Putnam, 195 1), which addressed
the Modern movement Even at McGill, the
Modernist litera lure such as Giedion's Space, Time
and A rchitecture: The Growth of a New Tradition
(Ca mbridge: Harvard University Press, 194 1), F.R.S.
Yorke and Colin Penn's A Key to Modem Architecture
(London and Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1938), and J.M.
Richard's An Introduction to Modem Design (London,
1940) was at first only included on the summer reading
lists. At Toronto, F.R.S. Yorke's The Modem
House in England (London: The Architectural Press,
1935) and Le Corousier Towards a New Architecture
were on the course bibliography from 1940, although
Giedion's Space, Time and Architecture was not included
unti11945. Students obviously acquired their
own collection of books and magazines, typified by
Bill Birmingham subscribing to Architectural Review
through the 1930s, or Roy Jessiman purchasing].
McAndrew and E. Mock's What is Modem Architecture?
(New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1946).
10 The renown quickly achieved by Vancouver Modernist
design is further indicated by the organization in
1949 of an exhibition of recent West Coast work by
the Architectural Society of the Toronto School under
the direction of Ian MacLennan, and by the publication
of an article on C.E. Pratt's Brooks house in West
Vancouver (1946-47; demolished) in Architectural
Record (October 1948): 97-101.
II "Aphorisms on Architecture and Form," G2 (1923),
reprinted in Philip C. Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, 3rd
ed. (New York, 1978), 189, preceded by the sen tence,
"We refuse to recognize problems of form, but only
problems of building. " Gropius's statement comes
from his The NewArchitech.re and the Bauhaus, trans.
P. Morton Shand (London, 1937), 7. See also his article
"Towa rd a Living Architecture," American Architect
and Architecture (January 1938): 21-22: "A true
Modern architect. that is to say, an architect who tries
to shape our new conception of life, who refuses to
live by repeating the forms and ornaments of our
ancestors, is constantly on the lookout for new means of
enriching his design in order to enliven the starkness
and rig our of the early examples of the architectonic
revolution."
12 Erickson, Vancouver Forum I.
131n an un published lecture dating from aboutl945 and
kindly made avai lable by his widow, Gerson explained
his admiration for Le Corbusier (and Modernist
practice generally), stating that he had "succeeded in
spreading the gospel of a truly new plastic art, based
on the techni cal resources of our day, and has clearly
shown how art must and will again become part of
everyday life, without the need of lowering artistic
standards through the means of the applied plastic
arts."
14 Coates's advocacy of Modernism is effectively
reviewed in Sherban Canta cuzino, Wells Coates, a
Monograph (London: G. Fraser, 1978). Cantacuzino
also covers the Canadian schemes Coates worked on
during the 1950s, ending with three projects for
Vancouver. including the "Project '58" redevelopment
proposa l. Coates's papers are now at the
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. Contemporary
British urban design, closely monitored in
Canada, is covered effectively in John Summerson,
Ten Years of British Architecture '45- '55 (London,
1956).
15 The choice of Lasscrrc was made by Dr. Norman
MacKenzie, president of the University of British
Columbia, but only after Peter Cotton and a group of
veteran undergraduates won the support of the professional
bodies representing the local contractors and
architects as well as the lea ding Vancouver Modernists,
including Pran and Berwick. Information derived from
the unpublished three-volume scrapbook of the School
of Architecture, U.B.C Special Collections.
16 Some indica tion of his contribution to the Ca nad ian
architectural profession is recounted in Irena Murray
and Norbert Schoenauer, eds., John Bland at Eighty:
A Tribute (Montreal: McGill University, 1991).
19:3
SSAC BULLETIN
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17 Information based on discussions with Bland, Chard
Wisnicki, and McNab.
18 Lyle's article, published in the March 1932 issue of
theJRA/C, is quoted in Geoffrey Simmins, Documents
in Canadian Architecture (Peterborough, Ont: BroadviewPress,
1992), 158. Waters's broadcast was
reprinted in JRAIC 13, no. 3 (March 1936): 49.
19 Torontonensis, 1937, p. 295.
20 Information kindly supplied by Thornton, who in 1938
worked with Birmingham in the Vancouver office of
C.B.K. Van Norman, together signing at least one of the
working drawings preserved at the Vancouver City
Archives for Van Norman's Modernist house on West
61stAvenue (demolished in February 1994).
21 "Bridging the Gap in an Ever Changing Environment,"
JRA/C 37, no. 7 (July 1960): 299-300. The
theoretical foundation and objectives of the McGill
curriculum were nicely defined by two former
students writing in John Bland at Eighty: David Burke,
who graduated in 1957, noted the respect accorded to
Mies, Le Corbusier, and Gropius, but also to F.L.
Wright and E. Saarinen, adding "The Modern movement
was well entrenched at McGill ... Yet John and
his staff ensured that the educational process never became
doctrinaire"; Moshe Safdie, whose graduating
thesis formed the basis for the Expo '67 Habitat apartments,
recalled the "sense of Architecture for the common
cause, architecture as the art of building, rooted
in the technology of construction and forever in
search of the appropriate interpretation of programme
and purpose and its imprint on the spatial organization
of the building."
22 Apart from the stress laid upon spiritual and aesthetic
ma tiers in Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architech.rc,
Gropi us averred in The Scope of Total Architecture,
3rd ed. (New York: Collier, 1966), 60, that
"rationalization [was] only [Modernism's] purifying
role. The other aspect, the satisfaction of the human
soul, is just as important as the material." At the 8th
C. LAM. conference at Bridgewater, England, in
1947, the delegates (originally to include Douglas
Simpson) reiterated their objective "to work for the
creation of a physical environment, that will sa tisfy
man's emotional and material needs and stimulate his
spiritual growth." Quoted in Giedion, Decadeof
ModemArchitech.re, 12.
(New York: Rizzoli/CBA, 1992).
27 Ibid. , 20.
28 Mies's quip is quoted in David A Spaeth, Mies Van
Der Rohe (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 19.
29 Arthur published a photograph of Mendelsohn's own
house at Rehoboth in the January 1938 issue ofJRA/C.
30 Chitty's house had also been illustrated in the
February 1938 issue of the Architectural Review.
Photographs of the Simon House are preserved in a
bound typescript autobiography kindly made available
by Mrs. Gerson, which also includes illustrations of
his own more radical Modernist house, "Wildwood,"
erected in 1950 on South Drive, Winnipeg.
31 In 1937, L'Architecture illustrated domestic architecture
by B. Taut, M. Fry, G . Samuel, as well as R
Schindler, together with (in October) Alvar Aalto's
Viipuri Library. In 1938 it would also carry
photographs of Howe and Lesaze's P.S.F.S. Building
in Philadelphia and Tecton's Highpoint I Flats in
London, in addition to houses by Soriano and Harris
plus a report on the M.A.R.S. London exhibition.
32 The design objectives of these architects were widely
publicized throughout James and Katherine M. Ford's
The Modem House in America (New York: Architectural
Book Pub., 1940), including direct statements by
Wurster, Belhuschi, Harris, and Sorriano, who
commented interestingly (p. 126): "There is no such
thing as a distinctly American modern architecture
nor any other nationality. All serious works of art are
international and not national."
33 Information kindly supplied by Nathan Nemetz.
34 McKay, 72. The comment was made about such of his
conceptually different and already neo-Wrightian
houses as that commissioned via Sharp & Thompson,
Berwick, Pratt by Dr. Harold Coppin 1950 (1952
Massey Silver Medal).
35 TorontoneiiSis, 1939, p. 129. The author was Jacob
Sugarman, who later had a distinguished career in
Ontario.
23 Arthur, trained at the University of Liverpool and in
the office of Sir Edwin Lutyens before being appointed
to the University of Toronto in 1923, defined his
idea of Modernism in a February 1936 CBC talk,
"How to Appreciate Architecture," reprinted in the
December 1936 JRAIC: "We live in a machine age and
are o nly now beginning to see that modern materials
and construction have an intrinsic beauty that needs
no embellishment."
24 ForTecton and brief references to Lasserre's
presence there, see John Allan, Berthold Lubetkin:
Architecture and the Tradition of Progress (London:
RIBA Publications, 1992).
25 Fred Lasserre, "Modern Architecture: The New
Aesthetics and Cement," JRAIC 15, no. 6 (June 1938):
145. In 1938, Arthur also published Modernist works
by Raymond McGrath, Agnolo Mazzoni, Erich
Mendelsohn, Connell Ward and Lucas, J.B. Parkin
(in August, a rather diluted brick Modernist house in
Croydon), Richard Neutra, and the pioneering eastern
Ca nadian Modernist Greenshields house in Montreal
by Ernest Barott. In 1937 he selected several British
Modernist buildings, including a villa at Frinto n by
Oliver Hill and the Quarry Hill Flats at Leeds by
R.A.H. Livett, and printed an advertisement for
Yorke's Modem House in England.
26 The ideologica l context of the exhibition is explored
in Terence Riley, The lntemational Style: Exhibition 15
and the Museum of Modem Art, Stephen Perella, ed.
Rhodri Windsor Liscombe is a professor in the
Department of Fine Arts at the University of British
Columbia, Vancouver. His most recent publication is
Altogether American: Roben Mills, Architect and
Engineer, 1781-1855 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994).
74
SSAC BULLETIN t9:3

Letters
II July 1994
I noticed your piece on Canadian architectural
periodicals in the most recent SSAC Bulletin, but
saw no mention there of the earliest periodical I've
come across, The Canadian Builder and Mechanics
Magazine. It would appear that this long-forgotten
publication, of which only one copy is known to exist in
public collections, may claim the distinction of being
the first monthly magazine in its subject field to
issue from Canadian presses.
On 3 February 1869 the London Free
Press reported the appearance of the first number
of The Canadian Builder, published by Thomas
Dyas. In March 1869 the second number, published
by the firm of Dyas and Wilkins, was noted in a
Philadelphia periodical, The Architectural Review
and American Builders' Journal. 1 Almost a year later,
in February 1870, it described the January issue as
wonderfully improved: "For fifty cents a year it gives
twelve numbers filled with material useful and interesting,
original and select, with engravings." 2
The Dyas and Wilkens partnership was
established in l.Dndon, Ontario, in late February,
1869. 3 A l.Dndon directory for that year lists the firm of
Dyas and Wilkens as architects and patent agents on
Richmond Street. Wilkens was also a partner in Teale
and Wilkens, marble and stone dealers. 4 Thomas W.
Dyas and Henry A Wilkens dissolved their partnership
on 29 Apri11870. 5 Dyas continued to publish 77ze
Canadian Builder for only a brief while longer before
selling it to Bell, Barker & Co., a Toronto printing and
publishing firm, in whose ownership the periodical is
thought to have expired after M ay, 1871. 6
Thomas Winning Dyas was born in Ireland
on 2 September 1845, one of seven children. His
father John Dyas brought the family from Ireland to
New Orleans about 1850 and then to London,
Canada West, in 1859. 7 Thomas Dyas trained as a
land surveyor and qualified for his profession in
1865, when he was living at Bothwell, Canada
West. 8 He is said to have moved to Toronto the
following year and entered into partnership with
Charles Unwin and C.C. Forneri. In 1868 Dyas
returned to live in London.
Thomas Dyas had a strong interest in
writing and publishing. Not only does he appear to
have been the moving force behind The Canadian
Builder, but in 1872-74 he contributed to 171e Fanners'
Advocate, an agricultural newspaper in London where
his father was assistant editor. The younger Dyas's
literary interests came to dominate his professional
activity in 1875, when he left surveying and took a job
in Toronto as superintendent of agencies for The
Globe newspaper. In 1878 he joined 17u Mail, where
he held various posts as manager of the business, advertising,
and circulation departments until his death
on 22 June 1899. It is of some interest that his eldest
daughter continued the family's links to publishing
when she married Hugh C. Maclean, editor of The
Contract Record and brother of James Bayne
Maclean, founder of Maclean Hunter.
1be National Library of Canada holds a
single copy of The Canadian Builder and Mechanics
Magazine, val. 1, no. 4 (1 May 1869). This eightpage
unillustrated issue is the only complete number
known to have survived. In addition, a single article
with illustrations was reprinted and reproduced in the
April 1870 issue of The Architectural Review and
American Builders' Journal. Charles F. Damoreau,
who engraved an elevation and plan illustrating the
article, was active in Toronto as a designer, artist,
and engraver on wood from 1864 to 1871. 9
Stephen A. Otto
Toronto
I. 77Je Arcltitec/ural Review [a !so known as Slcan 's Arcltitectural
Re>•iew after its founder and editor, Samuel Sloan, a Philadelphia
architect], vol. I, p. 608. The Canadian magazi ne was also noted
in theLondo11Advertiser, 13 October 1869, and was reported to
still be in publication by the London Free Press, I March 1870.
2./bid, vo l. 2, p. 494.
3. London Free Press, 26 February 1869, p. 2.
4. Province of Ontario Gaze/leer and Directory (Toronto:
Robertson and Cook, 1869).
5. London Free Press, 30 April 1870. Dyas carried on as an architect
an d engineer with offices opposite the Canadian Bank of
Comm erce (London Free Press, 10 May 1870 et seq.). Wilkens
became foreman at J.W. Smyth's marble works (London Free
Press, 4 May 1870).
6. Robertson & Cook 's Toronto City Directory for 1871-2 (Toronto:
Daily Telegraph Priniting House, [May)1 871), opp. p. 112.
7. Report of the Association of Ontario Land Surveyors, 1924.
8. Canada Classified Directory (Toronto: Mitchell and Co., 1865-66).
9. J. Russell Harper, Early Painters and Engravers in Canada.
"Institution for the Deaf and Dumb,
Belleville, Canada," engraved by
[C. F.] Damoreau, Toronto, and
reprinted from the Canadian
Builder in The Architectural
Review and American Builders'
Journal, Apri/1870, p. 589.
19:3
SSAC BULLETIN
75

Math Jeshurun (1904)
Agudath Achim (1912)
Machzikey Hadas (1926)
D
B'nei Jacob (1931)
76 SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 19:3

The First Synagogues
in Ottawa
J J" ~ile some Jews were living in Ottawa almost from its establishment as the capital of Canada, the Jewish community
r r i~ this city began in earnest in the 1880s, when groups of Jews arrived in Ottawa as part of the wave of emigration
from Czarist Russia. 1
In Eastern Europe, prayer services were an integral part of the traditional Jewish Orthodox lifestyle, and therefore
it was vital for the early immigrants to have religious services. For these immigrants- many of whom were impoverishedarriving
in the new world and having to learn a new language and adjust to a strange and challenging environment, the
synagogue served, at least initially, as a comforting link with the world they had left behind.
Since Jewish law defines a synagogue as any place where a quorum of ten males over the age of 13 (a minyan)
gathers to worship, early congregations in the new world typically began with individuals meeting in private homes. This practice
reflected the tradition of the Shteb/s, or unpretentious prayer rooms. Later, they would rent a space until enough money
was saved to buy land to build their own building.
The tight-knit quality of the community and the focused origin of congregants gave rise to the architectural
homogeneity of the first synagogues in Ottawa, Adath Jeshurun (1904), Agudath Achim (1912), Machzikey Hadas (1926),
and B'nei Jacob (1931) (figure 1 ). These buildings were modelled after Eastern E uropean synagogues, which employed the
Romanesque style embellished with Byzantine details. At the end of nineteenth century the Gothic style had become strongly
associated with Christianity, and Romanesque was chosen for Canadian synagogues because of its close links to the Eastern
European homeland of the Jewish communities. 2
b y H a g t
H
a d a y a
Figure 1. The first four synagogues in Ottawa.
(Hagit Hadaya, 1994)
19:3
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 77

Figure 2 (above). Schematic plan and section of an
Eastern European synagogue. (Hagit Hadaya, 1991)
Figure 3 (right). Adath Jeshurun Synagogue (1904),
375 King Edward Street, Ottawa, Ontario; front
elevation. (R. Schingh Collection, Ottawa Jewish
Historical Society)
I This description of Ottawa's first synagogues is based
on a paper presented at the SSAC conference in June
1994. It is excerpted from my Master's research essay
"In Search of Sacred Space: The Architectural History
of the Synagogue in Ottawa, 1892 to the Present"
(Carleton University, 1992).
2 Isaac Levy, The Synagogue: Its History and Function
(London: Valentine, Mitchell, 1963), 36.
3 Sheldon Levit~ Lynn Mils tone, and Sidney T.
Tenenbaum, Treasures of a People: The Synagogues of
Canada (foronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1985), viii.
4 R. Schingh, "Architecture and Ethnic Groups: The
Ottawa Region Jewish and Italian Communities,"
Research and Development Project 80-461 (1981),
15, Carleton University.
5 Abraham Lieff, Gathering Rosebuds (foronto: Gall­
Pa pen burg Computer Systems, 1986), I 0.
6 John H. Taylor, Ottawa: An Illustrated History, The
Histmy of Canadian Cities (foronto: James Lorimer
and the Canadian Museum of Civilization 1986), 124.
7 HermanS. Rood man, The Ottawa Jewish Community:
An Historical Chronicle of Our Community for the Years
1857-1987, 5617-5447: One hundred and thirty years of
progress and achievement in the annals of Ollawa Jewry
(Onawa: Jewish Community Council of Ottawa, 1989), I.
8 Shirley E. Woods, Ottawa: The Capital of Canada
(foronto: Doubleday, 1980), 182.
9 Rood man, 2.
10 Woods, 182.
Synagogues before the Second World War were commonly built on tight urban
residential lots. The placement of these buildings created a uninterrupted connection between
the street and the sanctuary, with the latter typically located half a storey above street
level (figure 2). This elevated main floor made it possible to have a social hall and/or a study
hall on the lower level, with windows for natural light. Since the congregations at the time
were Orthodox and required a separate seating section for women, the second floor generally
served as the women's gallery. This wrapped around the north, west, and south walls, allowing
for a two-storey cental space for the sanctuary itself and a visual axis to the Ark, placed at
the east wall facing Jerusalem. (Although the practice of placing the Ark on the wall facing
Jerusalem was a tradition, it never became a canon}
Most of the early Jewish immigrants came from Latvia and Lithuania, 4 then part of
Imperial Russia. The majority who arrived in Ottawa were Orthodox, and became peddlers
or carried on small businesses of their own so they would not have to work on the Shabbat. 5
The popular belief as to why Jews came to Canada's capital was that the cost of a peddler's
permit was 10 cents rather than the $25 charged in other major centres. 6
Jewish immigrants to Ottawa settled in the Lower Town area northeast of King Edward
Avenue and Rideau Street. They probably chose this location because of its affordable
housing and its proximity to the market, where goods for peddling could be obtained. By
1889 there were 20 Jewish families settled in Ottawa, 7 enough to form a minyan. As was typical
in the rest of Canada, Jewish worshippers in Ottawa followed the pattern of meeting first
in one another's home, then renting space until enough money was saved to buy some land
and build their own building. Services were first conducted in the homes of the leading members
of the day, Moses Bilsky and John Dover, who were the first Jewish settlers in Ottawa.
By 1892 the first congregation was formally formed, and adopted the name of
Adath Jeshurun. The first synagogue building of this congregation was located at 264 Murray
Street. A wooden structure to which a women's gallery was later added, this synagogue
proved to be poorly located since it was near a food processor whose main product was pork
and beans. During Shabbat services the odour of cooking pork carried into the synagogue.
The odour itself was bad enough, but was doubly insulting to the congregation because,
under Jewish law, the pig is considered an unclean animal. 8
In addition to this problem, by 1901 the Jewish population in Ottawa had increased
to 400 9 and the synagogue structure could no longer contain the great number of congregants.
The synagogue's leaders began to plan a program for expansion of their facilities and
purchased land for a larger house of worship. 10 A piece of land was acquired on King Edward
78
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 19:3

Ill
Ill
I ll
Avenue, and John W.H. Watts was commissioned to design the new structure. 11 Watts' symmetrical
design for the front facade of Adath Jeshurun's building incorporated a large corbelled
brick arch enclosing a pair of double doors, above which was a bank of five small
arched windows, all bracketed by two slightly projecting stair towers capped with Moorish
domes (figure 3). The windows followed the Romanesque tradition of rounded arches with
radiating brickwork. The design of this facade resembled that of the original Holy Blossom
Synagogue (now St. George's Greek Orthodox Church) on Bond Street in Toronto, designed
by Benjamin Siddall in 1897 (figure 4), though the onion domes on Adath Jeshurun are
smaller. (These two were the only synagogues in Canada to use Moorish domes to cap their
stairs towers). 12 The roofline was changed in 1930 when a decorative parapet wall containing
a circular window with a Magen David- Star of David- was added between the towers to
hide the pitched roof (figure 5).
The interior of the Adath Jeshurun Synagogue (figure 6) is reminiscent of Eastern
European models in that it is a long and narrow barrel-vaulted room with a lower flat ceiling
over the balcony. The balcony itself is horseshoe-shaped, and is supported on metal columns
that rise to meet the wooden ribs of the ceiling. The Bimah or reading platform was originally
on the main axis of the room, but was removed when the synagogue became the Hevra
Kadisha, or funeral chapel.
Agudath Achim, the second Orthodox synagogue, was begun at the turn of the century
when a gentleman by the name of Myer Held began a minyan at his home on St. Patrick
Street. 13 This served as a nucleus for the establishment of the Agudath Achim congregation.
Increased immigration also played a role in promoting the founding of a new synagogue. This
congregation's first structure was a converted double house on Rideau Street which accommodated
75 male worshippers on the ground floor. A smaller number of seats for the women
was available in the balcony. 14
In 1910 another piece of land was purchased on Rideau Street, and the architectural
firm of Burgess & Coyles was hired to design a building (figure 7). 15 These architects
also adopted the Romanesque tradition of arched openings and radiating brickwork. The arched
entrance consisted of a set of double doors above which were three round-headed leadpaned
windows. The two secondary entrances were on the sides of the projecting central
frontispiece, rather than flanking the main entrance as in Adath Jeshurun.
At about the same time, and despite the fact that Adath Jeshurun and Agudath Achim
were already in existence, another newly-arrived group of immigrants expressed a preference
for their own house of worship and established the Machzikey Hadas congregation. 16 The
Figure 4 (top). Holy Blossom Synagogue (1897),
Toronto, Ontario; front elevation. (National Archives of
Canada, RD 471)
Figure 5 (left). Adath Jeshurun Synagogue (1904), 375
King Edward Street; front elevation. (Hellmut Schade)
Figure 6 (above). Adath Jeshurun Synagogue; interior.
(S. Levitt, L. Milstone, and S. Tenenbaum, Treasures of
a People: The Synagogues of Canada {Toronto:
Lester & Orpen Oennys, 1985], 41)
11 "Corner Stone Laid," The 01/awaJounra/, 25 July
1904, 10. John William Hurrell Watts (1850-1917), a
notable Ottawa architect, was born and trained in
England. He had worked for the Chief Dominion
Architect for 23 years before establishing his own
practice in 1897. See Rhys Phillips, "Boastful
Mansions by Architect John W.H. Watts," The Ouawa
Citizen, 29 January 1994, Fl.
12 Harold D. Kalman, The Conservation of Ontario
Churches: A Programme for Funding Religious
Properties of Architectural and Historical Significance
(Toronto: Ministry of Culture and Recreation and
Ontario Heritage, 1977), I 13.
13 Agudath Achim Finding Aid, RG 5 A 02, Ottawa
Jewish Historical Society.
14lbid.
15lbid.
16 Rood man, 2.
19:3 SSAC BULLETIN SEAC
79

Figure 7. Agudath Achim (1912) , 417 Rideau Street,
Ottawa, Ontario; front elevation. (Ottawa Jewish
Historical Society 5-062)
17 Mr. Laibel Steinberg, inteJView by Sam Brozovsky,
1973, transcript, p. I, Ottawa Jewish Historical
Society.
18 S. Max, "Retrospect and Prospect Presentation at
Machzikey Hadas," dedication, !6 June 1974, 2
19 Noffke's range of work was enormous during a career
that spanned more than five decades, from 1908 to the
early 1960s. See Halina Jeletzky and Barbara Sibbald,
Faces and Facades: The Renfrew Architecture of Edey
and Noffke (Renfrew, Ont.: Juniper Books for
Heritage Renfrew, 1988), 31.
20 S. Berman, "Murray Street Synagogue Murals
Restored," press release, 1984.
desire of new groups to assemble with people from the same place of origin was not uncommon.
In Toronto, for example, the Anshei Kieve and Anshei Minsk congregations built their
own synagogues in 1926 (Rodfey Shalom Synagogue) and 1930 respectively; the words "Anshei
Kieve" and "Anshei Minsk" literally mean " people ofKieve" and "people of Minsk." The
practice of establishing their own places of worship allowed congregations to maintain their
own identity and perpetuate their own particular customs.
Machzikey Hadas had its beginning, as did the other congregations, with communal
praying in a private residence, in this case in an apartment on Murray Street in 1907. The congregation
saved enough money over a year to anticipate the purchase of their first permanent
premises in 1909, a soft drink factory building_l7 Property on the corner of Murray Street and
King Edward Avenue was bought in 1923 and services continued in the two houses which
were on the property. These were razed when the growth of the congregation forced expansion.
Construction of their new shut began in 1925-26, to be completed in 1929. 18
Werner E. Noffke (1878-1964), a prominent German-born Ottawa architect, was
commissioned to design the new building. 19 He chose the Romanesque style with some
Byzantine elements for his preliminary design for the Machzikey Hadas congregation (figure
8). The truncated corner towers and most of the ornamental features were eliminated when
the design of Machzikey Hadas underwent revisions, though Noffke did not abandon the
Romanesque tradition of gable roofs and large arched openings with radiating brickwork. In
his second design he greatly simplified the building profile by removing the towers and allowing
the lines of the pitched roof to extend across the entire front facade (figure 9). Most of
the ornamental brick work also vanished. The executed building (figure 10) was a further
modification, a compromise between the first two designs. This facade design resembled very
closely the Agudath Achim Synagogue on Rideau Street. The whole facade was brought into
a single mass, with a full-height frontispiece projecting only slightly from the body of the building.
The pilasters which formed the frontispiece were extended above the roof line and
capped by two small pointed domes. The full-height corbelled arch and the large roundheaded
window with the Magen David above the double doors were the only elements that
remained constant throughout all the design revisions.
In the interior (figure 11), the visual focus was on the east wall where the Ark was
placed. This was further emphasized by the women's gallery, which wrapped around the
north, west, and south walls to create a two-storey-high central sanctuary. Paintings~ Louis
Prefontaine and Leo Desjardins, commercial painters from the Levy Sign Company, 0
decorated the front of the women's gallery. Executed in 1935-36, the paintings depicted the
signs of the zodiac (with each of the twelve signs representing one of the original twelve tribes
of Israel), the ancient Western Wall, and the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. This type of
painting, typical of early twentieth century Canadian synagogue decoration, was inspired by
European models. It represented a desire of the congregation to add to their building some
80
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 19:3

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Figure 12. B'nei Jacob Synagogue (1931), 54 James
Street, Ottawa, Ontario; front elevation. (R. Schingh,
"Architecture and Ethnic Groups: The Ottawa Region
Jewish and Italian Communities" {1981}, 115.
amalgamated to form a new congregation, Beth Shalom. The urban synagogues were
deserted and demolished or lost to fire, with the exception Adath Jeshurun, which was sold to
the Hevra Kaddish and serves today as the funeral chapel. New synagogues have been built
to serve the existing and new congregations. While the first synagogues were designed and
decorated by non-Jewish architects and artists who were asked to interpret the requirements
of the community, the new buildings were designed by Jewish architects. They are no longer
based on traditional models, but follow contemporary trends in local architecture.
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, JEWRY HAS CREATED a world of its own in the midst of non-Jewish
neighbours. It was a traditional Jewish Orthodox world that the immigrants brought with
them from Eastern Europe, and it was the image of this world they tried to recreate in their
synagogues, to serve as a comforting link to the world they had left behind.
Hagit Hadaya was the collection documentation
assistant for the Ottawa Jewish Historical Society from
1991 to 1994. She is currently employed by the Ottawa
Board of Education, and teaches a course on Ottawa
architecture for Elderhostel Canada - YMCA-YWCA
82
SSAC BULLETIN SEAC 19:3

Letters
7 July 1994
I was very pleased to see your article entitled
"Canadian Architectural Periodicals" in the latest
issue of the SSAC Bulletin. This article is a valuable
reference work in its own right, and builds upon the
article written by Pamela Manson-Smith, the Architectural
Librarian at the School of Architecture at
the University of Toronto, and published in The Art
and Pictorial Press in Canada: Two Centuries of Art
Magazines (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1979).
She covers many of the titles that you have
cited, and also includes some I would term more
obscure given that they are "annuals" or periodicals
of local interest (such as SOS of Montreal). However,
there are some titles that I would encourage
you to consider for an expanded list of "pure" architectural
periodicals, given that they focus primarily
on architecture (as opposed to just "construction"
or "interior decoration"). These are:
1. The Royal Architect: A Journal devoted to the
Architectural interests of Canada, published monthly
in 1911, 1912, and 1913. A complete run ofvols. 4
and 5 ( 1911-1912) of this early Canadian architectural
periodical is held at the RAIC headquarters in
Ottawa. I also know that the Cleveland Public
Library holds vol. 4 (1911) and the Engineering
Societies Library in New York City holds a partial
run ofvol. 5 (1912). I understand the architecture
library at I'Universite de Montreal holds vols. 4, 5,
and numbers 1, 2, and 8 ofvol. 6 (1913). I'm not
aware of a more complete run anywhere else in
Canada or the U .S.A.
2. Acorn, The Journal of the Architectural Conservancy
of Ontario, published regularly four times a
year since 1976 and still going strong. It contains
much valuable information on historic buildings in
Ontario, with credits to architects (where known)
and black-and-white illustrations.
I'm tempted to try to persuade you to
include the long-running Contract Record (a.k.a.
Canadian Contract Record; Engineering & Contract
Record), published from February 1890 onward and
including much information about architects and
Canadian architecture, but I acknowledge that the
primary focus of the journal was building and construction
as well as road building, with virtually no
articles on the theory or philosophy of architecture
as a discipline.
Robert G. Hill
The Biographical Dictionary of Architects
in Canada, 1800-1950 (in preparation)
Toronto
THE ROYAL ARCHITECT I
A Journal deYoted to the Arc hitectural intere-t• of Canada
"·· s.n ••. v.t " Montreal, March 1911 .
AN INVITATION
,
.
.
invite the .·h chitcds uf the Dominion
the a rc hitects in each p rovince , as wrll
w ~
(If Canada to cnn~ i dcr the columns
of 'THE ROY.\L ARCH ITECT u their
rncdium for the insertion of corruponcbncc.
in form.ltion ~ n d any cont ribution
;u the nant u and addresses of all lh c:
practiiing archi tects in sttch pmvincc:,
lml the phot ogr:~p h 1 of th ~ o ff ic er ~ a?d
m~ml.rr s o f the: council o f the P.rovm_ctal

THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE IN CANADA
SOCIETE POUR L'ETUDE DE L'ARCHITECTURE AU CANADA
P.O. BOX 2302, STATION D/C.P. 2302, SUCC. D
OTTAWA, ONTARIO KIP 5W5
ISSN 0228-0744