The Early Architecture of Ontario

THE EARLY ARCHITECTURE OF ONTARIO ~ E. R. ARTHUR A GREAT deal has been written in the last thirty years on the early buildings of the United States and of the Province of Quebec, but the pioneer architecture of Ontario has not received the recognition which it merits. There are several reasons for this neglect. In the first place, the growth of cities and the passion for restoration, frequent enough now and even more ruthless in Victorian times, have brought about the entire disappearance of many fine houses, and the alteration of others to a point where the handicraft of the Colonial builder is no longer recognizable. Increased _prosperity and changing tastes, fostered by the rise of the saw mills, the invention of-photography and the ease of foreign travel, have all likewise assisted in the refashioning , if not the total destruction, of many early masterpieces. The sawmills in the second half of the nineteenth century began to introduce machinery, which sounded the death knell of the simple Georgian house of the preceding period. Mouldings designed by unskilled hands were standardized and published, and the fret-saw left its mark on thousands of smug Victorian porches and verandahs, sparing neither the cottage of the labourer nor the mansion of the city merchant. Foreign travel and the invention of photography opened up new avenues of architectural possibility. By merely glancing through the pages of a book the gentleman of 1870 might design himself a little house in the manner of the Alhambra at Granada or Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon. Compared with such an exciting adventure as this, it was 54 ARCHITECTURE OF ONTARIO natural that the Georgian house should be looked upon with mild contempt if not open dislike. Toward the end of the century, if one may judge from the wanton destruction of early architecture at that time, dislike was changed to actual repugnance. The house of 1790 represented a country in its infancy with a high standard of taste and·culture; and the house of r89o a country on the highroad to prosperity with taste at its lowest level. The romanticism of the nineteenth century might have saved many of our city houses if they had been less familiar. As it was) they had nothing of the glamour of age or of historic association-they were just things of beauty in an age of artistic vulgarity. In a young progressive country concern for the affairs of the present and the future leaves little time for reflection on the past, and old houses are discarded like old clothes when they have served their purpose. Happily the countryside did not suffer, except in a few cases from alteration, to the same extent as the cities. The rural community was less exposed to the changing fashions of the time; labour problems on the farm made·European travel difficult, and illustrated books were less easily obtained. As a result, the curious traveller -Mil find on the highways and byways of the Province houses, churches, mills, barns and shops which are much as they were one hundred or more years ago. The period included in this study begins with the settlement of the Province in 1784, and ends about the year 184o. It is impossible to bound any architectural style by a decade or even, in some cases, by a century, much less by a year, but it has been found by close observation that the trivialities of the second half of the . nineteenth century creep into buildings, noticeably in lattice work, between I 840 and r8so. On the other hand, ss THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY right up to the present time, it is possible to obtain mouldings and sash windows from country builders of the same detail as those employed by our early carpenters. The thin stream of the Georgian tradition trickled through the UilT lN 16~9 • t"' L Llr I( L t l 1:. v ~ ""! ' \ 0 H THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY There are four types of stone house, all dating from the infant years of the Province-the common field stone, split to a fairly smooth face, the roughly squared limestone , ledge or river stone, and dressed...