A History of Canadian Architecture, vols. 1 and 2, by Harold Kalman (review)

Book Reviews KALMAN, A History ofCanadian Architecture, vol.land 2 by Annmarie Adams 526 BELL; Social Class and Social Credit in Alberta by David Laycock 529 MORGAN (edited by POOL and YOUNG), Worker's Control on the Railroad: A Practical Example 'Right under Your Nose' by Frank Leonard 530 A History of Canadian Architecture, vols. l and 2. HAROLD KALMAN. Toronto: Oxford University Press 1994· Pp. xii, 478; vi, 456, illus. $95.00 the set Harold Kalman's long-awaited History of Canadian Architecture reflects many of the major changes that have occurred in the field of architectural history since the mid-197os. Having abandoned the analytical methods derived largely from art history, with its reliance on historic periods and styles, most historians of the built environment have attempted to broaden the established canon of famous monuments. Housing and industrial buildings, indeed, are more revealing of the lives of ordinary people than palaces and skyscrapers. This revolution in the field has also meant a devaluation of the relative historical importance of the architectural profession - fewer monographs are produced on famous designers - and increased attention to the contexts and uses of buildings and cities. Some of the most interesting work in this regard has abandoned the history of practice altogether and concentrates, instead, on the decidedly non-professional design of ordinary or vernacular places. Such places were considered unworthy of scholarly attention as late as 1943, when art and architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner made his oft-quoted statement that while Lincoln Cathedral was a work of architecture, a bicycle shed was a mere building.' Some of these ideas appeared in an earlier review in the Montreal Gazette, 29 October 1994· l Nikolaus Pevsner in his introduction to An Outline of European Architecture (1943; London: Pelican 1978) p6 The Canadian Historical Review Spiro Kostof's 1985 world survey, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (also published by Oxford), marked a decided move away from the established model of an evolutionary, style-based textbook.2 Like Kostof, Kalman sees architecture as a reflection of broader social and cultural values. For the most part, he lives up to his claim to have written a history of Canada as illustrated through the country's 'most permanent creations: buildings and communities.' Rather tha~ explaining the history of architecture as the evolution of forms (or worse yet, as the history of beautiful forms) , the author explores the role of buildings in the development of Canada. A preservationist by profession, Kalman traces the history of Canadian architecture from the Iroquoian longhouse to the postmodemism of the 1980s in fifteen thematic chapters ordered roughly chronologically . With more than 900 pages of text and nearly 900 illustrations, the two-volume set is clearly intended as a textbook or for reference. The names of buildings and places are called out in bold, anticipating readers who might peruse the material rather than dwell on each word. Kalman's method is neither as all-encompassing as Kostof's nor as reactionary as Pevsner's. His perspective straddles the old model of periods and styles and the 'new architectural history' of context and use. His chapters include substantial sections on the impact of the railway, housing, the development of cities, the influence of ethnic groups, and, not surprisingly, the historic preservation movement. And there are also the more predictable discussions of New France, Classicism in Upper and Lower Canada, the nineteenth-century revival styles, and the development of Modernism. Kalman believes that there are distinctly Canadian features to our architecture. Ordinary builders' houses, for example, are less likely to be brightly coloured here than in the United States, he says. He also argues that natural forms and local materials have been more respected in Canada than in other places. He sees the resource towns that developed near the sites offorest and mineral extraction as a particularly Canadian form, given their importance to our economy. In general, he suggests that Canadians have simplified models adopted from other places and that we have excelled in the architectural resolution of social issues. These are powerful assertions in a field that has seen few commentators as broadly conversant with the nation's architecture as Kalman. 2 The...