Building of the Week: Holy Trinity, Quebec City

Our building of the week is the earliest Anglican cathedral in all of Canada.  Completed in 1804, this church is a beacon of Englishness in a French town, with its use of the quintessentially-English model of James Gibbs' St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London of 1726.  Churches based on this model can be found all over the colonies and we have documented many ourselves.

The interior is, as might be expected from the exterior, faithful to the interior of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, with its balconies, classicizing plaster work and Palladian eastern window.

Above: interior looking east

While the exterior appears lavish in its use of ashlar masonry (large, smooth, square-cut stones), upon closer inspection it is revealed that the surface is really imitation ashlar:

Above: detail of "ashlar masonry" on west facade

Real stone, however, was used in some areas for emphasis, notably for the giant Ionic order pilasters and the enclosing arches on the west facade.

Above: the variety of materials used on the west facade

This is a common money-saving technique for buildings of all kinds at the time: spend money on the prominent features and use less expensive materials for other areas, making the building look like it cost more to make than it really did.

If you find yourself in Quebec City, be sure to check out this building - it's only a stone's throw from the Chateau Frontenac and is definitely worth your time.

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Building of the Week: Worker's house in Arvida

This week's building of the week is a worker's house in Arvida, Quebec that we had the pleasure of touring last week. The house is a small two-bedroom house that must be put into context to understand its true value.

Erected in the group of houses built for Alcoa Aluminum after 1927, this small house was part of a newfangled idea on the part of the company's owners to give each worker a house of his own.  Company towns prior to this provided cramped spaces for workers, so the idea to provide separate single-family dwellings for each employee was quite radical.  Since the average family size at the time would have been much larger, a private house on this scale would have been incredibly appealing to workers.

The town boasts that it was built in 135 days, a feat which was achieved by the use of prefabricated elements to construct the houses, much like the assembly line ideals of Ford.

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Building of the Week: St Paul's Catholic, Fulford Bay, Saltspring Island

Built between 1880 and 1885, St Paul's is Saltspring Island's first church.  Several of the features of this church are from Cowichan Bay's "Butter Church," including the bell, the windows and the door.  The island is dotted with Gothic churches on a similarly small scale, although this is the only "stone" church.  I say "stone" because the exterior is composed of a faux-stone cladding that was added in 1973.  Presumably, the original facing was wooden, while now the "stone" is highly convincing from a distance but less-so from up close, as seen below.  Regardless, this is an excellent example of a small British Columbia church in the Gothic style.

Summit Recap and Building of the Week

Has it really been almost a week since our last post?  I guess that the frenzy of posts while we were in B.C. made us feel like we were full up on posts for a while or maybe the jet lag made us forget to update.  Well, whatever the reason, we’re all recovered from our whirlwind tour of B.C. and ready to post again. And I do mean whirlwind - in 6 days (well, 5 really, since we didn’t visit any buildings on the day of the conference) we hit 27 churches, one suspension bridge and a whole lot of scenery.  Over the next little while, we’ll slowly be updating you on all of the buildings that we visited through both our “Building of the Week” section and through some more informative posts.

Above: Shannon Falls, Squamish, B.C. visited on Day 4

For now, be sure to check out our latest “Building of the Week,” the “Skookumchuck” Church.  We have information and more photos of this remarkable building in a post from last week, if you'd like more on the church.  Our heartfelt thanks go out to Geneva Quipp for showing us around and for telling us all about the church’s history.  We just can't get enough of the Skookumchuck Church and we hope that you enjoy it too!

Above: The hand-carved altar at the Skookumchuck Church

Our Building of the Week: St. George's Anglican Church, Sibbald Point

Stepping through the lych gate and entering the churchyard of St. George's, Sibbald Point is like stepping out Ontario and into rural England. This is the second St. George's on this property, which was donated for the construction of a church by the Sibbald family. Built in 1877, the current church replaced the original 1839 wooden church. The current building was designed by Gavillais and Thompson of Barrie and executed by local craftsmen in the memory of Susan Sibbald.
Architecturally the church is lovely with quoines, stringcourses, labels and functioning gargoyles all executed in handcut stone.

Behind the scenes of the "Building of the Week"

Here is the photo (quite literally) behind the making of this week's "Building of the Week" photograph at St. Peter-in-Chains, Peterborough.  I was able to sneak this shot of Yoda and Luke in action while setting up my tripod.

Building of the Week: Trafalgar Castle, Whitby

This one is a personal favourite of mine. Built in 1859-62 by Toronto architect (and later Toronto mayor) Joseph Sheard (1813-1883), this gigantic house is truly one of a kind.  The owner, Nelson Gilbert Reynolds, was adamant that it be built lavishly - so much so that he paid an exorbitant sum and subsequently went bankrupt.  The house had to be sold to the Methodist Church a few short years after its completion and became a school for girls, which it still is to this day.

Today, Trafalgar Castle stands out against its suburban backdrop and shows us that you can find really great architecture anywhere.

Warning: shameless self-promotion coming up...

For more information on this fantastic building, see my article titled “Storming the Castle: The Architecture of Trafalgar Castle, Whitby, Ontario” in the Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, Vol. 33, No. 2, 2008; pp. 43-51.  Unfortunately, it’s not online, but can be found in a library near you!

For a larger image, see the "Building of the Week" section at the bottom of the page.

Building of the Week: St James' Anglican, Mahone Bay

This week’s Building of the Week is St James' Anglican, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia.  It was built in 1885-1887 by the important east coast architect William Critchlow-Harris (1854-1913) who was especially active in Nova Scotia and P.E.I.  This particular building fits in nicely with the spread of Ecclesiology in Nova Scotia and with the long-standing tradition of wooden-church building on the east coast in general.  For a larger image, see the bottom of the page for our "Building of the Week" section.

Mahone Bay is a must-see for anyone interested in church architecture as the town’s waterline is dominated by three side-by-side nineteenth-century churches.  We came across this church last spring on a road trip around Nova Scotia before the 2009 Gothic Summit in Halifax (and hope to stop there again on our way to Lunenburg for the 2010 SSAC Conference!).  This shot was taken moments before all three churches were let out on Good Friday - needless to say, I’m lucky I got this shot before the crowds of people trampled through the frame (and trampled over me) on their way out.