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Nationalism or cultural imperialism? The Château style in Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Rhodri Windsor Liscombe
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Extract

A recurrent preoccupation in the history of taste, especially as manifested in architecture, is the attribution of national characteristics to individual styles. Among the better-known examples is the customary nationalist definition accorded to the so-called Château style in Canada, whose stylistic features are as clearly defined as its geographical and historical locations. Thereby it provides a descriptive matrix for the means by which retrospective subjective association can be confused with contemporary cultural intention, in a process here defined as initiation, identification, consolidation, tradition, and recapitulation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 36 , 1993 , pp. 127 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1993

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References

Notes

1 One obvious example is Pevsner, N., The Englishness of English Art (London, 1956)Google Scholar. The Greek Revival in the United States has been described as a national style in the literature from Hamlin, T., Greek Revival Architecture in America (New York, 1944)Google Scholar; Pierson, W. H., American Buildings and their Architects : the Colonial and Neoclassical Styles (New York, 1976)Google Scholar, whose chapter 10 is titled ‘American Neoclassicism. The National Phase. The Greek Revival’; to Kennedy, R. G., Greek Revival America (New York, 1989)Google Scholar. This interpretation, however, ignores the dependence of American Greek Revival designers upon British publications of both the antiquities and of contemporary Greek Revival buildings, such as Elmes’s, J. Metropolitan Improvements (London, 1832)Google Scholar; the contribution of a significant number of British immigrant architects including James Gallier and John Haviland; and the contemporary adaptation of Greek motifs in the architecture of the British North American colonies, especially Upper and Lower Canada, for which see Wright, J., Neoclassical Style in Canadian Architecture (Ottawa, 1986)Google Scholar. The issue of nationalism in Canadian architecture, though not the particular significance of the Château style, is examined in Documents in Canadian Architecture, ed. Simmins, G. (Peterborough, Ontario, 1992), esp. PP. 133-70Google Scholar. and Crossman, K., Architecture in Transition: from Art to Practice, 1885-1906 (Kingston and Montreal, 1987)Google Scholar.

2 A nationalist interpretation is variously proposed by Rogatnick, A., ‘Canadian Castles: Phenomenon of the Railway Hotel’, Architectural Review, 141 (May 1967), 364-72Google Scholar; Kalman, H., The Railway Hotels and the Development of the Château Style in Canada (Victoria, 1968)Google Scholar; and to a lesser degree Gowans, A., ‘The Canadian National Style’, in The Shield of Achilles, ed. Morton, W. L. (Toronto, 1968), pp. 208-19Google Scholar. In Building Canada (Toronto, 1966), pp. 136-37, Gowans places the Château-style hotels in the context of late Victorian historicism.

3 Kalman, Railway Hotels, pp. 30-31.

4 Journal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIO), 1 (March 1924), 93; the year before, Nobbs contributed an article entitled ‘The English Tradition in Canada’ to the British Empire Exhibition issue of the Architectural Review, 55 (June 1923), 241, noting both the high quality of Canadian hotel design and that’much has been learned from across the border’ (the United States). For Nobbs see Wagg, S., Percy Erskine Nobbs (Montreal, 1980)Google Scholar.

5 The Toronto trade journal Contract Record published a regular tally of investment in construction across the Dominion.

6 Fiddes, V. and Rowan, A., David Bryce 1803-1876: an Exhibition to Mark the Centenary of Scotland’s Great Victorian Architect (University of Edinburgh, 1976)Google Scholar, outlines the sources of the Baronial style in late medieval and early Renaissance French châteaux.

7 Spaven, D. and Maxwell, D., A Century of Service: a History of the Atholl Palace Hotel, Pitlochry (Pitlochry, c. 1986)Google Scholar: the hotel opened in 1886 as the Athole Hydropathic.

8 The career of MacDonald, a nationalist who yet always asserted his British birth and allegiance, is best recounted in Brown, R. C. and Cook, R., Canada 1826-1921: a Nation Transformed (Toronto, 1974)Google Scholar, and McNaught, K., The Pelican History of Canada, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, 1975)Google Scholar.

9 Smith served as third Canadian High Commissioner in London from 1896 until his death in 1914. His and Stephen’s careers, together with those of other important figures (including Sir Edward Beatty, of Ontario Scots descent and President of the CPR 1919-43) are well reviewed in D. Cruise and Griffiths, A., Lords of the Line (Markham, Ont., 1988)Google Scholar. See also Macnaughton, J., Lord Strathcona (Toronto, 1926)Google Scholar; Gibbon, J. H., Steel of Empire: the Romantic History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (Indianapolis, 1935)Google Scholar; Berton, P., The Impossible Railway (Toronto, 1972)Google Scholar; Lamb, W. K., History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; and Eagle, J. A, The Canadian Pacific Railway and the Development of Western Canada 1898-1914 (Montreal, 1989)Google Scholar.

10 Gifford, J., McWilliam, C., and Walker, D., The Buildings of Scotland: Edinburgh, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, 1988), pp. 573-74Google Scholar. Besides the chiefly domestic architecture illustrated in the Bryce catalogue (note 5), examples of the Château style in institutional design appear in Historic Buildings at Work, published by the Department of the Environment and Scottish Civic Trust (Edinburgh, 1983).

11 Rattenbury’s training and career in western Canada are related in my and Barrett’s, A. A. Francis Rattenbury and British Columbia: Architecture and Challenge in the Imperial Age (Vancouver, 1985)Google Scholar.

12 Segger, M., Victoria: a Primer for Regional History in Architecture (Watkins Glen, NY, 1979), pp. 284-87Google Scholar.

13 Illustrated in Rattenbury, pl. 15 and Lindstrum, D., West Yorkshire Architects and Architecture (London, 1978), pl. 207 Google Scholar.

14 Sturgis, R., The Works of Bruce Price (New York, 1899, repr. 1977)Google Scholar; Scully, V., The Shingle Style and the Stick Style, rev. ed. (New Haven, 1971)Google Scholar; Vaughan, W., The Life and Work of Sir William Van Home (New York, 1920)Google Scholar; and, with reference to the CPR, Lavallée, O., Van Home’s Road (Montreal, 1974)Google Scholar. The history of the hotel is recounted by Kalman, Railway Hotels, pp. 32-36, and with excellent illustrations, in Québec, trois siècles d’architecture, ed. Nappen, L. (Quebec, 1979), pp. 386–91Google Scholar. Kalman also illustrates the Windsor Station as designed and as built, and the CPR’s Château-style Place Viger Hotel and Station, Montreal, also by Price, 1896-98.

15 The stylistic and technical developments of Victorian and Edwardian transatlantic hotel design are examined in Pevsner, N., A History of Building Types (Princeton, NJ, 1976), pp. 169-92Google Scholar; Limerick, J., Ferguson, N., and Oliver, R., America’s Grand Resort Hotels (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; Boniface, P., on British Hotels and Restaurants 1830 to the Present Day (London, 1981)Google Scholar; and Grand Hotel: the Age of the Palace Hotel. An Architectural and Social History, ed. D’Ormesson, J. (London, 1984)Google Scholar, with a preface by D. Watkin, ‘The Grand Hotel Style’, which curiously omits reference to the Canadian railway hotels.

16 Rattenbury, p. 94.

17 Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, no. DR1982: 0028: 2-22.

18 For the Maxwells, see Gagnon-Patte, F., Country Houses for Montrealers, 1892–1924: the Architecture of E. and W. S. Maxwell (Montreal, 1987)Google Scholar. Some of the larger Canadian hotels finished over the ensuing decade, including the Maxwell’s CPR Palliser Hotel in Calgary, 1910, adopted the academic Classical style.

19 For the British hotels see also Service, A., Edwardian Architecture and its Origins (London, 1975)Google Scholar; and Stamp, G. and Amery, C., Victorian Buildings of London 1837-1887 (London, 1985)Google Scholar.

20 The Architecture of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, ed. Drexler, A. (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; for Ross and Macdonald, see Who’s Who in Canada 1934-1935, ed. Greene, G. M. (Toronto, 1935)Google Scholar, and Ross’s obituary in the RAIC, 23 (April, 1946), 103.

21 For the Palmer House Hotel, see Lowe, D., Lost Chicago (Boston, 1975), pp. 116-17Google Scholar; and for the Windsor Hotel, Cameron, C. and Wright, J., Second Empire Style in Canadian Architecture (Ottawa, 1980), pl. 60 Google Scholar.

22 Reynolds, D.M., The Architecture of New YorkCity (New York, 1984)Google Scholar, illustrating the Dakota (pp. 181-82) and Plaza (pp. 184-86); the latter is also discussed in Goldberger, P., The City Observed: New York (New York, 1979), p. 178 Google Scholar. Hardenberges Plaza Hotel was included in a special hotel issue of The Architectural Review, 2 (April 1913), 64-65, together with his other Château-style New York hotel, The Martinique; this issue also carried an article on the Château Laurier in Ottawa, pp. 114-16.

23 Rattenbury, pp. 124-67.

24 Vaughan, T., ed., Space, Style and Structure: Building in Northwest America (Portland, Oregon, 1974), pp. 298-99Google Scholar, 374-76, illus. III-336; illus. III-337 shows the Château-style Tacoma Hotel, by G. W. and W. D. Hewitt of 1885, and III-338 the proposed but unbuilt Château-style Tourist Hotel Tacoma by J. Anderson.

25 Baker, P. R., Richard Morris Hunt (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), esp. pp. 266-99Google Scholar and 412-32.

26 Illustrated in an undated promotional booklet ‘The Château Rideau Kingston Ontario Canada’, published by Hilger, Graves & Co.; Jennifer McKendry kindly supplied this source.

27 Construction, 1 (October 1907), 42-44.

28 Construction, 1 (January 1908), 44.

29 Construction, 1 (August 1908), 32-36, an article headed, ‘Remarkable Similarity in Plans’. Upon the hotel’s completion, the Contract Record for 24 January 1912, 48, stated that it emulated the ‘old French “Château” style … similar to the Château St. Louis of Quebec, which was built on the site where the Château Frontenac now stands’.

30 Contract Record (6 September 1912), 52. The journal described the design of the smaller Hotel Edmonton (200, as against 350 rooms) on 1 May 1912 (p. 47) as ‘distinctly of the Château type, modified to suit its purpose as a modern hotel’.

31 Rattenbury, pp. 225-45 and 316-39; and Hawker, R., ‘Château Prince Rupert: a Forgotten Dream’, B.C. Historical News, 20.2 (Spring 1987), 15–17 Google Scholar.

32 This episode was related in Berton, P., Vimy (Toronto, 1985)Google Scholar; the Dominion signed the Versailles Treaty separately, the beginning of increasing diplomatic independence from the Imperial government.

33 RAIC, 7 (September 1930), 329-30; ibid., (November 1930), 393-96, illustrated the newly completed additions to the Château Laurier.

34 RAIC, 4 (February 1927), 60.

35 RAIC, 6 (August 1929), 246-47.

36 RAIC, 9 (March 1932), 65.

37 The history of the Ottawa buildings cited in this paragraph and other buildings in the Château-Baronial style commissioned by the federal govenment in Ottawa are reviewed in Kalman, H. and Roaf, J., Exploring Ottawa (Toronto, 1983)Google Scholar; for the Seaforth Armoury, RAIC, 14 (May 1937), 104-05.

38 Downs, B., ‘Blackcomb; a Ski Resort in the Making’, Canadian Architect, 34 (February 1989), 16–25 Google Scholar.

39 Boddy, T., ‘The National Gallery of Canada’, Canadian Architect, 33 (June 1988), 28–49 Google Scholar. A more frankly Château-style design was entered in the competition for the National Gallery by the Montreal-based architect Peter Rose and published in Architectural Design, 53.5/6 (1983), 28-31.