Born at Hawick, Scotland on 18 June 1879, son of an architect, he trained as an architect then emigrated to Canada in 1912 and worked at Winnipeg, including supervision of construction of the Legislative Building on behalf of architect Frank W. Simon, between 1912 and 1915. Some of the structures that he designed included the Waddell Fountain in Central Park, in 1914, and buildings at the Broadway (downtown) site of the University of Manitoba. He served as President of the Manitoba Association of Architects in 1926. He moved to Alberta in 1927 to oversee the construction of railway hotels at Banff and Lake Louise. He was also responsible for the design of the Calgary Labour Temple. He died at Calgary on 26 June 1933 from a fall from a tenth-storey window in the Palliser Hotel, of which he had been making sketches. He was buried in Burnsland Cemetery at Calgary.
Some of his architectural works in Manitoba included:
Building
Location
Year
Status
410 Cumberland Avenue, Winnipeg
1914
St. John’s Telephone Exchange Building (expansion)
405 Burrows Avenue, Winnipeg
1922
St. James Telephone Exchange Building (expansion)
340 Rutland Street, Winnipeg
1925
Demolished (2022)
See also:
The Broadway Site of the University of Manitoba: Origins and Demise by Richard A. Johnson
Manitoba History, Number 51, February 2006
1916 Canada census, Ancestry.
“Manitoba architects elect new officers,” Manitoba Free Press, 27 January 1926, page 5.
“Calgary architect falls 270 feet to death from hotel,” The Lethbridge Herald, 26 June 1933, page 1.
Obituary [Madeline H. Manuel], Winnipeg Free Press, 21 April 1959, page 23.
Dictionary of Scottish Architects.
Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada, 1800-1950 by Robert G. Hill, Toronto.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 18 September 2022
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