British architecture and urban design in Canada

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by Martin Mtl

lol

While I appreciate everyone's opinions, I have to agree with your reaction.

The plexes' urbanscape effect is the complete opposite of soulless and depressing. These plexes are the main reason why Montreal's central boroughs have Canada's best urban experience when it comes to walkability, charm and aesthetics.

But whatever, not for everyone I guess.

[Acajack]

They're also an example of what I would call "noble proletarian" architecture.

Canada's doesn't have much of that at all, definitely not outside of Quebec and to some degree Halifax and St. John's.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by Acajack

They're also an example of what I would call "noble proletarian" architecture.

Canada's doesn't have much of that at all, definitely not outside of Quebec and to some degree Halifax and St. John's.

True. And they most definitely don't have a 1950's aesthetic, that's just the most absurd thing I read on this forum in long while. I've been inside hundreds of plexes in my life, visiting friends or just living in them, and they are spacious, very elaborate with decorative fireplace, columns, moldings, chandelier, woodwork, stained glass, etc. Many were designed for working class, but with a though for some refinement that you wouldn't expect, and many were designed to be more luxurious and they are (in Outremont, for exemple, there are hundreds of plexes that are as luxurious as Manhattan's brownstones).

Also, it's ridiculous to say that they are passé. I mean we are still building them!

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Martin Mtl

True. And they most definitely don't have a 1950's aesthetic, that's just the most absurd thing I read on this forum in long while. I've been inside hundreds of plexes in my life, visiting friends or just living in them, and they are spacious, very elaborate with decorative fireplace, columns, moldings, chandelier, woodwork, stained glass, etc. Many were designed for working class, but with a though for some refinement that you wouldn't expect, and many were designed to be more luxurious and they are.

Also, it's ridiculous to say that they are passé. I mean we are still building them!

To my eye as well, they definitely evoke the era when they were built.

In terms of "appeal", a word someone else used, well that's matter of opinion but they definitely made perfect sense as a type of housing. And still do to some degree.

[someone123]

Here's another "could have been built in the UK" building. A house in Port Hood, NS, along the west coast of Cape Breton:


Source

[urbandreamer]

I love Montreal's duplex/triplex walkups! They were obviously inspired by the Scottish tradition of living in tenements while outdoor staircases were common in the Scottish Borders 600 years ago! The Scots and English lived in the more ornate/luxurious flats in Mtl, while poor rural Francophones moved into cheaper modest apartments. Many Scottish businessmen owned the factories where the cast iron or pressed tin details, the brick or stone were manufactured. The Irish and French Canadians moved to Montreal for factory jobs/domestic help/service work and needed affordable housing. With increased densities came increased building setbacks resulting in maximizing layouts/profits: outdoor staircases don't need to be heated!

Spend a few months in Montreal and walk the streets. You can get a sense of where the Scots lived - sadly many of their mansions were torn down for the expressway.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

I love Montreal's duplex/triplex walkups! They were obviously inspired by the Scottish tradition of living in tenements while outdoor staircases were common in the Scottish Borders 600 years ago! The Scots and English lived in the more ornate/luxurious flats in Mtl, while poor rural Francophones moved into cheaper modest apartments. Many Scottish businessmen owned the factories where the cast iron or pressed tin details, the brick or stone were manufactured. The Irish and French Canadians moved to Montreal for factory jobs/domestic help/service work and needed affordable housing. With increased densities came increased building setbacks resulting in maximizing layouts/profits: outdoor staircases don't need to be heated!

Spend a few months in Montreal and walk the streets. You can get a sense of where the Scots lived - sadly many of their mansions were torn down for the expressway.

Hum, I don't know of any expressway build in Montreal that implied the demolition of historic mansions. The Scottish entrepreneurs of Montreal build their mansions in the Golden Square Mile, where of course there is no expressway. According to Heritage Montreal, about 30 to 40% of those mansions were demolished to build high-rises, but the rest remain.

On a side note, it is interesting to note that there are tens of thousands of plexes in Montreal and very few were demolished over the years. That in itself is quite remarkable.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by someone123

Here's another "could have been built in the UK" building. A house in Port Hood, NS, along the west coast of Cape Breton:


Source

Not sure about this particular example, but sometimes the general form looks "European" to us but the details are all wrong. I was once in Pictou with an academic group that included a professor from a Scottish university and while she could see the influence, the stone was just not the type or colour she was used to and it didn't really resonate as "like home" as much as I'd anticipated.

[Martin Mtl]

Originally Posted by Acajack

They most definitely add a lot to the unique character of the city.

Even some of the criticisms are part of the mystique. Upon seeing them, an Aussie friend who was visiting asked: "who the fuck thought it was a good idea to stick outdoor staircases on houses in this climate?" and then burst out laughing.

Actually they make a lot of sense in our climate. It's that much space that you don't have to heat in the winter and that you don't have to clean everyday with melting dirty snow. When you have to clean the interior stairs from the second to the third floor, you get the appeal of having the first set of stairs outside.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Andy6

Not sure about this particular example, but sometimes the general form looks "European" to us but the details are all wrong. I was once in Pictou with an academic group that included a professor from a Scottish university and while she could see the influence, the stone was just not the type or colour she was used to and it didn't really resonate as "like home" as much as I'd anticipated.

This will always be in the eye of the beholder and builders had to work with what was available so it will always be possible to pick out differences. The stone would have been sourced regionally.

I guess one question to ask is whether they were aiming to build Scottish-style buildings at the time with what they had at their disposal, or something else. For the typical NS stonemason around the 1820-1870 period, the British styles and Scottish in particular seem to have been a dominant point of reference.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Acajack

They're also an example of what I would call "noble proletarian" architecture.

Canada's doesn't have much of that at all, definitely not outside of Quebec and to some degree Halifax and St. John's.

Yes, in that sense a city like Toronto is more "English" and a city like Montreal is more "Scottish".

I think the most solid residential architecture in the British Isles is in Scotland.

Even though London is a much bigger, more metropolitan city - and always was - its terraced housing feels like matchstick architecture compared to a rock solid Glasgow tenement building. And those tenements looked the same whether you were in the richer west end or the poorer east end. I have a friend who moved to Glasgow and lives in one of these tenements, and I admire his 10 ft ceilings, marble fireplace and enormous bay windows.

My Toronto semi probably costs 2-3X as much but it's seemingly made out of cardboard with a 6 ft-high basement. Basically anybody with any money who buys one of these homes immediately hires a structural engineer to gut the entire inside and remove the structural walls, since the interior of a pre-war Toronto home is not conducive to the needs of a modern family. In that sense, I kind of feel a connection with people in London who complain about their cramped, drafty homes.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Even though London is a much bigger, more metropolitan city - and always was - its terraced housing feels like matchstick architecture compared to a rock solid Glasgow tenement building. And those tenements looked the same whether you were in the richer west end or the poorer east end. I have a friend who moved to Glasgow and lives in one of these tenements, and I admire his 10 ft ceilings, marble fireplace and enormous bay windows.

Glasgow's architecture is great. One thing I wonder is if those crumbling stone tenement buildings were higher end or lower end housing around the time when they were built (there's also higher-end housing that clearly looks like it was built for the wealthy).

My impression is that Glasgow used to be a relatively wealthier city in the 19th century ("second city of the empire" days) compared to what it is today, with a higher proportion of the inner city areas being inhabited by wealthier people. These comparisons are always a bit challenging of course because people as a whole are better off today. But there are some clear-cut examples in some places where a home that might have been inhabited by a factory owner or ship's captain in the 19th century is used as working class apartments.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by someone123

This will always be in the eye of the beholder and builders had to work with what was available so it will always be possible to pick out differences. The stone would have been sourced regionally.

I guess one question to ask is whether they were aiming to build Scottish-style buildings at the time with what they had at their disposal, or something else. For the typical NS stonemason around the 1820-1870 period, the British styles and Scottish in particular seem to have been a dominant point of reference.

True, I'm sure. They were aiming at building buildings, not buildings in a style, so they would have built them the same as they'd always built them, unless the materials weren't available. My great great grandfather was a stonemason just across the way in PEI in the mid-1800s and I'm sure whatever he built was done in the way he'd learned from his father from the Isle of Skye.

[megadude]

Question. Are these British style? I loved the first one when I was in QC three years ago. Didn't know about the other one but just as cool.



https://www.shutterstock.com/image-p...roof-729317656


https://fr.yelp.ca/biz/aux-anciens-c...ns-qu%C3%A9bec

[Acajack]

Not an expert but they strike me as "New France" style.

The houses in the second photo especially are IMO typical of the housing style with sloped roofs that the early French colonists developed in order that they not collapse under the weight of the snow.

[JHikka]

Saint John

Most of the buildings in Saint John are Italianate or Second Empire (French) style, but there's a couple of British designs still around

Chipman Hill (mid-19th Century, interior Victorian)
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep...?id=9377&pid=0



Holman Residence (Queen Anne Revival)
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep...id=10833&pid=0


Although not technically British, the New England Federalist style of the Loyalist House is always nice:


One of my favourites is the Lunenburg Academy in Lunenburg, NS:
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep...?id=1517&pid=0


The Algonquin in St. Andrews, NB is Tudor Revival:
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep...id=17161&pid=0

[MTLskyline]

I find the colonial French architecture in Quebec to be reminiscent of Brittany, where many of the French settlers originated.
Somewhere like Saint-Malo looks a lot like Quebec City in some spots
https://goo.gl/maps/Q2HtqxUHbb9qegr98

The British architecture in Quebec definitely has a bit of a Scottish slant (many of the anglophone business class were Scots), somewhere like the Golden Square Mile would have had a lot of great examples, but unfortunately much of it was lost in the 1960s and 70s. Montreal's current downtown is really largely on the site of the Golden Square Mile, which is why a lot of it is now gone (Old Montreal was the downtown until the post-war period). Most of what remains is near Sherbrooke or slightly above it.

https://goo.gl/maps/CxCRTiv7RXXEyLXQ8

Westmount's architecture also looks British in spots, and is generally better preserved than the Golden Square Mile. But it is newer (a lot is from 1920s-40s rather than Victorian). Something like the City Hall/Library/Selwyn House complexes look like something taken from a city in England.
https://goo.gl/maps/v4HEXwvS2k7eViek7

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Proof Sheet

This is a very common UK form of housing built in the 20's/30's
https://goo.gl/maps/VXr6KzeLPGDqWpev5

This style of fairly ubiquitous 2-storey brick box post-war housing has always vaguely reminded me of British suburbs of the same era:

https://goo.gl/maps/uYVKwhWuYwdxMiSSA


And in the multi-family department, stuff like these:

https://goo.gl/maps/ee7QAv5LwUKrsBkx9
https://goo.gl/maps/io4PjwPGJJYPuatB7


Of course, for a more literal comparison you've always got the late-19th century terraces like these:

https://goo.gl/maps/neHLDhg5uQg6kzhb9

[Acajack]

Oskenonton Lane might be the ugliest residential street in Canada.

[Architype]

Vancouver has a lot of English Storybook houses, probably not found so much elsewhere in Canada.
Unfortunately they are being systematically erased from the landscape and replaced with modern monstrosities.

English Storybook is an interwar style inspired by English cottages. Soldiers returning from World War I brought back their encounters with European architecture. The English Storybook style is a close relative of the Tudor Revival. Like Tudor Revival, this style became especially popular during the 1920s and 1930s . . .

https://www.vancouverheritagefoundat...les/storybook/