Edward James Lennox. Marilyn M. Litvak

      Illus. 25: The Beatty Building, 3 King Street West, 1886 (demolished).

      City of Toronto Archives

      2 Toronto’s Third City Hall

      The year 1886 marked a turning point in Lennox’s career. He won the competition to design Toronto’s new city hall (now treasured as the city’s “Old City Hall”; Illus. 26), and for the next fifteen years, although he would be involved in many other projects, the City Hall was to be a continuing preoccupation.

      Between 1884 and 1886, the city was in pursuit of a design for a new public building. What started out in 1884 as a competition for a county courthouse ended up as a second competition in 1886 for a combined courthouse and municipal building. A select number of the original entrants were invited to submit new or augmented plans, and Lennox, who was then thirty-two years old, emerged as the winner of the second competition.

      To ensure his designs were not found “wanting” in any respect, Lennox travelled to “principle [sic] cities in the Eastern States.”¹ In May of 1887 he wrote to the chairman of the Court House Committee that he intended to visit Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Albany. On his return he reported to the committee: “I find on the whole that my visit has been somewhat dissappointing [sic], that is, in seeing any building which is laid out superior or ventilated any better than the one which your Committee has seen fit to adopt.”²

      Lennox was being disingenuous: he was not “disappointed.” It was his way of telling the building committee that he knew what he was doing and that his building could compete with what the best American architects had to offer. Much of his report was concerned with technical matters and layout rather than style,³ and with good reason. In 1886 an American architect from Buffalo, Richard Waite, had been awarded the commission to build the Ontario Parliament Buildings. This action was considered devious and downright deceitful by Canadian architects. Waite had been part of the jury that found plans submitted by Canadians “wanting, more, it seems, for their handling of mechanical needs than for their overall conception, and design.”⁴ After the competition closed, Waite submitted plans of his own, and despite the fact that the projected cost of his plans was well above original budget limits, he was awarded the job. A great brouhaha ensued; Canadian architects were insulted and angry. Lennox’s measured statement about his disappointment with the layout and ventilation in public buildings in large American cities was clearly intended as a rebuke to those Ontario government officials who were responsible for the fiasco.

      In the same report, E.J. mentioned H.H. Richardson’s Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail (1884—88): “Pittsburg [sic] is the only city of all the cities that has a building that is somewhat similar in its appointments to what your building will be.” Lennox, like many of his contemporaries, was very much influenced by the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838—86). Richardson, trained at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris from 1859 to 1862, is regarded as the pioneer of Romanesque Revival architecture in America. Nonetheless, he was not one to shun naturalistic High Victorian Gothic detailing: to wit, his Trinity Church in Boston, 1872, and Austin Hall, Harvard, 1881–83. Trinity Church in particular was highly influential and established him as an original and at the same time learned architect.⁵ Lennox took to Richardson’s early version of the Romanesque Revival and executed it in his own projects with great panache. However, it was Richardson’s Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Illus. 27), that would prove to be of signal importance to Lennox.

      E.J. indicated in his report that he had visited Boston, but made no mention of Trinity Church or Austin Hall at Harvard University. He may or may not have seen Trinity Church. And though he may or may not have visited Austin Hall, he did own a folio book, Art for All and Decorations,⁶ in which the hall is featured. Lennox’s columns in the front entrance of Toronto’s Old City Hall bear a striking resemblance to Richardson’s multiple-shaft and capital arrangement of Austin Hall.

      By July of 1887, E.J.’s plans for the City Hall were complete (Illus. 28 and 29). The city council of 1888, realizing that costs would exceed approved funds, decided that it would have to put the matter before the city’s ratepayers. The council also determined that an accurate account of expected expenditure was needed if the plan was to gain approval.⁷ That spring, Lennox and the building committee, in search of materials appropriate for such an important building, “explored half the stone deposits of the province, travelled for miles in waggons over the most execrable roads to see out of the way rocks and boulders.”⁸ By July of 1888 Lennox was ready to advertise for tenders.⁹ When tenders were in, costs were $582,034 more than the $1,050,000 originally stipulated. The total cost of the project was estimated at $1,632,034.¹⁰

      In 1889 the city mounted a publicity campaign to convince its ratepayers that their money (including an extra $582,034) would be well spent on municipal and county buildings that would reflect Toronto’s importance as a commercial and metropolitan centre.¹¹ The request for additional funding was approved, and work began almost immediately. The site had to be cleared of existing buildings, and the foundations laid.

      Legend has it that E.J.’s brother, Charles David Lennox, was as much responsible for the design of Old City Hall as was E.J. himself. Without doubt their relationship was a close one, as Charles worked in his brother’s shop for some thirty-four years, from 1880 until 1914, with the exception of two years away in New York City in the firm of Jardine & Jardine, 1885–86.¹² However, though Charles was an active member of the Toronto professional architectural community, none of the drawings, specifications, or letters connected with Old City Hall or any other project of Lennox’s bear the signature Charles D. Lennox. If he was co-architect with his brother on the work, history has not recorded the fact.

      At the “laying of the corner-stone” ceremonies in November of 1891, Lennox proclaimed that his building would “be second to none of its kind in America,”¹³ but the building programme was to be fraught with problems and dissension.

      As early as May of 1892 Lennox became dissatisfied with the contracting firm, Elliott & Neelon. He claimed they were using expensive out-of-town labour while Toronto was in the midst of a terrible recession. In a letter to the city building committee, E.J. objected in the strongest terms to this practice while “hundreds” of “starving workmen of Toronto … have to walk the streets looking for work.”¹⁴ In addition, E.J. complained of the firm’s poor workmanship and substandard supplies, of rowdyism on site, and lack of progress. By 2 July he was warning the contractors they would be replaced if they did not immediately “supply a force of at least 100 stone-cutters, 30 bricklayers, and 60 labourers, together with the quality of materials specified in the contract.”¹⁵