RES. COLLECTOR U.P.E.I ROBE) JN UBRARY JiAflY USE ONLY

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2 RES. COLLECTOR U.P.E.I ROBE) JN UBRARY JiAflY USE ONLY

3 Prince Edward Island Architects A series from the Institute of Island Architectural Studies and Conservation William Critchlow Harris In 1993 a deranged arsonist torched St. Cuthbert's Church in St. Teresa, William Harris's last church. He spent time in jail, but before he was released the issue whether or not he should serve a period of probation afterwards was the subject of debate in the newspapers. The thought of such an individual being unsupervised makes one wonder if any church, particularly any wooden church, in Prince Edward Island is safe. And of course they are not safe in any case, even if no arsonist is on the loose. Edifices of timber are fragile, and are vulnerable not only to fire but also to decay and mutilation. Someone has said that the Harris churches are a special feature of the Island landscape. But SPEC-P there are not as many of them now as there NA used to be; and no doubt their number will 749 diminish in the future. Of the four Island William Harris churches that were lost before the ^_ 3 _ 7 burning of St. Cuthbert's, three were destroyed by fire - St. Joseph's at Kelly's Cross, St T85 j Ann's at Emyvale,.and St. Mary's at Souris - Harris's largest church. The fourth casualty 2000 was, in effect, abandoned - St. Thomas's at Long Creek. The loss of these churches should caution us to take the best care we can of those that remain. There are 14 still standing: the Methodist (now United) church at Tryon and its near replica at Bedeque; St. Mark's, Kensington; St. Patrick's, Grand River; St. Elizabeth's, Springfield; St. Malachy's, Kinkora; St. John's, Milton; St. John the Evangelist, Crapaud; St. Patrick's, Fort Augustus; St. Paul's, Sturgeon; and in Charlottetown, St. Paul's on Queen Square; All Souls' Chapel at St. Peter's Cathedral; and Central Christian Church. The [fourteenth is the Kirk of St. James, which is attributed to David Stirling, but is probably mostly from the hand of Harris. Of course, not all the Harris churches are in Prince Edward Island. There is one, a gem, in New Brunswick, at Clifton Royal, and some splendid ones in Nova Scotia - of which St. James's at Mahone Bay must be accounted the chief - but only because the exterior of his All Saints' Church at Springhill has been so badly mutilated by the application of every kind I of tawdry cladding that has come and gone in fashion over the past 70 years - asphalt shingles, abitibi board, aluminum and vinyl siding - that its virtues are obliterated, at least as far as its exterior appearance is concerned. The Springhill highway sign - "You should

4 see us now" - if taken in reference to All Saints' Church - suggests that Springhill has its "eyes wide shut" in respect to what could be that town's greatest architectural asset, a gorgeous Church with a towering steeple set on a hill in the middle of the town. In 1993 the catalogue published for the William Harris exhibition that year included a reproduction of William Harris's exterior elevation drawing for All Saints' Church, Springhill (right), in the hope that it might inspire the sort of restoration that was carried out at St. Mary's Church, Indian River a few years earlier. How shall we understand William Harris's Church architecture? We must, of course, look at his churches in the context of the architecture of the time in which he lived. But the forms they take, and the way he uses his Gothic architectural vocabulary, are determined by the liturgical function of the building and not just by style and contemporary taste. In the few interpretations of his designs left by Harris the emphasis is always on how the form of the building serves its function. But it is evident from both his architectural drawings and occasional written references that aesthetics also played a role in the thinking that went into his designs. Thus in The Charlottetown Examiner of March 14, 1896 he noted in reference to his new St. Paul's Church on Queen Square, "The wooden groined roof covering the chancel and nave, besides being beautiful, is acoustically a very valuable feature." St. Paul's (below) is the first of his churches to have a groined, or rib-vaulted, ceiling throughout, and the first in which his adaptation of important elements of the French Gothic vocabulary - prompted by their acoustical utility - is complete. In addition to the groined ceiling, shallow transepts, an apsidal east end, a chancel the same width and height as the nave, sounding panels of thin spruce and maple boards in the chancel, and a chancel floor supported on a single sounding post of juniper wood, all contributed to an acoustical efficiency that made him extremely popular as an ecclesiastical architect. All these churches of his maturity - and eight of an original eleven survive in Nova Scotia as well as seven of an original ten in Prince Edward Island -were designed as if they were musical instruments. In fact, Harris, who played the piano and the fiddle, spent hours at night studying the role played by these instruments in enhancing the sounds made in them, so much so that he kept his aged father awake, and grumbling, "If only he would play a tune I would forgive him!" Not only do the interiors of these churches enhance and distribute the sounds made within them by speakers and choirs, they also provide worshippers with excellent sight-lines. The first generation of Gothic Revival architects contented themselves with creating replicas of medieval buildings, often in the English Decorated Style. The High Victorian architects like William Harris, who

5 came along a little later, were more eclectic and adventurous. In their Church architecture, as in their "Queen Anne Style" house designs, they borrowed and mixed elements from different periods and places, and even invented new ones, in a kind of asymmetrical PYijbsrsnc A good example of this kind of Harris audacity is St. Malachy's Church in Kinkora, where an octagonal crossing, unusual in a Gothic building, enables him to seat a large proportion of the congregation together in the centre of the building. He used this device in two of his three cathedral designs, none of which, unfortunately, was ever built. Although Harris's specialty was churches he also designed many houses, meeting halls, business blocks and hotels. Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island has more of them than any other place, but there are Harris secular buildings in Summerside, Tignish, the Wilmot Valley, Springfield, New Haven, Emyvale, Kelly's Cross, and Kinkora on the Island, and in North Sydney, Whitney Pier, Cheticamp, Antigonish, New Glasgow, Windsor, Halifax, Prince's Lodge, Dartmouth, Canning, Gaspereaux, and New Germany in Nova Scotia. His earliest designs have mansard roofs and are Second Empire in style; but in the 1880s he went on to flirt with the Stick Style, and drew houses characterised by belts of board and batten cladding between the storeys and in gables, and by the use of scalloped shingles on the second storey. After 1895 he moved toward the Shingle Style with broad sloping roofs, umbrages around front doors, snub gables with bargeboards decorated with lines of little holes, and round towers with cone-shaped roofs reminiscent of French chateaux. Inside there are living halls, inglenooks and well-crafted staircases, in some cases semi-circular and cantilevered. Harris's most spectacular assignment was as architect of a planned town in Cape Breton Island. Fifty buildings, including two hotels, were constructed in his characteristic style at Broughton near Louisbourg for an English coal-mining entrepreneur, Col. Horace Mayhew, in But the project collapsed before it had ever shipped a piece of coal, or Harris had been fully paid, and the forest reclaimed the site. Now nothing remains but the massive concrete cellars of the principal buildings. But Broughton was not his greatest disappointment. That was the rejection in 1906 of his design for the Anglican Cathedral in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he had dreamed all his life of building. The Bishop of Nova Scotia, Clarendon Lamb Worrell, guided by his peers in Toronto and by Percy Nobbs, Professor of Design at McGill University in Montreal, obtained instead a Perpendicular Gothic design with atrocious acoustics and sight lines from the prestigious New York architect, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. It was erected under the supervision of Harris's partner, William Horton, who by the Bishop's direction passed materials and methods inferior to those specified. It was opened in November, A month later Harris suffered the first of the heart attacks that claimed his life in In the absence of the cathedrals that were not built, and the planned town that failed, the more modest All Souls' Chapel at St. Peter's Cathedral in Charlottetown must serve as his masterpiece. Here in the dim light of its Victorian Gothic interior the mystical inner life of William Harris is given form and substance, a place where the veil between time and eternity is thin, and dreams and faith are more real than disappointments and betrayals. Robert C. Tuck, Michaelmas, 2000

6 Biography William Critchlow Harris was born at Bootle, Liverpool, England, April 30, 1854, the fifth child of William Critchlow Harris, , and Sarah Stretch Harris, His family emigrated to Prince Edward Island in He was apprenticed to architect David Stirling in Halifax, Nova Scotia, , with whom he was in partnership He was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, from 1882 until 1884, when he returned to Charlottetown. After 1899 he made his headquarters in Halifax, and took as a partner William T. Horton. He died July 16, 1913, in Halifax. He never married. Inventory Churches: (those still standing in 2000 are set in bold/ace type) St. James' Anglican, Herring Cove, N.S Methodist Mission Hall, Charlottetown, PEL, 1877 (Kirk of St. James, Charlottetown, PEL, 1877) Methodist Church, Tryon, PEL, 1881 All Saints' Anglican, Clifton, N.B., 1884 St. Mark's Anglican, Kensington, PEL, 1885 St Thomas's Anglican, Long Creek, PEL, 1886 St. James' Anglican, Mahone Bay, N.S., 1886 Methodist Church Steeple, Bedeque, PEL 1886 St. Paul's Roman Catholic, Sturgeon, PEL, 1887 All Souls' Chapel, Charlottetown, 1888 St. Patrick's Roman Catholic, Grand River, PEL All Saints' Anglican, Springhill, N.S., 1892 St. Elizabeth's Anglican, Springfield, PEL, c.1892 St. Joseph's Roman Catholic, Kelly's Cross, PEL,1894 St. John's Anglican, Arichat, N.S., 1895 St. Paul's Anglican, Charlottetown, PEL, 1895 St. John's Roman Catholic, Windsor, N.S., 1898 St. Patrick's Roman Catholic, Ft. Augustus, PEI, 1898 St. John's Anglican, Milton, PEL, 1898 St. Anne's Roman Catholic, Emyvale, PEL, c.1898 St. Malachy's Roman Catholic, 1899 St. John's Anglican baptistry, tower, Truro, N.S, 1900 Central Christian, Charlottetown, PEL, St Mary's Roman Catholic, Souris, PEL, 1901 St. James' Anglican, Newport, N.S., 1901 St. John the Evangelist Anglican, Crapaud, PEL, 1901 St. Mary's Roman Catholic, Indian River, PEL, 1902 St. John's Anglican, North Sydney, N.S., 1902 Trinity Anglican, Sydney Mines, N.S., 1903 St. Andrew's Anglican, Mulgrave, N.S., 1904 St. George's Anglican, Falmouth, N.S., 1904 All Saints' Anglican, Bedford, N.S, 1904 St. Alban's Anglican, Whitney Pier, N.S., c 1905 Immaculate Concept'n Roman Catholic, Truro, N.S Anglican Church, Londonderry, N.S., c.1909 St. James' Anglican, Spry Bay, N.S St. Joseph's Roman Catholic, N Sydney, N.S, 1911 St. Cuthbert's Roman Catholic, St. Teresa, PEL, 1911 The Transfiguration Anglican, New Burn, N.S, 1912 Emmanuel Anglican, Dartmouth, N.S., 1912 Bibliography Gothic Dreams: Biography of WC Harris, Dundurn, 1978, Gothic Dreams: Architecture of WC Harris, Confed. Centre of the Arts Both by R.C. Tuck. Houses: (those more or less intact in 2000) Winder mere/water mere, Charlottetown, PEL, 1977 Beaconsfield, Charlottetown, PEL, 1977 Charlotte Residence Charlottetown, PEL, 1880 MacLennan House, Charlottetown, PEL, 1881 Hacker House, Wilmot Valley, PEL, c.1886 J.D. MacLeod House, Charlottetown, PEL, 1886 The Priory (R.Young) Charlottetown, PEL, 1887 Peters/Peake House, Charlottetown, PEL, 1888 Dundas Terrace, Charlottetown, PEL, 1889 Hawthorne Cottage, Charlottetown, PEL, 1891 Brighton Lodge, Charlottetown, PEL, 1892 W.A. Weeks' House, Charlottetown. PEL, c.1892 MacQuarrie House (Silver Fox) Summerside. PEI, 1892 Manager's House, Cheticamp. N.S., 1894 MacKinnon House, Summerside, PEL, c.1894 R. Moore House, Charlottetown, 1895 Hazeldean, Springfield, PEL, 1895 The Cottage/Caroma Lodge, Charlottetown, 1895 Senator Murphy House, Tignish, PEL, 1897 Lawson House, King Street, Windsor, N.S H.C. Mills House, Summerside, PEL, c.1898 Wellner Terrace, Charlottetown, PEL, 1900 Briardene, Antigonish, N.S., 1901 Louis Kaye House/Sigma Chi, Halifax, N.S., c 1902 Borden House, Canning, N.S, 1902 Rutherford House, Gaspereaux, N.S., c.1902 R. Cotton House, Charlottetown, P.E.I., 1904 St. Peter's Rectory, Charlottetown, PEL, 1904 Ducksberry House, Whitney Pier, N.S., c.1905 MacDonald House, North Sydney, N.S. c Pierce Street House, North Sydney, N.S., c Dr. R.F.O. O'Brien House, Halifax, N.S., 1910 Tudor Apartments, Halifax, N.S, c 1910 Two Houses, Prince's Lodge, Halifax, N.S. Presbyteries and Rectories in Kinkora, Kelly's Cross, Emyvale, Charlottetown (2), P.E.I., New Germany, N.S. Public Buildings King's County Courthouse, Georgetown, PEL, 1887 College Ste-Anne, Church Point, N.S, 1899 Newson, Cameron, Desbrisay, Connolly, Hogan, and Rogers Buildings, Charlottetown, P.E.I. McCullogh Building, New Glasgow, N.S, c.1908 Kaizer, Mary McAlpine, Brander&Morris Buildings, Halifax, N.S.(all on Barrington Street). Church Halls in Amherst, Springhill, Mahone Bay, N.S.

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