1905 – Home Bank of Canada, 8 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario

Head office of the Home Bank of Canada, which was one of the great Canadian banking scandals of the early 20th century. Its costly collapse in 1923 shattered public trust in banks and encouraged growth in bank reform sentiment across the country. The collapse could have been prevented if the government of the day had acted on warnings from a manager in Winnipeg as early as 1914 that the loanbook was heavily imbalanced.

“For a single frontage like that of the Home Bank the greatest distinction is to be obtained trom columns. The banks appear to have come to the fortunate decision that low buildings devoted principally to their own purposes make the proper type for a bank building. As they are surrounded by much taller buildings, the scale which is given by a single order of two or three storey height is desirable to enable them to hold their own in the street. The view of the Home Bank, or of the Yonge St. Branch of the Bank of Commerce, (illustrated in our February number), as one approaches them on the same side of the road, is striking, and adds much to the fineness of the street. This however determines the principle rather than the solution of it. One cannot help hankering after something founded on the proportions of the orders but not following them altogether in detail.

Here is a suggestion which at any rate opens up a way of some individual variation and will improve our universal rendering of the orders with an empty pediment. There is no Greek precedent for this. It was never intended that an order should be crowned by a plain pediment without sculpture. The pediment form itself is severe enough without being made a ground solely for the display of rectangular dentils and console ends. Sculpture in some form is demanded for the sake of its grace of line. And there is plenty of motive for its display in bank heraldry and titles, without it being necessary to revert to the affairs of the Lapithe and Centaurs and other persons in whom we are but coldly interested, and who, not having the expense of clothes, had dealings with no bank but that on which the wild thyme grows.

The Home Bank is interesting as being of reinforced concrete throughout.”
Canadian Architect and Builder, April 1906

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