1914 – Bowles Lunch Room, Bay Street, Toronto, Canada
Hand, Harris & Merritt executed some of the most distinctive terra cotta buildings in Ontario for H.L. Bowles, owner of the Bowles Lunch Co. restaurant chain. Described as “impeccably detailed and exquisitely crafted, these landmarks are all now regrettably demolished.”
Directly north of the St. Charles Hotel, on the corner of Queen and Bay streets, is the Bowles’ Lunch, a frank solution of the difficult problem in designing an attractive two-storey structure, with the ground floor mainly plate glass. The exterior is of pink granite base, ivory matt glazed terra cotta, asbestos roof, copper windows, Circassian walnut doors with white enameled trim. The restaurant space has a two-inch hexagonal ceramic tile floor, verde antique base, seven-foot veined statuary marble wainscot, walls and ceiling of cream matt glazed tile with eight-inch plaster cornice between. Among the furnishings are the counters and sugar tables of Skyros marble, chairs of mahogany, cigar stand of Circassian walnut. In the small cigar store, treated with walnut and cork tile flooring, is a series of decorative panels in color, which depict the colonists meeting the Indians, bartering for trade, loading tobacco on boat, feast in cabin, landing in England, selling of tobacco, receiving knighthoods— finally contentment and pleasure.
Construction, August 1915
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Published March 31, 2026
