1915 – Knox College, Toronto, Canada

Constructed after an architectural competition that attracted a large number of entries adjudicated by the Board of Management alongside Professor Percy K. Hobbs, of the School of Architecture, McGill University, and Frank Darling, prominent Toronto architect.

Designed by architectural firm Chapman & McGiffin in the Collegiate Gothic style that was popular in North America at this time. Finished externally in Credit Valley grey sandstone, with Indiana limestone trimmings. A U-shaped plan around a cloister and courtyard in the centre. The courtyard is divided into two by a covered cloister which crosses between the east and west wings of the building. The building includes offices, residences, library, and a chapel. The interior highlight is the lobby in the eastern wing of the building with fan vaulting and dramatic staircases which provide access to the chapel on the south side and the library on the north side.

“It stands as a conspicuous achievement among the newer works which has come to take place in the University group; and reflects deserving credit upon its designers, Messrs. Chapman & McGiiffin, whose solution of a most difficult problem has resulted in an institution which picturesquely adds to existing structures on the grounds, and shows an interesting grasp of the complex requirements which its various offices necessarily involve. Briefly summarized, the organization to be housed in the new college buildings can be divided roughly into the six elements of the chapel, the library, the academic portion, the administrative offices, the residences or dormitories, and the dining hall, with its accompanying services.

The chapel seats slightly over five hundred people, and is about ten feet above grade level, having below it a gymnasium with locker and shower rooms adjoining. The library consists in a large reading room, adjoining a modern stack room, the latter having a capacity of seventy-five thousand volumes and an office for the librarian controlling both the stack room and the reading room. For academic purposes there are six class rooms and a corresponding number of professors’ rooms; the class rooms varying in seating capacity from twenty-five to sixty. The administrative portion consists in a waiting room, a general office, the principal’s private office and a large board room; the latter loom has been given considerable dignity owing to its possible use for other purposes than those only connected with the college.

In the students’ residences or dormitories are accommodations for slightly over one hundred students, the latter for purposes of control are separated into three distinct houses. Each house is four storeys high, has a reception room on the ground floor and bathing and lavatory accommodation on every floor, and in practically all cases a student has been given a room to himself. The dining hall accommodates about one hundred and fifty men in tables running lengthwise and a “high” table across the end. A students’ common room and a private dining room forms part of this group, as well as the necessary serving pantry. Below the dining hall is a floor devoted to the servants’ accommodation, and below this is the kitchen with the necessary store rooms, etc. In addition to the foregoing- there are two debating rooms, or club rooms, and a small hospital in the St. George street tower.

The site chosen for the college measures three hundred and fifty feet in length by two hundred and thirty-four feet in depth, and it has a slight slope to the south. The building faces St. George street on the west and the University lawn on the east, and the academic portion of the building was kept on the University side, while the residential portion adjoined the street. These two wings are connected on the south side, thus forming three sides of a quadrangle from which the three residences are entered. The completed scheme takes into consideration the extension of the building at some future date, so* as to enclose the quadrangle on the four sides. An open cloister traverses the quadrangle, giving a protected passage across the court from the academic to the residential portion of the buildings.”
Construction, October 1915

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