Paris

Many buildings from this era suffer from an excess of ornament, but the more beautiful buildings done in this style are truly magnificent. The Opera House in Paris by Garnier is a good example. It is a huge building with an extravagant and avant guard floor plan. Each wing of the building is calculated to give maximum visual impact and to create a sense of occasion both inside and out.

This is the kind of architecture that inspired the Beaux Arts style in Canada. IN France it is known as the style of Napoleon III.

Perth

A square building with the entrance on a cutoff corner and a multiplicity of Classical detailing is an obvious Beaux Arts building. This bank in Perth, built in 1903 by Darling and Pearson, is typical of this pattern of Beaux Arts banks. On the street façades are temple fronts with pediments, architraves, dentils, and engaged pilasters.

Unlike the Classical Revival style, the Beaux Arts style makes no pretensions to accuracy of detailing. Instead, it is an eclectic mixture of Classical and Renaissance details. Along with the temple front are half-round windows with keystones, and above the pediments are corner buttresses. The windows on the upper floor have pediments, and within the tympanum of the large pediments are roundels. The building is created in a mixture of red and yellow brick with rough cut stone on the base for rustication.

Brantford

Like the bank in Perth above, this is another corner bank in Brantford that is of the oversized Classical mixture style. Here we have giant order, fluted, Ionic pilasters along the sides with giant order engaged columns on the corner front. Above these are a continuous architrave and frieze with a large cornice and dentil blocks.

On the attic level is a series of windows with alternating triangular and Florentine pediments in the Renaissance style. The parapet on the corner door has a small ziggurat pattern. This mixture of Renaissance and Classical elements is standard for Beaux Arts style buildings.

Norwich

In many parts of Western Ontario the local brick is a lovely yello or orange colour. Here in Norwich the Bank of Montreal sports a local brick with an impressive set of engaged stone pilasters. The three round headed arches on the first floor are Diocletian arches.

This building faces the street, but it is in stark contrast to the rest of the Victorian streetscape.

Galt

Galt has many fine stone buildings. This Beaux Arts Bank is similar in design to the one in Norwich, but is built with stone.

Hamilton

The Bank of Montreal in Hamilton is much larger but is basically the same design as the two above.

Griffin Hamilton

Beaux Arts is difficult to distinguish from Art Deco because both styles are generally for large buildings and both are often constructed in stone. The detailing on Beaux Arts will be Classical. Art Deco detailing will not be something that you can recognise from either the Greek or Roman time periods.

Here the Griffin design on the Bank of Montreal building, first appearing in Mesopotamia, is a design often copied in Renaissance and baroque periods.

Thunder Bay

If Gothic was the vocabulary for educational institutes, Classical was the vocabulary for banks. This CIBC in Thunder Bay has four massive Doric columns with large abacuses and prominent fluting. There are an unusually high frieze with windows, a large cornice, and an attic floor with stylized triglyphs and guttae. The inspiration shows the relatively unadorned surfaces of Greek architecture as opposed to the more ornate Roman.

The pedimented doorway between the central two columns has discrete engaged pilasters and a very simple architrave. The Classical elements are monumental and imposing giving the impression of solidity and mass that is most appropriate in a bank.

Thunder Bay

This bank building designed in 1913 is constructed of local lime stone. In contrast to the extravagant Beaux Arts buildings above, this represents a movement towards "Modern Classicism". Instead of the frantic mixture of Classical and Renaissance detailing, the elements have been reduced to bare essentials.

An exaggerated Renaissance style cornice separates the attic floor from the monumental arcaded façades of the first floor. The windows are divided by unadorned paired pilasters. The half-round windows have simple keystones.

Spandrel panels between the upper and lower halves of the windows show restrained detailing that suggests Art Deco influence. This is repeated on the front door where the broken pediment and keystoned crest containing the date have a decidedly stylized look. All the Classical elements are here but they are used in a more subdued and understatedly elegant manner.

Toronto

This is a less colourful, but much better known, building than the Perth example above. Like it, the entrance is on a cutoff corner and there are two temple fronts facing the street. There is much more ornament and decorative flourishing such as the volutes over the second storey window, the extravagant doorway, and the carved architrave. The pilasters supporting the pediments have ornate capitals as well as crests and garlands.

This Bank of Montreal building was built in 1885 by Darling and Curry. It is now the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Aedicule

An aedicule is a Calssical Door Surround using pilasters, a pediment, and an entablature. This is found on the south elevation of the Bank of Montreal building.

Toronto - Balusrtade

Over the entrance, on the corner of the building,there is an attic story crowned by a balustrade. A small edicule stands in the center. It is flanked by scrolls and has a 'rococo' shell in the tympanum.

Toronto - Pediment

The pediment is in the Baroque style with a broken eliptical arch, a triangulated pediment rsing through the center, and adroned by scrolls. There is both dentil and egg and dart molding. The crest in the center is the Bank of Montreal crest.

Two First Nations people relax beside a sheild which has a beaver, and elm branch which are native to Ontario, the rose and clovers which symbolize British influence and the French Fleurs De Lis. The words: Concordia Salus, latin for "Well-being through harmony", means control over natural resources by commerce.

Toronto - Entrance

The entrance has a coffered barrel vault, with branches in the spandrel panels. There is a keystone and band with another rococo shell within the frieze.

The engaged pilasters have stylized Ionic columns, fluting that extend from the capital to the spring line of the arch.

Bank Bathurst and College

Beaux Arts banks can be found in many parts of Toronto. This oversized soffit is on a bank at Bathurst and College Streets. The soffits are coffered and under these is a frieze of egg and dart. Scrolls with margents flank the window.

Bank Bathurst and College

Obviously this building needs a bit of work, but it is interesting to see how the building was put together. The egg and dart is wonderful as is the beading and the fluting on the column.

Vitruvian Scroll

Above the door on the College Street entrance is a Vitruvian Scroll.

Reed and Ribbon

The door has a round headed arch. There are radiating palm leaves surrounded by a reed and ribbon design.

DowntownToronto

Further downtown is an old Bank of Montreal that has a similar door design. Instead of reed and ribbon this is husk and ribbon.

Toronto

The Canada Life Assurance Company was one of the first Beaux Arts buildings on University Avenue. Insurqance companies grew along with banks in Ontario. Finished in 1931 it was a precursor to the Great Depression, so did not have much company on the street for a few years.

There are huge scroll consoles with triglyphs and guttae on either side of the main door. The Florentine pediment has an oversized keystone.

The Doric style columns start on the second floor. The facade is achromatic and elegant.

Toronto

The side door has a cast iron lintel with a central acroterion. The walls are banded ashlar. The keystone is oversized and ornate.

Toronto

Next door is another Beaux Arts building that has the classical bucrane as a decoration on the architrave.

The capitals are a mixture of palm leaves (on the top) and acanthus on the bottom. Typical of the Beaux Arts style is the mixing of various unrelated classical motifs on the same facade. Palm capitals are more Egyptian in origin while acanthus are more Greek and Roman.

Ottawa

In Ottawa you have a wonderful use of metopes in their traditional use as 'signage' of what the building represents. The metope on the left is mining and industry. In the middle is trade and travel and on the right is a balancing of funds.

Ottawa

This cornice has block modillions and dentils.

The circles on the columns lead to Art Deco which was just becoming popular at this time. Underneath is a decorative Greek Key design.

Ottawa

Here is an agraffe.

Bucrane Toronto

The bucrane is either an ox or a ram's head found on Doric metopes. Often the head is adorned, as it is here, with a husk - bell-flowers in a link. There are also ribbons completing the symbol of opulence and plenty.

Carnegie Dundas

by architect Alfred Hirschfelder Chapman

John Lyle studied first in the Hamilton School of Art, then at Yale University and finally the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He settled in Toronto and dedicated the best part of his career to making Toronto beautiful not just through buildings but also through boulevards, squares and other niceties that enhance the visual landscape.

Public Library Ayr

The Public Library in Ayr is a Carnegie Librarry as well. Designed by architect William Edward Binning, it was opened in 1911.

Notice that the massing of the building is very similar to that of the Galt Bank above.

Brantford

Here is a somewhat different adaptation of Beaux Arts Classicism on a public building; this time it is the Brantford Public Library.

Atop the impressive flight of stairs is a temple-front with four Ionic columns, an entablature announcing the purpose of the building, a pediment with dentiled cornices, a brick tympanum, and an anthemion - a Greek palmette ornament used at the peak of pediments. This temple-front lies in front of a Renaissance styled façade with a heavy cornice and pedimented windows. The center of the plan has a large dome with clerestory lighting. Altogether an impressive place for books.

Union Station Toronto

Union Station is possibly the most well known building designed by architect John Lyle. That he was completely engrossed in the style can be seen by the fact that his place of work was called an Atelier.

John Lyle studied first in the Hamilton School of Art, then at Yale University and finally the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He settled in Toronto and dedicated the best part of his career to making Toronto beautiful not just through buildings but also through boulevards, squares and other niceties that enhance the visual landscape.

Union Station Toronto

Tuscan Order columns line the front of the Union Staion in Toronto. The station is fashioned after the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Tuscan was a Roman order, one of the original Classical orders of architecture.

Under the upper cornice you find dentils. The lower cornice has egg and dart. There are wreaths along the frieze indicating wealth and opulence. The Greek key design is found elsewhere in Toronto.

Toronto

One door in Union station has a huge coffered barrel vault with a cartouched keystone. The windows above the door and the mouldings around the galss doors are all polished brass.

Ottawa 1912

There is a fabulous Beaux Arts train station downtown Ottawa It was meant to be a central train station situated across for the Chateau Laurier hotel and a very short walk to the downtown core.

It functioned in that capacity for many years, then in the 1970s it was decided that there was no more need for trains downtown. The Ottawa train station is now far outside the downtown core, and a bus must be taken from the station to the downtown core. This beautiful building is now a conference center.

Ottawa 1912

The center is an easy walk to the park. The colonade on the south side of the building, opens onto the river and the park.

Ottawa 1912

The Ottawa Government Conference center is much simpler than the Toronto Union Station. The cornice has a simple attic storey above. The columns are Doric order, but not strictly adhering to the Classical model. There are dentils under the cornice.

Dominion Public Building

ASlo on Front street

Royal Alexandra

Not far from his very famous Union Station, John Lyle designed the Royal Alexandra Theatre in 1907

Like many Beaux Arts buildings, you can see that it is an extension of the Second Empire style.

Royal Alexandra

The theatre is named after the grandmother of Edward VII, of the Edwardian style of architecture. It was granted the royal designation by King Edward and is now. This is the sole remaining theatre in North America with the royal designation.

Dominion Public Building Toronto

Here is a another different adaptation of Beaux Arts Classicism on a public building. Here we have a Renaissance first story with crossettes and exaggerated Edwardian keystones. Atop this is a giant order of colmns spanning three floors, something not found in either Renaissance or Classical architecture.

There is a large cornice, like those in the above buildings, that undulates back from the hexastyle (six columns) quasi-temple front. The style is remeniscent of the banks found in Hamilton, Galt and Thunder bay with the pediment and attice being somewhat merged together.

Ottawa

Like the Dominion building above, this building in Ottawa has second storey giant order engaged pilasters and an undulating attic above the cornice.

Toronto Power -Generating Station --Niagara Falls

This is one of the most spectacular Beaux Arts buildings in the province, enhanced by it's incredible location beside the waters of Niagara Falls. There is a rotunda with radiating Ionic columnd, a huge cornice with mutules, and wonderful scrolled ornaments on the attic level remeniscent of Cathedral of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. The architect, E.J. Lennox, must have had a grand time designing it.

Niagara Falls

The main doorway has a hexastyle temple front.

Niagara Falls

Note the huge dentil blocks and the massive columns over an aediculed window.

Sault Ste. Marie

Sault Ste. Marie's Courthouse is another example of a civic building that is created in the Beaux Arts Classicism style. Instead of stone block the material is brick with stone detailing. Again we see an eclectic mixture of Classical and Renaissance details. From the Classical are four engaged Ionic columns under a pediment . The columns are only half the height of the façade and are part of a frontispiece . Like the Renaissance palazzi, the first floor is rusticated and the windows create a regularized pattern.

Thunder Bay

At first glance this looks like a Neo-Gothic school because of the street level which is composed of a four-centered arch opening, spandrels and buttresses. But this base supports a monumental Classical Composite order frontispiece with an exaggerated cornice and elliptical lunette. The cornice is ornamented with egg-and-dart molding.

The side piers have Baroque brackets and above the cornice band is a pediment design completely split into two parts. The building has permanence and presence, but the detailing is wonderfully wild.

Hamilton

At first this bank in Hamilton looks almost as if it could be a Classical Revival. the temple front is convincing until you see that there are four columns and two pillars making up the front. All have Corinthian capitals, but the columns are fluted while the pillars are not.