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U.P.E.I ROBE) „JN UBRARY
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Prince Edward Island Architects
A series from the Institute of Island Architectural Studies and Conservation
William Critchlow Harris
1854 -1913
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, S t 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
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
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 1904. 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, 1910. A
month later Harris suffered the first of the heart attacks that claimed his life in 1913.
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
Biography
William Critchlow Harris was born at Bootle, Liverpool, England, April 30, 1854, the fifth child of William Critchlow
Harris, 1813-99, and Sarah Stretch Harris, 1818-97. His family emigrated to Prince Edward Island in 1856. He was
apprenticed to architect David Stirling in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1870-5, with whom he was in partnership 1877-82. 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
Houses:
Churches:
(those more or less intact in 2000)
(those still standing in 2000 are set in bold/ace type)
Windermere/Water mere, Charlottetown, P E L , 1977
St. James' Anglican, Herring Cove, N.S. 1872
Beaconsfield, Charlottetown, P E L , 1977
Methodist Mission Hall, Charlottetown, P E L , 1877
Charlotte Residence Charlottetown, P E L , 1880
(Kirk of St. James, Charlottetown, P E L , 1877)
MacLennan House, Charlottetown, P E L , 1881
Methodist Church, Tryon, P E L , 1881
Hacker House, Wilmot Valley, P E L , c.1886
All Saints' Anglican, Clifton, N.B., 1884
J.D. MacLeod House, Charlottetown, P E L , 1886
St. Mark's Anglican, Kensington, P E L , 1885
The Priory (R.Young) Charlottetown, P E L , 1887
St Thomas's Anglican, Long Creek, P E L , 1886
Peters/Peake House, Charlottetown, P E L , 1888
St. James' Anglican, Mahone Bay, N.S., 1886
Dundas Terrace, Charlottetown, P E L , 1889
Methodist Church Steeple, Bedeque, P E L 1886
Hawthorne Cottage, Charlottetown, P E L , 1891
St. Paul's Roman Catholic, Sturgeon, P E L , 1887
Brighton Lodge, Charlottetown, P E L , 1892
All Souls' Chapel, Charlottetown, 1888
W.A. Weeks' House, Charlottetown. P E L , c.1892
St. Patrick's Roman Catholic, Grand River, P E L
MacQuarrie House (Silver Fox) Summerside. PEI, 1892
All Saints' Anglican, Springhill, N.S., 1892
Manager's House, Cheticamp. N.S., 1894
St. Elizabeth's Anglican, Springfield, P E L , c.1892
MacKinnon House, Summerside, P E L , c.1894
St. Joseph's Roman Catholic, Kelly's Cross, PEL,1894
R. Moore House, Charlottetown, 1895
St. John's Anglican, Arichat, N.S., 1895
Hazeldean, Springfield, P E L , 1895
St. Paul's Anglican, Charlottetown, P E L , 1895
The Cottage/Caroma Lodge, Charlottetown, 1895
St. John's Roman Catholic, Windsor, N.S., 1898
Senator Murphy House, Tignish, P E L , 1897
St. Patrick's Roman Catholic, Ft. Augustus, PEI, 1898
Lawson House, King Street, Windsor, N.S. 1898
St. John's Anglican, Milton, P E L , 1898
H.C. Mills House, Summerside, P E L , c.1898
St. Anne's Roman Catholic, Emyvale, P E L , c.1898
Wellner Terrace, Charlottetown, P E L , 1900
St. Malachy's Roman Catholic, 1899
Briardene, Antigonish, N.S., 1901
St. John's Anglican baptistry, tower, Truro, N . S , 1900
Louis Kaye House/Sigma Chi, Halifax, N.S., c 1902
Central Christian, Charlottetown, P E L , 1900.
Borden House, Canning, N . S , 1902
St Mary's Roman Catholic, Souris, P E L , 1901
Rutherford House, Gaspereaux, N.S., c.1902
St. James' Anglican, Newport, N.S., 1901
St. John the Evangelist Anglican, Crapaud, P E L , 1901 R. Cotton House, Charlottetown, P.E.I., 1904
St. Peter's Rectory, Charlottetown, P E L , 1904
St. Mary's Roman Catholic, Indian River, P E L , 1902
Ducksberry House, Whitney Pier, N.S., c.1905
St. John's Anglican, North Sydney, N.S., 1902
MacDonald House, North Sydney, N.S. c.1906
Trinity Anglican, Sydney Mines, N.S., 1903
102 Pierce Street House, North Sydney, N.S., c. 1906
St. Andrew's Anglican, Mulgrave, N.S., 1904
Dr. R.F.O. O'Brien House, Halifax, N.S., 1910
St. George's Anglican, Falmouth, N.S., 1904
Tudor Apartments, Halifax, N.S , c 1910
All Saints' Anglican, Bedford, N . S , 1904
Two Houses, Prince's Lodge, Halifax, N.S.
St. Alban's Anglican, Whitney Pier, N.S., c 1905
Immaculate Concept'n Roman Catholic, Truro, N.S. 1908 Presbyteries and Rectories in Kinkora, Kelly's Cross,
Emyvale, Charlottetown (2), P.E.I., New Germany, N.S.
Anglican Church, Londonderry, N.S., c.1909
St. James' Anglican, Spry Bay, N.S. 1910
Public Buildings
St. Joseph's Roman Catholic, N Sydney, N . S , 1911
King's County Courthouse, Georgetown, P E L , 1887
St. Cuthbert's Roman Catholic, St. Teresa, P E L , 1911
College Ste-Anne, Church Point, N . S , 1899
The Transfiguration Anglican, New Burn, N.S , 1912
Newson, Cameron, Desbrisay, Connolly, Hogan, and
Emmanuel Anglican, Dartmouth, N.S., 1912
Rogers Buildings, Charlottetown, P.E.I.
Bibliography
Gothic Dreams: Biography of WC Harris, Dundurn,
1978, Gothic Dreams: Architecture of WC Harris,
Confed. Centre of the Arts 1993. Both by R.C. Tuck.
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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