If there was one thing Edward James "E.J." Lennox did not lack, it was confidence.
As the architect behind OId City Hall, Lennox wasn’t afraid to fight for his vision of the project, even if that meant ruffling the feathers of penny-pinching city councillors — and even scaling a fence — to get his way.
The future of Old City Hall currently hangs in the lurch. Its final courthouse tenants will vacate this spring and the city has failed to secure a private sector replacement, or funding for something more ambitious, like a Museum of Toronto.
Known as the “builder of Toronto,” Lennox was commissioned to design many of Toronto’s more notable structures, including Casa Loma.
His story is the story of a man willing to stick his neck out to make the Gilded Age-era city bloom.
Lennox was “combative and fearless when it came to speaking his mind,” according to his biographer Marilyn M. Litva, who argued Lennox “believed he was destined to be a great architect. The quantity and quality of his work speak to that conviction.”
Born in Toronto in 1854, Lennox’s career began with a five-year partnership with William Frederick McCaw and the design of several churches. His most notable early works included the Hotel Hanlan (a hotel on the Toronto Islands owned by champion rower Ned Hanlan that was later destroyed by a fire) and offices and residences for the Massey manufacturing family.
In 1886, Lennox won a competition to design a building to serve as a York County courthouse and replacement for Toronto’s second city hall, whose shell still exists on the face of St. Lawrence Market’s south building.
Inspiration and very heavy gargoyles
After touring municipal buildings in several eastern American cities for inspiration, Lennox was most impressed with the Alleghany County Courthouse in Pittsburgh — and it's easy to see its visual references reflected in Lennox’s design for Toronto’s Old City Hall.
Lennox seized on the Romanesque style of the Pittsburgh building, including elements of 11th and 12th century southern European architecture, like arched entrances, stone construction and medieval motifs.
When Old City Hall’s cornerstone was laid in November 1891, Lennox declared it would “be second to none of its kind in America.”
Parks Canada’s plaque outside Old City Hall calls the building a “clear expression of the region's late 19th century self-confidence.”
Among the unique features of Lennox’s design is the off-centre clock tower, designed to line up perfectly with Bay Street, which ended in front of the site at that time.
A more problematic addition by Lennox was the use of gargoyles that weighed 900 kilograms apiece. A city draftsman was nearly killed when a gargoyle's jaw crashed through the roof in March 1921.
Lennox was unhappy when the city architect contemplated removing them.
“No decent architect would do such a thing as to remove them all,” he told the Toronto Star. “It will spoil the general appearance.”
What went unreported was that two other gargoyle jaws had previously fallen off as well. The gargoyles were removed from Old City Hall in 1939 but were recreated during renovations in the early 2000s.
A late night storming of the site
Relations between Lennox and original contractors Elliott & Neelon deteriorated during the early construction period. He was upset that they brought in expensive labourers from outside the city when there were many construction workers in Toronto who were underemployed due to an economic recession. He also believed the contractors were using shoddy materials and supplies.
As August 1892 ended, Lennox served the contractors with a 10-day notice to leave the project. They responded with a restraining order that prevented Lennox from being onsite.
At the end of day 10, Lennox, along with half-a-dozen police officers, went on a mission to reclaim his project. He tore out a plank from the hoarding the contractors had erected, scaled the fence and found two unarmed night watchmen. He fired them, then quickly rehired them when they agreed to work for him.
Elliott & Neelon were dropped from the project and unsuccessfully sued the city.
Lennox became the new contractor, allowing him to work with his desired labour pool and bring in materials he preferred, such as Credit Valley sandstone. He introduced an eight-hour workday.
The ‘builder of Toronto’
Over the decade Lennox built Old City Hall, he also designed many other projects.
Among his most significant surviving structures from the 1890s are the Massey Mausoleum in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery and the Toronto Athletic Club at 149 College St. (now the University of Toronto’s Stewart Building). He also designed blocks of commercial and warehouse buildings, private residences and the original Fred Victor Mission.
As Old City Hall construction slowly progressed and costs climbed, Lennox’s relationship with Toronto’s building committee deteriorated as he was increasingly asked to justify his actions.
Despite the price tag for the project rising from $1 million to $2.5 million, then-mayor John Shaw defended the money spent when the building opened in September 1899.
“Great buildings symbolize a people’s deeds and aspirations,” Shaw noted. “It has been said that, whenever a nation had a conscience and a mind, it recorded the evidence of its being in the highest products of this greatest of all arts.”
“Where no such monuments are to be found, the mental and moral natures of the people have not been above the faculties of the beasts.”
Canadian Architect and Builder magazine argued Lennox’s work proved Canadians could do as good a job or better than architects imported from the United States, as had been the case with Buffalo-based Richard Waite’s recent work on the Ontario Legislature Buildings at Queen’s Park.
Quiet revenge
When Old City Hall was completed, the city refused to place a plaque identifying Lennox as its architect.
Lennox did not accept this humiliation quietly.
On all four sides underneath the roof, Lennox had his name and profession carved into the stone.
When a journalist discovered the carvings in early 1899 and declared them “Lennox’s gigantic gall,” Canadian Architect and Builder defended Lennox, noting that identifying the architect was a standard European practice and the recently built Queen’s Park buildings included a life-size figure of its architect.
The carvings were soon forgotten, to be rediscovered in the early 1970s.
Legend also has it that Lennox took one other measure to spite city council.
A series of grotesque faces carved into a pillar at the front entrance are allegedly caricatures of the councillors he was at odds with. The only face rendered respectfully just happens to resemble Lennox.
Simmering disagreements between Lennox and the city boiled over in 1907 when he produced an itemized account of what he felt the city still owed him for Old City Hall, including for the time he had spent at city meetings.
Lennox demanded $181,000, which council refused to pay. Lennox sued.
The protracted case took five years to settle, eventually netting Lennox $60,000 plus interest; far less than he felt he deserved.
It turned out that despite having continued to consult on Old City Hall’s finishing touches such as utility fixtures and carpets, no public records indicated that he was promised additional payment once the physical structure was finished.
Casa Loma and Lennox’s vision for the 21st century
Lennox remained busy while he waited for his money. He modified another architect’s design for the King Edward Hotel and worked on the west wing of the Ontario Legislature after it suffered fire damage. Other surviving structures include St. Paul’s Anglican Church on Bloor Street East and the Ralph Thornton Centre on Queen Street East (originally designed as a postal station).
His largest commission in Toronto during this time was Casa Loma, fulfilling owner Sir Henry Pellatt’s dream of building a castle.
Lennox purchased land nearby at 5 Austin Terr. and built a less dramatic home of his own, known as Lenwil, where he lived until his death in 1933.
Thinking ahead, he was asked in 1904 to write an article for a city-published annual where he envisioned what Toronto would look like a century in the future.
Lennox predicted that by 2004 the old city core would be replaced with a series of giant towers connected by enclosed above-ground bridges where noiseless streetcars would run.
He envisioned “boards of expert commissions” appointed by the city “whose duty it will be to see that no building is allowed to be erected except when it is strictly of good design and one that will enhance the architectural appearance of the city.”
Summing up Lennox’s legacy in a 1978 Financial Post article, writer Doug Fetherling observed that he “was probably responsible, perhaps more than anyone else, for giving Toronto the swagger for which it’s so unanimously detested by other parts of the country.”
“Historically, his buildings are an excellent symbol for what it is about Toronto that residents of other places dislike: big, boastful, confident, and smug.”
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Jamie Bradburn is a Toronto-based freelance writer and historian, specializing in tales of the city and beyond. His work has been published by Spacing, the Toronto Star and TVO.
