Crown Assets: The Architecture of the Department of Public Works, 1867-1967

David E. Smith is a professor of political Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan and the author of Building a Province: A History of
Saskatchewan in Documents and The Invisible Crown.

Crown Assets offers not only a compendium of federal buildings
constructed during Canada’s first century but also an exposition on
the evolution of architecture and its relationship to government and the
society it serves. All the familiar structures are here, with those on
Parliament Hill (begun before Confederation, it is true, but later
replaced, as was the Centre Block following the fire of 1916, or
expanded, as was the West Block in the 1870s) at the visual and symbolic
centre. The post offices, hospitals, immigration buildings, armories,
experimental farms, research laboratories, and more, appear and reappear
in Second Empire (the first “approved ‘federal’ style”), Beaux
Arts, Edwardian Baroque, Art Deco, and International Dress. At a time
when successful federalism means expanded provincialism, it is startling
today to be reminded of a federal presence that still visibly defines
most Canadian communities.

Janet Wright has produced more than a catalogue of brick and stone or
glass and steel buildings, however. The Crown Assets, she makes clear,
were the product of politics liberally defined. The principal actors
were the departments of the federal government (with central roles
assigned to Public Works and its Chief Architect’s Branch), the
architectural professional (whose spokesmen cited here include John
Lyle, John Parkin, and Ernest Cormier), planning authorities like the
National Capital Commission, and such leaders as Macdonald, Mackenzie,
and King, the last of whom, the author says, “regarded the creation of
a dignified and beautiful national capital as his final legacy to the
nation.” The role of the Massey Commission in influencing
architectural taste is seldom recognized by historians; Wright remedies
this omission too.