Early Domestic Architecture in Regina: Presentation Drawings and Plans

David E. Smith is a political science professor at the University of
Saskatchewan and author of Jimmy Gardiner: Relentless Liberal.

This is a catalogue of a 1982 exhibit of drawings by four Regina architects: Edgar M. Storey, Stanley E. Store, William Gysbert Van Egmond, and Francis Henry Portnall. The first three were in partnership; Portnall worked alone. Except for Edgar M. Storey, who died before World War I, the others continued to practise until the late forties and fifties. The catalogue’s six colour plates and 56 black-and-white plates are of sketches executed before 1930.

Presentation drawings consist of preliminary renderings for the client and post-contract specification sheets for the contractor and craftsman. Except for two, all are of single residential dwellings. Their interest lies in the contrast between the work of Portnall and the others and in the influence which British and French models had on North American drawing practice.

A quarter of the catalogue is devoted to discussing “residential architecture” and “domestic planning.” The evolution of the nineteenth century country house into a North American middle-class structure is summarized; as well, there are numerous references to style types and the use and arrangement of interior spaces. The unifying effect of the Chicago Prairie School on Storey and Van Egmond’s work is particularly noted; it was needed, since their style type is labelled “eclectic.”

Architectural vocabulary is arcane and the turgid prose of the catalogue offers little enlightenment. The houses themselves are jewels and the specific information provided on each contributes, as the Foreword claims, to “the reconstruction of Canadian architectural history.”