New Book

Toronto Edwardian Offers Fresh Look on Canada’s Architectural history

The publication of a new book on architect Frank Darling was launched on February 19th in the old Christie Mansion, one of the architect’s finest houses.
Photos courtesy of ERA Architects

Toronto’s architectural community gathered at the University of Toronto’s Regis College (the former Christie mansion) to celebrate the launch of Toronto Edwardian: Frank Darling, Architect of Canada’s Imperial Age, a project supported by ERA Architects and authored by David Winterton, a Principal at the firm. Darling’s previously overlooked architectural legacy was feted in one of his most sumptuous Edwardian interior spaces.

Published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, Toronto Edwardian is the first monograph on architect Frank Darling and his firm Darling & Pearson, the prolific architects who envisioned Toronto’s Edwardian institutional core and many of Canada’s most important early 20th-century buildings. Winterton reconstructs Darling’s career, and expertly draws connections between his Grand Manner architecture and the sociopolitical influences of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Toronto Edwardian’s narrative structure unfolds in two distinct parts: the first provides a cultural and patronage context; the second focuses on the individual buildings through chapters devoted to building types. The book intends to address a gap in Canadian architectural history by focusing on the heady period from 1890 to the early 1920s when Darling’s firm dominated.

“The pre-eminent Toronto-based architecture firm of Darling & Pearson and its main creative force and notable aesthete – Frank Darling (1850–1923) – were certainly the most prolific, and arguably the most influential and talented, of private practitioners during Canada’s Edwardian era.” says Winterton.

A vital contribution to understanding Edwardian-era architecture in Canada, Toronto Edwardian has been enthusiastically endorsed by authorities on the nation’s architectural history and culture.

“David Winterton examines the work of one of Canada’s greatest architects in local, national, and global contexts,” says Mark Osbaldeston, author of Unbuilt Toronto: A History of the City That Might Have Been. “Engagingly written, deeply researched, and extensively illustrated, Toronto Edwardian is an important book, advancing our understanding of Canadian architecture – and Canadian society – during a key period in the nation’s development.”

“David Winterton has opened a window on a period in architecture that has long deserved serious scholarly attention,” says G.A. Bremner, author of Building Greater Britain: Architecture, Imperialism, and the Edwardian Baroque Revival, c.1885–1920. “Beautifully illustrated, with informative and engaging prose, Toronto Edwardian will undoubtedly invigorate debate over Canada’s imperial past as seen through the buildings of one of the foremost architects of the age.”

Toronto Edwardian: Frank Darling, Architect of Canada’s Imperial Age is now available for preorder/purchase from McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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