George H. Duggan House(2/1910-6/1911)
3666 McTavish Street [120 McTavish Street], Montreal, QC, Canada
Residential, Urban house [basement, 3 floors, 7 bedrooms]; brick; wall bearing

Client: G.H. Duggan
Architect: E. & W.S. Maxwell

Description: G.H. Duggan was an energetic and successful engineer and businessmen as well as an amateur yacht designer and award-winning yacht racer. Born in Toronto, Ontario, on 6 September 1862, he trained at the School of Practical Science, University of Toronto. He was member and President (1916) of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers and held different positions at Dominion Bridge Co., in Montreal from 1886 on: General Manager, 1913-1919; President, 1919-1936 and Chairman from 1936. He was also Chairman and President of Dominion Engineering Works and held various positions at Dominion Coal Co., a mining venture. He designed and sailed the yacht Seawankaka, winner of the International Cup, 1896-1901. Mr. Duggan was a larger-than-life figure, equally at ease building bridges, managing mining businesses or sailing small boats. George Duggan is known to McGill as the donor of Braehead (http://imago.library.mcgill.ca/campus/buildings/Duggan_House.html), a Neo-Gothic mansion built in 1861 at 3724 McTavish Street by architect Andrew B. Taft for Mr. Orrin S. Wood, manager of Allan’s Montreal Telegraph Co. G.H. Duggan purchased this house in 1929; it had been built in part with limestone from the never-finished Simon McTavish Mansion that stood nearby, and lived there until his death in 1946. Two years earlier he had arranged for the donation of the house to McGill University. The house was connected to the S. Mortimer Barnett Davis House some time later and was used by the Faculty of Law until 1976. Since 1977 the Faculty of Education occupies it. The Maxwells prepared two schemes for this fine urban house located just above McGill’s Thomson House (http://imago.libray.mcgill.ca/campus/buildings/David_Thomson_House.html) on McTavish Street. Scheme no. 1 (not built) called for a narrow, formal row house with a centrally placed bay window and the entrance porch on the narrow street façade and a typical L-type plan (main rooms at the front with a narrower extension in the back). A complete set of drawings signed March 1910 were prepared but cancelled in favour of scheme no. 2 (built, signed set of drawings, May 1910), a more relaxed composition with the main entrance placed on the long, south façade under a curved balcony supported by Tuscan columns. Red pressed brick and stone panels are rendered with Neo-Georgian details. The central part of the entry elevation is slightly bevelled, as are the corners. The street façade has the chimney stack placed on the central axis with slightly recessed widows and stone spandrels on either side. Wrought iron balconies adorn windows on the first floor -the piano nobile -- as the basement is mostly unexcavated. The ground floor is mostly devoted to services (kitchen, servant’s hall and bedrooms, laundry and stores), with the exception of the formal sequence of vestibule/coat room/powder room/study, the latter room with a fireplace serviced by the front elevation chimney stack. The main formal rooms are located on the first floor: a small drawing room and a larger living room with back-to-back fireplaces; the dining room to the rear; the latter two opening unto a balcony above the entrance. Beyond the dining room at the back is a bedroom with bathroom. The second floor has six more bedrooms (the front one with fireplace) and two bathrooms. Mr. Duggan owned another house at 299 Peel Street for which alterations took place in 1901 and a country house at Sydney, Cape Breton, renovated in 1902 (by Maxwell each time). It is unclear which house the family lived in; Mr. Duggan had a son who died at war in 1915, and a daughter. The 1910 house with its nine bedrooms seems fairly large, but so was Braehead, which we know he occupied from 1929. McGill University, Faculty of Education (Child and Adolescent ) AMI Department House, presently occupies the house under the name Hugesson House.

Holdings: Urban house (basement, 3 floors, 7 bedrooms); brick; wall bearing 48 Drawings: 35 ink on linen; 6 pencil on paper; 4 watercolour on paper; 3 blueprints 3 Survey drawings: survey plans, lot plans 10 Development drawings: floor plans, roof plan, elevations, conservatory, exterior steps 7 Working drawings: floor plans, roof plans, elevations 27 Detail drawings: elevations, dining room, living room, study, hall, entry, structure, staircases, mantelpieces, chimneys, doors, furniture, galleries, railings, fittings, terrace 1 Consultant drawing: folding doors1 File folder: correspondenceComment: 1 drawing by Variety M.F.G. Company, Chicago, is included.
Comments: 1 drawing by Variety M.F.G. Company, Chicago, is included.