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Duncan McIntyre and Richard B. Angus Houses(10/1892 - 4/1894)
3674-3690 Peel Street, Montreal, QC, Canada
Residential, Urban house [2 semi-detached, basement, 5 bedrooms, 2 servants' rooms]; stone; wall bearing

Client: Duncan McIntyre and Richard Bladworth Angus
Architect: E. Maxwell

Description: Though most of the semi-detached houses, which Edward Maxwell designed, were for modest-income clients, few were designed as mansion-like double houses. The best example of this kind was produced when the Canadian Pacific Railway magnates Duncan McIntyre and Richard B. Angus commissioned Edward to build an elegant semi-detached house for their respective children. It was decided that McIntyre’s son, Duncan Junior, and his wife Nellie were to live in northern half, while Elspeth Hudson Angus and her husband Charles Meredith would occupy the southern half of the semi-detached structure. Edward designed a Châteauesque fortress of roughhewn Miramichi sandstone with battered turrets and conical towers. The style was basically adopted because it was appealing at that time, particularly to those people who were involved with the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. Many hotels and stations designed for the company across Canada adopted this style. When Edward was working on McIntyre-Angus Houses, American architect Bruce Price was concurrently supervising the construction of the first of the great Château-style hotels, the Château Frontenac in Quebec City. The Maxwells were later to design an important addition to the hotel. The main façade of both houses took advantage of the views of the river to the south and Mount Royal to the north. The front façade of one house is the replica of the other and is divided in two with the party wall emphasized by a large dormer placed on the steeply sloping roof. The dormer window reflects the Château style and is decorated with elaborately carved pinnacles. The features such as large chimneys, dormers and gables that puncture the roofline enhance the appearance of the façade by breaking the formal symmetry. The notable difference in terms of elevation lies in two turrets that occupy the houses at two ends. The house designed for Richard B. Angus in the southern half features a polygonal turret in contrast to the semicircular north turret designed for Duncan McIntyre House. These turrets rest on a two-storey bay, which partially intersects the gable roof above. The window openings in the bays at the top light the interiors of the gable, which is a distinct feature of the Château style. The McIntyre-Angus Houses adopts the mirror plan; an idea derived from the English terrace house and was used as a technique to reduce the cost of construction. Edward was probably persuaded by Duncan McIntyre to adopt this concept, for which his house on Dorchester Street (now René-Lévesque Boulevard) built by architect William Tutin Thomas, employed the mirror image plan. Edward was familiar with this concept from his Boston days. The floor plan resembles an I-shape. The entrance porch leads to a reception hall through a small vestibule. In the Angus House, the hall to its right opens into a drawing room facing Peel Street and to its left, the dining room with the access to kitchen and pantry. The front and back stairs are arranged along the spine of both houses. These stairs are reached by crossing the reception hall. The interiors of the houses were dark compared to other Edward designed houses. This is mainly because the light flowed through only three sides of the wall surface with all the windows deeply recessed. Another reason for this was due to the oak, cedar, mahogany, and magnolia wainscoting. A single skylight filled with stained glass panels filters light into the stairwell. Two years after this project completed, Edward built two more semi-detached houses, one for Thomas Samuel (197) at 35 Cote-Saint-Antoine Road and the other for George Plow at 356 Metcalfe Avenue. The McIntyre-Angus Houses demonstrated, among other, Edward’s ability to tailor the architectural requirements of the structure to the financial means of his clients.

Holdings: Urban house (2 semi-detached, basement, 5 bedrooms, 2 servants' rooms); stone; wall bearing
31 Drawings: 18 ink on linen; 4 ink on paper; 9 watercolour on linen
3 Presentation drawings: floor plans
7 Development drawings: floor plans, attic floor plan, roof plan, elevations, section, structure, finishes
9 Working drawings: floor plans, attic floor plans, elevations, section
12 Detail drawings: alcove, hall, entry, stairs, mantelpieces, fittings, finishes
2 Photographs: 2 finished exteriors

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