Howard Dennison Chapman, RIP

I read the sad news in yesterday's Globe and Mail that architect Howard Dennison Chapman died. He was 96.

Chapman was the son of Alfred H. Chapman, the Toronto architect behind the Royal Ontario Museum's entrance on Queen's Park, the Princes Gates at the Canadian National Exhibition, the Toronto Hydro Building and others.

Chapman pere also built Toronto's first Central Reference Library, which Chapman fils restored (with partner Howard Walker) and turned into the Koffler Student Centre of the University of Toronto (which houses the university book store).

Alfred Chapman left no information (that I could find anyway) about who the bearded figure is on the building, and Howard was unable to answer the question when I spoke to him in 2005 while researching Faces on Places: A Grotesque Tour of Toronto.

Among his other works was the "half-round" Riverdale Hospital (with Len Hurst), which was demolished in 2013 after years of opposition.

A web exhibit of some of his work by the City of Toronto archives is still online.

Another view of March: Windy (in Chicago and in Toronto — at Jilly's strip club)

March "was a lousy month to exist on the South Side of Chicago... March was the final fart of winter."

So declared the late John Powers in his novel The Last Catholic in America.

John grew up around the block from me on the South Side of Chicago, and the Last Catholic is a book about our neighbourhood.

March is known for wind — the kind needed for kite-flying, as well as the meteorological flatulence Powers described — which is why I chose this terra cotta relief from a building in central Toronto to illustrate it. (More about the building later.)

Powers continued his description of this transitional month: March "would rain on us one day, freeze us the second day, and on the third day blow us off our feet. By the end of the month, we were globs of wind-wracked ice... In March, we would go to school ... dressed in fur-lined raincoats, cleated shoes guaranteed not to slide on ice-glazed sidewalks, and bricks in our lunch boxes so we wouldn't blow away."

These terra cotta pieces, and others like them, appear on a building that started life in 1893 as an office building known as Dingman's Hall. Located at the corner of Broadview and Queen Street East, it was built by Archibald Dingman, who had a varied business career — but not as varied as the uses to which this building has been put.

Dingman's Hall was a meeting place, with rooms rented out to visiting Shriners, Masons and others. Later, the building was known as the Broadview Hotel. It is currently a boarding house — the New Broadview Hotel — but is generally referred to as Jilly's, the name of the strip club on the first floor.

When Archie Dingman owned the building, he was a partner in the Comfort Soap Company. He was also associated with the Scarboro Electric Railway and a firm that built coaster brakes for bicycles, before moving west to Alberta and getting into the oil industry, according to his obit. He died in 1936, two weeks shy of his 86th birthday.

Most of what I've read about Dingman overlooks an unexpected accomplishment: In 1899 (or thereabouts), he somehow crossed paths and teamed up with composer Davenport Kerrison and wrote the lyrics of "The Flag That Bears the Maple Leaf." Although the song predates by more than 60 years the introduction of the new Canadian flag bearing the maple leaf, it probably referred to the maple leaf insignia worn by Canadian soldiers during the Boer War:

The flag that bears the maple leaf,
Entwined about thy brow shall be,
An emblem that beneath its folds,
No slave shall cry for liberty;

REFRAIN
Hurrah, boys, Hurrah!
For Canada, Hurrah!
No harm to her can e'er befall,
No danger great shall us appall,
While our prairies grand and Egypt's sand,
Tell how our heroes fall...
Tell how our heroes fall.

The Saxon force, the Celtic fire,
Grand heritage that thou dost own,
Make bold the Lion's brood and strong,
To front and brave the world alone,

REFRAIN

On many field of carnage red,
Stern duty's call thou hast obeyed,
And while they daughters sad-eyed wept,
Thy sturdy sons have hist'ry made,

REFRAIN

Should foes again our land assail,
Or traitor's foot her soil profane,
In serried ranks with iron front
We'll steadfast stand and not in vain,

REFRAIN

The lions of March (part 2)

More of Toronto's architectural lions to mark the beginning of March...

Unfortunately, I don't have much any information on the history of the buildings to which these fellows are attached.

I talked to the then-owner of the house that sports these lions, but none of the very detailed information she gave me squared with anything I later looked up. So just enjoy these not-terribly ferocious-looking felines:

This guy has graced this yellow building (which has been a variety of restaurants) for as long as I've been in Toronto, in the Yonge-Eglinton neighbourhood:

Here is a newer cat (judging from the relative newness of the house), in one of Toronto's tonier 'hoods:

And finally, the lion I am most curious about. This fellow and his brothers appear on a number of houses in North Toronto. They're all made of cast stone, so are suffering varying degrees of erosion. But to get an idea of how really small they are, see how they barely register when you view the whole house. Maybe these are cowardly lions?

Tomorrow, some windy architectural sculpture...

The lions of March (part 1)

March has arrived. In Toronto, there are no alerts or warnings or red notifications on the Weather Network. But the forecast is for more wintry weather for the foreseeable future.

So it's as true as ever this year that March comes in like a lion (and — one can only hope this year — will go out like a lamb).

To mark the start of March, I thought I'd post some of Toronto's architectural lions:

If this were a human face tangled up in foliage, it would be called a "green man." I don't know if there is a category of architectural sculpture known as the "green lion," but there ought to be, based on this example alone.

Lions may be so ubiquitous in architectural sculpture because of their frequent use in heraldry, and because they stand for virtually everything.

This building is currently a branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), at Church and Carlton, but it was originally the Somerset House Hotel, built in 1895 by Frederick H. Herbert and remodelled in 1930 by Langley & Howland.

In entry for Herbert in the online Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada 1800-1950, Robert Hill says he was a proponent of the Queen Anne style and his work was characterized by circular corner towers (of which this is a modified example).

Here's another CIBC lion, although from the days when it was just the Imperial Bank of Canada, and before its merger with the Canadian Bank of Commerce in 1961.

I shot this on a recently closed CIBC branch in Leaside. The building has recently been sold to a developer. It was built in 1940-1941 as the official bank to the former Town of Leaside and, according to the building's heritage property nomination form, was the scene of a Boyd Gang hold up.