PEI COLLECTION ^collection ^c^^/ *&%?& lLiDS:V^ - -;^'"':' P.E.I. COLLECTION LIBRARY OF U.P.E.I. ikJt University of Prince Edward Island A Gift to the Robertson Library From ^-d^C A Guide to the Charlottetown of William and Robert Harris Robert Harris, 1849 - 1919, left, and his brother, William C. Harris, jr., 1854 - 1913, above, came to Prince Edward Island as small children in an Anglo- Welsh immigrant family in 1856. Today Charlottetown has important collections of Robert's paintings of people and landscapes, and is rich in churches, private homes, public buildings and business blocks designed by William. This little book will tell you what there is to see, and where to find it by Robert C. Tuck A Guide to the Charlottetown of William and Robert Harris P.E.I. COLLECTION LIBRARY OF U.P.E.I. by Robert C Tuck LIBRARY USE ONLY PEI NA 749 .H37 T84 1997 Maplewood Books A Guide to the Charlottetown of William and Robert Harris by Robert C. Tuck Maplewood Books, 90 Maplewood Crescent, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada CIA 2X6 Email rtuck@isn.net 902-628-1955 Copyright 1997 by Robert C Tuck All rights reserved. Published July 1997 Design, Production & Printing: Maplewood Books Binding: Irwin Print, Charlottetown. ISBN 0-9682492-1-3 The Charlottetown of Robert and William Harris Introduction Quite often I am asked to give a talk on William Harris, or take a group on a walk about Charlottetown to see the buildings he designed. This little book is the outcome of these invitations. It is brief enough to be read in an hour, and small enough to fit in your pocket as you explore the old town. You will notice that the subject of this book is the Charlottetown not only of architect William Harris, but also of his brother, portrait painter and landscape artist Robert Harris. Robert's Charlottetown is not as obvious as William's, but it is there nevertheless, not only in the paintings in All Souls' Chapel and in the Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum Permanent Collection, but also in Province House and Fanning Bank, the Lieutenant Governor's mansion. There are always Robert Harris paintings from the Permanent Collection in these government buildings; and there are others in private collections in Charlottetown and elsewhere in Prince Edward Island Also part of Robert and William Harris's Charlottetown are the houses in which they lived as children, growing up in an immigrant family in the 1850s and 1860s. Their parents, W. Critchlow and Sarah Stretch Harris, lived in no fewer than 14 different houses following their arrival in Charlottetown from Liverpool on the barque Isabel on October 10, 1856. Several of these houses are still standing, and you will find pictures of them in an appendix. If you would like to know more about Robert and William Harris, and their family, there are a number of books available - although several are out of print and can be found only in libraries and second¬ hand book shops. I list them in a bibliography at the back. Robert C. Tuck, Charlottetown, July 1, 1997 /. The Provincial Building. Robert Harris financed his first formal art studies in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 1870s by painting portraits of prominent citizens and politicians at home in Prince Edward Island. Each commision paid him $25 to $30 - when he was able to collect it. Today several of these portraits hang in the Legislative Chamber of the Provincial Building in Charlottetown (left), including that of Cornelius Howatt (below right), notable as an opponent of Prince Edward Island's entry into Confederation, and Edward Whelan, a fearless journalist and opponent of the land ownership system that hobbled the development of the Island in Colonial days. Other Robert Harris paintings, as for example Comrades (below left), presently hanging in the Speaker's suite, are on loan to Province House from the Permanent Collection at the Confederation Centre of the Arts Gallery and Museum. 2. Confederation Centre of the Arts Gallery & Museum Next door to Province House the Confederation Centre of the Arts Gallery and Museum includes thousands of works of art by Robert Harris in its permanent collection, from small drawings in 60 sketchbooks to large landscape and portrait paintings. Some part of this collection is always on show, together with a selection of architectural drawings from the folios of William Harris. The Gallery is open daily in the summer. Portraits by Robert Harris of two of his sisters, Margaret Ellin (left) and Sarah (right). Both of these paintings form part of the Permanent Collection of the Confederation Centre of the Arts Gallery and Museum. Robert Harris's studies for his famous painting, The Fathers of Confederation, include the above colour sketch. His large portrait of Sir John A. Macdonald, made shortly before the statesman's death in 1891, may also be seen in the Gallery. 3. Charlottetown through Harris Eyes Some of the best visual recordings of early Charlottetown come from the hand of Robert Harris. The watercolour sketch of the city (below) dates from about 1869, and shows the timber spires of St. Dunstan's Cathedral, St. Paul's Parish Church, and the Kirk of St. James (all three have since been replaced by stone buildings). As a teenager Robert Harris was employed by surveyor Henry Cundall, and a carefully drawn map of the city dates from this period. These and other pencil and watercolour drawings of Charlottetown, as well as later oil paintings of the city by Robert, form part of the Permanent Collection at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum, and are often on show in the Gallery. In the 1880s and 1890s Ned Harris, the younger brother of Robert and William, who was born in Charlottetown in 1861, took photographs of Charlottetown. The picture (right) of the children of Tom and Henrietta \ 4 (Haszard) Harris, and Margaret Ellin (Harris) and Will Cotton, playing with some friends in the front yard of Hawthorne Villa (see page 18), is reproduced from an old print made on blue paper from Ned's camera. In the background is the steeple of the Kirk of St. James (left), and on the right the roof of St. Peter's Cathedral. 4. Victoria Row In February, 1884, fire destroyed the Charlottetown post office on Queen's Square, and a row of wooden shops across from it on Richmond Street. At this time William Harris was in Winnipeg, but he returned immediately to Charlottetown at the prospect of work. Richmond Street was rebuilt in brick. Two of the new buildings were designed by Harris: the Cameron block (above), and the Newson Block (below). The Cameron block is unique among Harris's designs in that its front elevation is symmetrical. A neo-classical storefront has replaced the original Harris- designed front on the Newson block. As the old photograph shows, it used to be like that on the Cameron building. The change was made by a bank that bought the building in 1908. Harris's favourite dog-tooth trim gave way to Ionic ornament. Terrible fires that wiped out timber-built town cores in the Maritime Provinces were common before the First World War - Digby, Windsor, Bridgewater and Summerside were all devastated. Before the ruins had cooled, the towns were descended upon by architects looking for work. Some fine buildings of brick ensued, none better anywhere than those in "Victoria Row". Two of Harris's most impressive buildings - the federal Cabot Building (or post office) and the Market Hall - once stood across from Victoria Row where the Confederation Centre complex now stands. They too were destroyed by fire. 5. Charlotte Parish Church Charlottetown was laid out in the 18th century to serve as a colonial capital. At its centre was Queen's Square, where - as Sarah Harris noted in one of her letters - Westminster was created in miniature. At its eastern end was the Parish Church, dedicated in honour of St. Paul. In 1888 the parish built a handsome stone rectory on the Square to plans by William Harris, and in 1894 it commissioned him to design a new church to replace its old wooden building. Because it is the first of the churches of his mature period, and incorporates all the features that made him successful as an ecclesiastical architect, St. Paul's is the most important of all William Harris's buildings. His earlier church designs reflect English Gothic precedents, but at St. Paul's he adopted elements of French Gothic Style out of acoustical and liturgical considerations. He made the chancel the same height and width as the nave, with an apse rather than a square end. The ceiling is groined, the better to distribute sound waves throughout the interior. The cells in the chancel walls are made resonant by thin sheets of maple and spruce separated by a narrow space, and the chancel floor is supported on a single post of juniper wood, corresponding to the sounding post in a violin. Harris, a musician himself, designed St. Paul's as if it were a large musical instrument. The exterior stonework has recently been cleaned, and restored where necessary. The octagonal vestries were added as 1st World War memorials. Inside, the lights have been removed from the column capitals to holes cut in the ceiling, and the chancel floor extended. Note the red clay tiles in the sanctuary walls, made at the Hornsby Charlottetown Pottery, and the beautifully crafted pulpit. 6. DesRrisay and Connolly Buildings The DesBrisay block (below), at the corner of Grafton and Queen streets, was built in 1901 to plans drawn by William Harris^ and features the multi-coloured brickwork popularised by the English architect William Butterfield. The brick was imported from Ontario. Architecturally, it is one of the finest buildings of its kind in eastern Canada. Both William Harris and his older brother Tom had offices in the building On the morning of February 2, 1904, Tom was found lying on the floor of his office with his doorkey in his hand, dead of a heart attack just after arriving at work. For many years Hughes drug store, reputed to be the oldest in Canada, occupied the ground floor of the building. All that's left of the drugstore is some elaborate oak wood work carved by James A Stewart. The brickwork was cleaned recently, and the building presents an attractive appearance appropriate to the premier corner of Charlottetown. The Owen Connolly building (right) at 75 Queen Street, erected in 1889 two years after Mr. Connolly's death by the trustees of his estate, on the other hand remains uncleaned. The black grime on its rough hewn Island and Nova Scotia stone facade is a relic of days gone by when Charlottetown was largely heated by coal fires in open grates. The exterior of the building is mostly unspoiled including the passageway on the left that admitted horse-drawn carts to the yard at the back. A massive parapet supports a bust of Mr. Connolly carved by Howard Ramsay. 7. Rogers and Hogan Buildings and a unique Church The Rogers Hardware Building (below), at 70 Grafton Street, with its rusticated stone and brickwork facade, was built as a warehouse in 1896. The grey stone inserts are Harris signatures, and echo those on St. Paul's Church at the other end of Queen's Square. At 137 Kent Street another Butterfield-style multicoloured William Harris business block has not only been restored but has spawned an offspring in the shape of a smaller building in identical style. The original building was a duplex, with living quarters opening on a lawn in the back. It was designed by William Harris and built by M.P. Hogan in 1886. The original store front was later replaced by plate glass and bland mid-20th century bricks. The bricks have been removed, and the plate glass is now set in brickwork that matches the 1880s work in the upper storeys. Two blocks east on Kent Street is Central Christian Church, built to William Harris's plans by Lowe Brothers in 1901. Despite its small size its exterior shows considerable sophistication in the way its conical-roofed round tower relates to the spacial volumes of the nave, transept and entrance. The bartizans at the corners, the snub gables and the holey bargeboards are Harris signatures. Inside there is a groined ceiling and a small gallery. An ell on the east side is a later addition. liT^. ■ ,",; ■ "■ ■ ■■ ■■ ■ 8. The Maclennan and J.D.MacLeod ffowes In 1886 William Harris designed his most elaborately ornamented house (below, left) for the widow of the Reverend John MacLennan, who had been minister to the Selkirk settlers at St. John's Presbyterian Church, Belfast, east of Charlottetown. It still stands at 237 Prince Street, substantially intact, but now divided into apartments that have necessitated some minor changes. The house is a cookie cutter's dream - or nightmare - adorned with fretwork rabbits, foxes and squirrels. The bargeboards are a riot of quatrefoils. Gingerbread trim is everywhere. In keeping with the canons of the Queen Anne Style, the elevations are non¬ symmetrical, and each differs from the others. In the 1880s Harris provided most of his houses with veranda-like side entrances, surmounted by open balconies on the second floor. Those on the MacLennan house have been walled in to make some of the apartments larger. Just up the street, at 169 Euston, is the J.D. MacLeod house (above, right), built the same year, but less elaborate in its trim. It has board and batten cladding in the gables and in a belt between the first and second floors - another Harris signature from this period of his career. The photograph shows the house in its original appearance, before the entrance veranda and the balcony above it were made into a sunporch with Doric features inappropriate in a Queen Anne Style building. However, an enclosed stairway giving separate access to an upstairs apartment has been devised in a manner sympathetic to the style of the house. 9. The Kirk of St James, PownaL Street. When the Presbyterian Kirk of St. James was being built in 1877 W. Critchlow Harris, the father of Robert and William, observed in a letter that "the new Kirk will be the A-l building of Charlottetown." In many respects it still is. The design of the building has always been attributed to David Stirling, William Harris's master, who in 1877 came to Charlottetown from Halifax, and formed a partnership with his 23 year old protege. He had been awarded the commission to design the new Falconwood Asylum, built that same year on the shores of the Hillsborough River near Charlottetown. Certainly, the Kirk bears a resemblance in some respects to other Stirling churches, such as Fort Massey and St. David's churches in Halifax, the Hensley Memorial Chapel in Windsor, Nova Scotia - and even the nearby St. Peter's Cathedral, which almost certainly was designed by Stirling in 1869. However, the Kirk is included in a list of Harris's churches published in his obituary notice in 1913. Be that as it may, there is no doubt about the ceiling and the pews being Harris's work. They were installed following a fire about 1900. A possible clue to further evidence of Harris's hand in the Kirk is the Perpendicular or Tudor Style window incorporated in the wall on the north side of the building - a Harris signature throughout his career. William Harris in 1888 told a story of what he called "despicable roguery" on the part of the man who supplied the red Island sandstone used in the Kirk. Some of the stone got soaked in salt water, which is ruinous to a sandstone, when the scow on which it was loaded sank The man dried out the stone and supplied it without mentioning the mishap. The stone later deteriorated and had to be replaced 10. The Charlotte Residence & Rochford Square In 1880 William A. Weeks of Charlottetown built himself a new house in fashionable French style on Rochford Square to plans drawn by William Harris (below). It had 16 rooms and a curved staircase inside the spacious front hall. The Harris family moved into Mr. Weeks' old house behind the new one, which now became William Harris's property. Ten years later he moved it to 32-34 Brighton Road, where it remains to this day. Mr. Weeks' new house later had a wing in nondescript style added to it when it was made into a residence for retired ladies and renamed The Charlotte Residence. The house faces on Rochford Square. On May 24, 1894, the Square was the scene of great activity as trees were planted by members of the Harris family, which by this time included a considerable number of nephews and nieces of Robert and William, one for each member of the family, whether at home or "away". The whole operation was under William's direction. His list of names survives, but unfortunately is plan is lost, so that the individual trees cannot be identified with the persons they represent. Rochford Square in 1895. William Weeks' house is on the far right. The spire of the Kirk is in the centre, and St. Peter's Cathedral, with a wooden front, is on the left. The original plan for St. Peter's called for a steeple on the corner. It was never built. / 7. All Sauls' Chapel at St Peter's Cathedral In 1869 a new "chapel-of-ease" was opened on Rochford Square for the convenience of poor people who lived at "The Bog" in west end Charlottetown and couldn't afford the pew rents at St. Paul's Parish Church on Queen Square. The Harris family transferred their attendance to the new Church, which was dedicated to St. Peter, and William was a member of the first class confirmed in it that year. In 1879 it was made the Anglican Cathedral on the Island by the Right Reverend Hibbert Binney, who, as Bishop of Nova Scotia, had, by his letters patent from the Crown, episcopal jurisdiction in Prince Edward Island. This removed it from the control of the Rector of Charlotte, a "low" churchman opposed to the Anglo-Catholic practices desired by many young people, as well as by the Bishop himself. The consequence was the development of a strong liturgical, musical and artistic tradition at St. Peter's, which flourishes to this day. When the Reverend George Hodgson, St. Peter's first priest, died in 1844 William Harris designed a small Chapel (above) in memory of him and other deceased members. Robert Harris painted memorial pictures showing, left side, Dorcas, St Athanasius, St. Jerome, St Ambrose, St. Augustine, St Chrysostom, St. Gregory, and St Luke. On the right side are Christ Calling St. Andrew, the Morson Children, The Martyrdom of St. Stephen^ the Harris Family (shown as a Holy Land family being blessed by Christ), and St. James. Over the entry, and under a window showing Christ's Resurrection, is Robert's tribute to William, the Crucifixion of Christ. Three other windows, by the English firms of Kemp and Morris, show, from the left, St Michael, St Mary, and Christ the King. Dominating the interior is one of Robert Harris's finest paintings, the Ascending Christ. There is a daily mass in the Chapel, preceded by Morning Prayer, and Evensong is also said daily, at 5 p.m. (6 p.m. on Sundays). 12. St Peter's Rectory & Cathedral Furniture In 1904 the five St. Peter's Cathedral Trustees* built a Rectory at 21 Fitzroy Street (below) to plans by William Harris. Apart from the loss of a "piano" window on the west side and the addition of a garage the house remains very much as it was built. Inside the Cathedral William Harris, while not its architect, has contributed much to its furnishing. He designed the rood or chancel screen while still an apprentice in Halifax in 1873, and the reredos, or altar screen (below left), with its characteristic Harris arched niches for statues, the pulpit (below right), and the stalls in the choir are his work. Hanging in the sacristy is the portrait Robert Harris painted while he was still in his early 20s, and as yet without formal artistic training, of the Cathedral's founder, Bishop Hibbert Binney. Another portrait, of the Reverend George Hodgson, who died in 1884, is in storage at the Confederation Centre Gallery awaiting restoration. Because it was a Cathedral - and in order to safeguard its Anglo-Catholic character - it did not have at that time a parochial corporation of rector, wardens and vestry. 13. Beaconsfield and The Priory A block west down Kent Street from Rochford Square are two of William Harris's most interesting houses. The Priory (below right) is built of Wallace sandstone with red Island stone facings. Harris is said to have modelled it on a Welsh cottage - but its pillared piazza on the south side is pure Romanesque Revival. Inside there is dark woodwork and stained glass. The downstairs is designed for entertaining. Reception rooms open through french doors to a "living hall' dominated by a curved staircase that wraps around interior stairs connecting the maids' rooms in the attic with the kitchen in the back. The house was constructed in 1887 by railway accountant Richard Jackson in an attempt, it is said, to lure into matrimony a local lady who had proven difficult otherwise to impress. When he was found to have diverted men and materials from the railway to work on the house he left the province, and it became the home of his mortgagee, James Beales. James Peake had similar ill fortune with Beaconsfield (above left), across the street from The Priory. After marrying the daughter of the Lieutenant Governor, he engaged the fledgling architect William Harris to design for him Charlottetown's most luxurious and expensive house, in fashionable French Second Empire Style, which he built on a splendid site facing the Governor's mansion. Within 6 years of its construction in 1877 he was bankrupt, and his mortgagee, the parsimonious bachelor, Henry Cundall, moved in and made it his home. Today it houses the Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, and is filled with late Victorian antiques. 'pjsp- 14. The Cottase fCaroma Tnd^) 4 The Qa& HoMSg At 1 Grafton Street is The Cottage (right), built in 1894 to plans by William Hams as a wedding present to Frank Heartz from his parents. The i Cottage is a modest name for such a house, but similar villas being built at New England seaside resorts at the time by millionaires were commonly called cottages, so it was really a pretentious title. In 1914 it was bought by the Premier of Prince Edward Island, J.A. Mathieson. Years later his daughters, Mrs Campbell and Mrs. .Rogers, turned it into a guest house, renaming it Caroma Lodge, a title concocted out of their married surnames. In recent years the exterior has been splendidly restored by Mr and Mrs Keir Kenny. Note the sunburst ornament in the gables on the Grafton Street side. All now missing is a part of the veranda, removed some years ago to allow more light into the reception rooms. A beautiful arch and a fine "crinoline" staircase were destroyed when the house was for a time subdivided into apartments. The Clergy House (left), at 5 Grafton Street, was built to William Harris's plans in 1877 for his pastor at St. Peter's Cathedral, the Rev. George Hodgson. It served not only as a home for him and his curates, but also as a residence for the out-of-town students and teachers of St. Peter's School that operated in association with the Cathedral from 1871 to 1932. Father Hodgson died at the age of 44 eight months after marrying Gertrude Magdalene DesBrisay. She and her four sisters, all widows, took up residence in the house. They were known as "The Holy Family", making their way daily to mass and evensong at All Souls' Chapel, built as a memorial to Father Hodgson and others, many of them their relatives. The house today is divided into apartments, and has lost much of its character by the application of vinyl siding and other poorly informed changes. 16. Two Terraces - Dundas and Wellner After the death of Owen Connolly his trustees erected Dundas Terrace (below) in 1889, a typical William Harris design, and yet with its own unique assembly of characteristic Harris elements. The asymmetrical facade boasts snub and hipped gables, monumental chimneys, a balcony, verandas with spool ornamentation, scalloped and straight shingles, board and batten cladding, and the flared string courses common to Queen Anne Style buildings. The architectural integrity of Dundas Terrace has been maintained over the years, and it remains today after 100 years one of the landmark buildings of Charlottetown. Wellner Terrace (right), 55 - 59 Hillsborough Street, shows some of the same characteristics as Dundas Terrace, but it was built 11 years later in 1900. Harris's treatment of verandas underwent change in the meanwhile. Lathe- turned ornament is gone, replaced by horseshoe shaped openings related to the umbrages within which he set the front doors of several of his Brighton Road houses. Wellner Terrace was built by W.W. Wellner out of materials salvaged from the demolition of a 32 room hotel built in Spring Park in 1879 that had turned out to be a financial disaster for its owner, Henry Coombs. Mr. Wellner was Mr. Coombs mortgagee, and like Mr. Cundall and Mr. Beales before him, came into possession of a building its builder failed to pay for. Wellner Terrace was restored by Ron Cameron in the early 1980s. A scale model of the building made from a photocopy of Harris's plans is preserved at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery. 18. Brighton Road About 1890 William Harris, after having worked with property owners for some time, and having seen how a number of them prospered (with the exception of those like James Peake and Alexander Coombs whose financial troubles we have already noted), decided to go into property development for himself. He bought land opposite the old exhibition ground on Brighton Road and moved on to it the old Revere Hotel from the foot of Great George Street. The hotel was very large, so he cut it in half, and made each half into a semi¬ detached dwelling, Nos. 24-26 and 28-30 Brighton Road. Buildings were moved in those days by putting them on rollers and attaching them by ropes to a capstan in the middle of the street that was turned by a horse. William installed himself, his sister Sarah, and his parents into No. 24, his brother Tom and his wife Etta and their four children into No. 26, and his sister Maggie and her husband, Will Cotton (publisher of Charlottetown's daily paper, The Examiner), and their seven children into No. 30. Tom's business partner, W.H. Stewart, bought the lot on the corner in 1891 and built on it a house, No. 22, designed by William, that had an umbrage and holey bargeboards. The Harrises called No. 24 Hawthorne Villa, so No. 22 became Hawthorne Cottage. As you can see from the picture the name Hawthorne was most appropriate, for within a few years the property was smothered in creeper. Houses with creepers are difficult to paint, and present problems in maintenance. But they appealed to lovers of the Picturesque a hundred years ago. William Harris always drew creepers in his architectural drawings of exterior elevations. On the next corner, in 1903, Harold Jenkitis built hihtself a house (No. 36) to a William Harris design with cottier buttresses (like the buttress On St. Peter's Rectory) and an umbrage (like the umbrage on Hawthorne Cottage). Unfortunately, the umbrage was later filled in with a Colonial Style doorway appropriate to a different style of architecture. Mr. Jenkin's claim to fame is that he coined the word groceteria. In 1892 William Harris moved the old Weeks house on Pownal Street, in which he and his parents had lived since 1880, to No. 32 - 34 Brighton Road, turning it into a duplex. It was later the home of 20. More Brighton Road Harris Houses No. 12 Brighton Road (below) provides yet another example of a handsome Harris house turned into apartments that has lost some part of its architectural character by reason of unsympathetic modification. The house was built in 1896 by Sherriff Ewen MacDougall, and it boasted an open balcony, an umbrage at the front door, and a couple of shed roofs as labels over windows. Some years ago the house was damaged by fire; an abusive husband set it on fire in order to harm his wife, who lived in one of the apartments. The roof was destroyed and had to be replaced; unfortunately, it was rebuilt without the snub gables. Down at the far end of Brighton Road on a site overlooking Charlottetown harbour and the North River, Frederick W. Hyndman in 1877 built a house known variously as Watermere or Windermere (below). Contemporary with Beaconsfield, Westbourne, and the Clergy House, it shares no similarity of features with any of these, or with Harris's later buildings. The 23 year old architect had yet to develop his own distinctive style. The house is Harris's only essay in a familiar Island type, the L-shaped farmhouse. When the house was under construction a passerby remarked to Harris that it looked "odd"; he replied, "Have you ever seen an egg that looked like a chicken?" At the time it was built, Watermere was outside town. Mrs. Hyndman didn't like the isolation and persuaded her husband to move back into town. Their son, Eardley, grew up and married Winnifred Cotton, the daughter of William and Robert Harris's sister, Margaret Ellin (or Maggie, as she was called). F.W. Hyndman was founder of the Charlottetown insurance firm, Hyndman & Company. 22. Big and Little Sisters on North River Road In 1888 Justice J.H. Peters built a large house at 121 North River Road (below right) to plans drawn by William Harris as a wedding gift for his son. The design of the house indicated the direction Harris's style would take in the future. It is the first of his houses to have the semi-hipped or snub gables, and the holey bargeboards, that became signatures of his style. Originally the veranda spread around the semi- octagonal ell on the left hand side. The house was set back from the road and is approached by a short carriage drive. In 1913 it was bought by Arthur G. Peake. Today it serves as a popular bed and breakfast hotel. At the corner of North River Road and Churchill Avenue is the cottage William Harris drew for his nephew Robert Cotton in 1904 (left). It is influenced by the American architect H.H. Richardson's Shingle Style, a fact less apparent now that it has been sheathed in imitation stone and clapboard. In 1910 Robert and William Harris and their siblings added the extension shown on the right in the photograph to serve as The Family Room. It housed Harris family memorabilia in a kind of museum. The collection was to remain intact in perpetuity under the care of the senior male of the Harris name. But when Margaret Ellin Harris Cotton, Robert Cotton's mother, died in 1944 the house was sold and the collection was divided among descendants. Some important items went to the Robert Harris Memorial Gallery built on Queen's Square after the death of Robert Harris's widow, Bessie, in 1928. They eventually found their way into The Confederation Centre of the Arts Gallery and Museum. 7R3D98 The Charlottetown of William and Robert Harris by Robert C. Tuck, published by Maplewood Books, Charlottetown, P.E.I. i mix of architectural history, gossip and anecdote, this little book will fit in your pocket as you roam the streets of the Prince Edward Island capital spotting the 39 William Harris designed churches, business blocks, tenements and dwelling houses. 1877 Beaconsfield Westbourne* The Clergy House Watermere (Kirk of St. James) 1879 Houle House* 1880 Charlotte Residence 1881 MacLennan House 1885 Cameron Block Newson Block 1886 Hogan Block J.D. MacLeod House 1887 Richmond St. House The Priory The Cooperage 1888 Elmwood House St. Paul's Rectory All Souls' Chapel 1889 Connolly Building Dundas Terrace 1891 Hawthorne Villa A Hawthorne Villa B Hawthorne Cottage 1892 Major Weeks House Brighton Lodge E.J. Hodgson Library 1895 The Cottage/Caroma Lodge R. Moore House St. Paul's Church 1896 J. MacMillan House Sheriff MacDougall House Rogers Warehouse 1900 Wellner Terrace Central Christian Church John D. Reid House 1901 DesBrisay Block 1903 R.H. Jenkins House Beales House 1904 Family Room House St. Peter's Rectory *Not shown in the text P.E.I. COLLECTION LIBRARY OF U.RE.L *»"& LIBRARY USE ONLY