File 124 - Proposal of Development of Macdonald Park

“In addition to his scheme for the main [McGill] university grounds, Nobbs also furnished a scale model and designs for a vast athletic and residential complex for Macdonald Park, a site lying north of Pine Avenue, purchased by the far-sighted Sir William Macdonald in 1911. Although believing “every sacrifice is justifiable to maintain the McGill buildings between Sherbrooke and Pine Avenue as a group in limestone throughout,” Nobbs designated economical brick with limestone dressings for the Macdonald Park structures, since the site was well away from the main campus. Regrettably, this ambitious project was never realized. Nobbs’s graceful and brilliantly sited Molson Stadium, designed in the manner of a Greek theatre (its lines and view now destroyed by additional seating), had been completed before the end of the war, and gate receipts paid for a field house, which was erected to his designs in 1922. Ultimately, none of the architect’s planning schemes were carried out as he conceived them, yet the individual buildings and additions which he did execute for McGill were each thoughtful attempts to create harmony where none had previously existed.” --Susan Wagg, Percy Erskine Nobbs: Architect, Artist, Craftsman (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1982) , 46-47 --