File 223 - Proposed Subdivision of Property

See also op. no. 221.

Like most Arts and Crafts-trained architects, Percy Nobbs excelled in domestic design. In partnership with George Taylor Hyde, he created several model housing schemes during the 1920s. Each scheme demonstrated the value of intelligent planning. One complete group – all in brick – is extant on the south side of The Boulevard near the corner of Mt. Pleasant Avenue, Westmount, Quebec. Intended for professional people or “brainworkers” as Nobbs called them, four of the five houses are semidetached. “Such houses,” he wrote, “can be both built and heated more cheaply while preserving the essential amenities when constructed in groups of three, four or five.” --Susan Wagg, Percy Erskine Nobbs: Architect, Artist, Craftsman (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1982), 55. -- --These clustered homes also echoed Nobbs’ belief that apart from facilitating aesthetic harmony in a residential enclave, groups of dwellings offer the community added economies. Nobbs stressed the importance of adequate sun exposure and efficient ventilation in all rooms of a dwelling. He also insisted that all facades of a home be given equal design consideration in order to ensure that views of the rear of the buildings were as pleasing as those of the front. The asymmetrical massing of the exterior forms depends entirely on the internal organization, which is arranged to take full advantage of light, air, and the views afforded by the site. The angles of the steep pitched roofs, replicated in the edges of the dormer windows and the towering chimneys acknowledge climatic conditions during snowy Canadian winters. In Nobbs’ design for houses, form invariably follows function. Other clusters of homes designed by Nobbs and Hyde are Grove Park Development Houses (1929), in Westmount; Belvedere Terrace (1925-1927), in Westmount; and Queen Mary’s Garden (1925), in Hampstead, all of which reflect the turn-of-the-century domestic architectural trend prevalent in England. --Norbert Schoenauer, “Percy Erskine Nobbs: Teacher and Builder of Architecture,” Fontanus: from the Collections of McGill University. 7 (1996) : 46-57. --