Newfoundland Modern: Architecture in the Smallwood Years, 1949–1972
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by Robert Mellin
McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2011 304 pp., illus., $59.95 hardcover
A double review with Selwyn Pullan: Photographing Mid-Century West Coast Modernism
by Barry Downs, Donald Luxton, Kiriko Watanabe, and Adele Weder
Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, 2012
160 pp., illus., $45 hardcover
Attention is increasingly being paid to Canada’s heritage of modern architecture, which includes buildings from the optimistic years before and immediately after the country’s 1967 centennial. Many of these structures are now at risk in the same ways that their early-twentieth-century predecessors were fifty years ago. A few recent books tell the stories behind their construction and highlight their architectural and cultural significance, including two attractive volumes that showcase modern design at opposite ends of the country.
In Newfoundland Modern, McGill University architecture professor Robert Mellin offers a wide-ranging look at building in the period after the province’s 1949 entry into Confederation. Newfoundland’s leaders — including foremost its first post- Confederation premier, Joey Smallwood — encouraged modern architecture as a means of demonstrating both a break with the past and the province’s turn towards a new future of promised prosperity. This resulted in a large number of buildings whose ubiquity, Mellin says, can sometimes overshadow their importance.
Among the buildings Mellin highlights are churches and colleges, homes and hospitals, apartment towers and an airport terminal — at Gander Airport, which served as a refuelling stop for transatlantic fights. Despite the loss of most passenger traffic, the 1959 terminal is remarkably wellpreserved, down to the original designer furniture.
Mellin’s book incudes dozens of photographs and illustrations, many of them in full colour, as well as chapters on two notable Newfoundland architects, Frederick A. Colbourne and Angus J. Campbell. Through its examination of architecture, Newfoundland Modern also says much about the province during the Smallwood era.
Another recent book, showing work by Vancouver-based photographer Selwyn Pullan, features striking images that explore the insides and surroundings of a series of remarkable West Coast structures, in particular several envy-inducing homes built between the 1950s and the early 1970s. The architects have found innovative and inspiring ways to take full advantage of British Columbia’s tremendous light and scenery, and Pullan was up to the task of translating their efforts into two dimensions.
Selwyn Pullan is published in conjunction with the West Vancouver Museum, which has showcased the photographer’s work in recent exhibitions. The book includes essays on Pullan and on the architecture he helped to promote, and its many full-page photographs offer views of several buildings that no longer exist and of others that have been transformed from their original designs.
— Phil Koch (Read bio)
Phil Koch is the News and Reviews Editor of Canada's History.