Item 78 - [Presbyterian Church]

Benjamin Dillon was an important regional architect in Eastern Ontario who practised there for over 40 years. Born in Lyndhurst, Ontario on 8 May 1871, he studied architecture and mechanical drawing with John Robb, a private tutor in Kingston, and then attended classes at the Kingston School of Art for two seasons before articling with Arthur Ellis, a prominent architect in Kingston. He opened an office in Renfrew in the Ottawa Valley in 1896 and worked there for two years, then moved permanently to Brockville in late 1898 and continued to live and work there for the next 35 years. Despite competition from architects in nearby Kingston and Ottawa, Dillon was successful at sustaining his own career, and in obtaining commissions throughout Leeds, Grenville and Lanark Counties, Dundas County, and in Lennox & Addington Counties, and his name can now be linked to over 80 projects which he completed for institutional, ecclesiastical, commercial, residential and industrial projects during the period from 1899 to 1937. These included over fifteen churches located in towns and villages, invariably designed in a bold and expressive Romanesque Revival style which he favoured for his Methodist, Presbyterian and Anglican clients. He adapted this style for institutional commissions, best seen in his design for the Town Hall in Athens, Ontario (1903-04), and for the Carnegie Library in Brockville (1903), both of which have survived and are still in use today.

His designs for churches are almost instantly recognizable for the sheer size and scale of the building, and for the asymmetrical appearance and composition of each work. His unique and outstanding ecclesiastical commissions include St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, Pakenham, Ont. (1896-97), and the sprawling Methodist Church in the tiny community of Chesterville, Ont. (1907), both of which are still standing. His career was not without setbacks; in February 1916 his business office in the Harding Block in Brockville was gutted by fire (along with those of several other tenants) and he lost all of his architectural drawings and records (see the Weekly British Whig (Kingston), 10 Feb. 1916, 8). This may explain why few archival collection of his drawings have been located in Canadian institutions or local museums. Dillon died at Maitland, Ont. on 9 July 1942