Term used to describe an architectural style adopted for public buildings in Canada in the late 19th century and early 20th; also, more generally, a style practised in North America during that period (the latter is also called Ch?teauesque). Buildings in the Ch?teau style are usually asymmetrical and are characterized by picturesque silhouettes created by steep hipped roofs, dormer windows, towers, turrets and tall chimneys. The Canadian prototype was the wood-framed Banff Springs Hotel in the Rocky Mountains at Banff, Alberta (1886-8; destr. 1925), designed for the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) by Bruce Price. It was inspired by Scottish Baronial architecture of the 16th and 17th centuries and French ch?teaux of the Renaissance. It also showed an awareness of recent European sources such as George Gilbert Scott's Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, London (1866-76). The CPR subsequently used the style for brick hotels on picturesque sites, such as the Ch?teau Frontenac, Quebec City (1892-3; subsequent additions to 1924), the sources for which were Loire Valley architecture as well as the work of H. H. Richardson in the USA. Another major example is the Empress Hotel, Victoria, British Columbia (1904-8; many additions), by Francis Mawson Rattenbury, a building with fa?ades of flat relief that culminate in the style's characteristic steep roofs and dormer windows. The CPR also built stations in the style, such as the second Vancouver Station (1897-8), designed by Edward Maxwell. The rival Grand Trunk Railway quickly adopted the style for such hotels as the Ch?teau Laurier, Ottawa, Ontario (1908-12), by Ross & MacFarlane, and the Fort Garry Hotel, Winnipeg, Manitoba (1911-13), by the same architects.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
