Renowned Canadian Architect Eb Zeidler Spent His Formative Years In Peterborough & Made Huge Mark Here

Before Eberhard Zeidler had his first huge architectural project, he spent more than a decade, 1951-1962, in Peterborough. While none of the projects would match the scale of the Eaton Centre or the McMaster Health Sciences Centre he did, several helped hone his skills, and to contextualize his ideas.

The Modernist trained in Bauhaus became more sensitive to the people who lived and worked in the buildings created by architects. Peterborough remained a part of his world long after he left.

When Eb Zeidler started working at the Blackwell and Craig architectural firm at the corner of Hunter and George, he already had impressive credentials, and had expectations of being a chief designer or architect in Canada.

However, he quickly learned that unlike in Germany, architects did not have to sign off on every building project. Architects rarely designed houses or factories, and there were not enough new churches, hospitals and office buildings to support very many architects. Zeidler began as a draftsman and the wages were low.

St. John the Baptist Anglican Church in Lakefield

For the first week, he stayed in a boarding house at Water and Parkhill, and then moved to the YMCA, which was closer to work. Blackwell and Craig had a major client in the Bank of Toronto, and had an office in Toronto designing new branches of the bank. The amalgamation of the Bank of Toronto and of the Dominion Bank of Canada occurred in early 1955, and there would be more architectural work for the firm.

But in early 1952, Zeidler was transferred to the Toronto office to work on designing new banks. There he worked with Ron Dalziel and William Ralston, the “chief designer of our firm”, and their office was in the Bank of Toronto’s “lovely classic temple” on Yonge across from Eaton’s. Zeidler drew the working drawings for Ralston’s design of the new branch at the corner of Dundas and University—a magnificent Art Deco building.

Architect Frank Franner had left Blackwell and Craig to start an engineering and construction firm known as Timber Structures, which was on the west side of High Street north of Lansdowne. He invited Zeidler, who had architectural and engineering experience, to join the new firm.

Early projects in Peterborough were a hockey rink and two churches, in which Zeidler said they worked with glulam, a new engineered product consisting of two-inch wooden planks laminated together and which could be bent into pleasing arches. Franner became an architect in Scarborough, and Timber Structures continued with David E. Ness as president; the Roy Studio had Timber Structures as a major client, and so an impressive collection of photos of their projects are in the Peterborough Museum and Archives.

When Jim Craig invited Zeidler to return to Blackwell and Craig, Zeidler took the two churches, Grace United and St. Giles Presbyterian, with him. Both projects were on hold as the congregations raised the necessary money. Zeidler’s first project as chief designer was to add, 1952-1953, a Sunday School hall to St. John the Baptist Anglican Church in Lakefield.

This was a two-storey box with glulam arches, and laid out parallel to Regent Street. To match the existing church, the roof angles matched, and stone facing joined the hall to the church. There was a narthex of glass between and exits to both Regent and Queen. “I thought the composition looked charming and fit well into the little village,” Zeidler said. He spent more time supervising this project because it was his first Canadian building.

Grace United Church

He was soon working on Grace United Church, on Monaghan across from Kenner Collegiate. The Sunday School on Barnardo Avenue connected with George Street United Church from the 1880s to the 1930s was also known as Grace. Because the congregation had only raised $100,000, the Sunday School was put in the “gloomy” basement “in Peterborough fashion.” The main entrance was at grade level, and the stairs went up for the church and down for the Sunday School.

That said, the church is quite amazing. Jim Craig and Bill Williams helped prepare the construction documentation, and the project was put to tender. Huffman Brothers came in below the architect’s budget and the building of the church was underway. The building used glulam arches, but the arches increased in height as they came closer to Monaghan Road, so the church reached its greatest height over the chancel and sanctuary and the roof extended over the front wall.

That wall facing Monaghan Road was manufactured by Norm Armstrong, a local precaster, and each square was coloured a different hue. Zeidler wanted the wall to be grey like a fieldstone wall but to have pink and green tones, “like natural fieldstone”. He also considered the ways the light would enter the church. Mainly, the light was concentrated on the communion table.

St. Giles Church

There were some critics of the church, but Zeidler was impressed by Robertson Davies’ “glowing editorial” in the Peterborough Examiner about the church which he felt captured our times, and met the needs of its people.

Zeidler worked on St. Giles Church, 1953-54. A few blocks north of Grace Church, St. Giles was a smaller church designed for a congregation of 200. The glass wall facing the street was screened with “a vertical grille of laminated wood slabs perpendicular to the glass.” At some angles, the wall looked solid; at others, the light streamed in.

The firm of Blackwell and Craig did a major addition at St. John’s Anglican Church in Peterborough, 1956-1958, that presented several difficulties. As in Lakefield, the stones removed from one wall were used in building the joining walls between the 1835 church and the 1878 parish hall (which had been expanded by William Blackwell in 1900 and 1926).

St. John’s Anglican Church

Zeidler only mentions this project in his chronology of selected works. However, as archivist-historian at St. John’s since 1976, I have often had to give guided tours of this remarkable Peterborough landmark. The plan was well-executed particularly as it dealt with enclosing the space between the church and the hall and extending the parish hall north on two levels.

However, it continues to bother me that when the new chapel was joined to the nave, a huge hole was carved in the wall of the nave, and two large stained glass windows were cut in half. I always begin my tour of the church standing in this hole and looking at the magnificent vertical lines of the neo-Gothic church that captures all the major ideas of neo-Gothic architecture in the Victorian era.

During the 1950s, Zeidler worked on additions to other local churches such as St. James United, Park Street Baptist and Mark Street United. During the 1950s, churches in the area were adding rooms for Sunday School classes, and the increased space has been easily used for other purposes since then. He did renovations at George Street United and St. George’s Anglican Church.  

In 1959, Zeidler designed the new parish hall for what became St. Barnabas Church; as it turned out, the parish hall did double duty so well that a proposed church was never constructed, and the reserved property was used for housing. That same year, Bridgenorth United Church was built. During the 1960s, he did an addition at Fairview United in Smith Township (now Selwyn), and churches in Norwood, Campbellford.

Zeidler worked on the new Beth Israel Synagogue during 1963-64, and it was quickly recognized as outstanding, and was featured in Peterborough: Land of Shining Waters (1966). He worked closely with the rabbi about interpreting the Jewish faith in this building. It took many years for the congregation of about 60 to raise the necessary funds. Rabbi Rosenberg spoke at the opening of the synagogue and gave what Zeidler considered a “rousing speech.”

Rosenberg compared the building to the Lion of Judah: “the powerful body hovering in quiet anticipation with its two paws outstretched to protect its faithful.” The front was defined by a colonnade and Zeidler had created an entrance to the synagogue through a courtyard that was flanked by two classrooms. On reflection, Zeidler thought Rabbi Rosenberg was correct: “it was a small temple that sat like a lion brooding at the edge of a hill, part of the landscape, visible and yet not intruding."

Zeidler’s success with religious buildings was well-established. His first churches showed that even with tight budgets, a great architect could produce stunning results. He built numerous churches, even as late as 1985.

In 2009, he said he considered his first architectural projects to be the Richard Hamilton home in Peterborough and Grace United Church, “both built with some influences from Germany.” However, quite early, his work was also sensitive to the particular sites and the problems to overcome. People had emotional responses to each of his buildings.

—guest column by Peterborough historian Elwood H. Jones. Photos by Evan Holt.

Engage with us on social media on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat (ptbo_canada). Write to us at tips@ptbocanada.com. Sign up for PTBOBuzz newsletter here. Watch our PTBOCanada Love video here.