Fonds 1515 - Henry Harrison Madill fonds

Henry Harrison Madill was Director/Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Toronto from 1934-1957.

He was successful architect and educator, active for his entire career in Toronto, Ont. Born in Beaverton, Ont. On 13 April 1899, he attended Jarvis Collegiate and enrolled in the Dept. of Architecture at the School of Practical Science at the University of Toronto in 1908. Madill showed early skill and talent as a designer and delineator while studying architecture at the University of Toronto. Three of his student designs, including ‘A Design for a Memorial’, and ‘A Colonial Residence’, were published in the journal <i>Construction [Toronto]</i>, iii, June 1910, 46, 48, 49, illus. He graduated in 1912, and within months he had formed a partnership in Toronto with his classmate James H. Craig. This collaboration was to endure for more than 40 years until the death of Craig in 1954.

Activity in their office was briefly suspended in 1915-18 when both partners went overseas to serve with the Canadian Army during WWI. Madill attained the rank of Major, and was later appointed commanding officer of the Canadian Officers Training Corps during WWII, receiving the title of Lieut. Colonel, and he was later awarded the Order of the British Empire for service during both wars. The firm of Craig & Madill specialised in the design of educational and institutional buildings throughout Ontario, and they introduced a more refined and simplified modernist style to their work, best seen in the elegant and restrained elevational treatment of the Palace Pier (1930; demol.), and West Toronto Post Office (1935-36).

Madill was also was a respected educator, teaching classes in architecture at the University of Toronto after 1920, and becoming associate professor there in 1924, and Director of the School of Architecture in 1934. He remained head of the School until 1957, becoming the Dean in 1948 when the school split from the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. He was later appointed Director Emeritus of the School of Architecture in 1975. Madill was nominated as a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Inst. of Canada in 1935, and was later appointed Honorary Fellow of the American Inst. of Architects in 1956, in acknowledgement of his contribution to architectural education. He died in Toronto on 4 May 1988