If you would like to contact me, please send an email to reg@regporter.com. The Central Plan House – Part 2 We resume here our discussion of the early Georgian central plan house as it appeared on the Island in the first six decades of the Nineteenth Century. As we advance with our survey, once again we begin with a very grand house set in picturesque grounds away from the city in green acres, yet within minutes of the centre of town.   Ravenwood House, 1820-28 In 1871 the painter Robert Harris produced a watercolour with a viewpoint near the bottom of Mount Edward Road. As cows return home to their town stables…

Interlude – the birth of the Greek Revival Style on PEI  The evolution of Georgian architecture on the Island is unique in one startling way and I feel an enormous compulsion to interrupt my narrative on domestic buildings to explain how one original and beautiful method of joining the corners to the eaves originated and developed. We have seen examples of it in previous posts and it will appear in the ones that follow. Let us pause for a short while and contemplate this elegant invention and make it second nature in our perception. As the colony of Prince Edward Island began to grow in the early Nineteenth Century, buildings…

Prologue A Plethora of Architectural Style Names: Georgian, Neoclassical, Palladian and Picturesque. For the beginner in the study of domestic, and more imposing, architectural styles in British Colonial Canada, the list of names they quickly encounter can be intimidating and off-putting. Georgian refers to the period, 1714 – 1830, when the Hanoverian kings called George – all four of them – reigned. The period is extended seven more years, 1830-37, when William IV reigned, and which continued the Georgian style up to the time of Queen Victoria who came to the throne in 1837. Neoclassical refers to the practice, inherited from the Renaissance and Baroque ages to build structures and…