ABSTRACT
"Advancing the Material Interests of the
Redeemer's Kingdom": The Erskine Presbyterian Church, Montreal, 1894
Janis R. Zubalik
1996
This thesis takes Montreal's 1894 Erskine Presbyterian
Church, by Montreal architect Alexander Cowper Hutchison (1838-1922), as a specific
example of the building of an Akron-auditorium combination plan church. Although
relatively rare in Montreal, this American church type was perhaps the most popular style
of church for evangelical Protestant congregations in North America from 1880 through
about 1914. Inspired by theatre architecture and a Methodist Sunday School programme,
these churches featured an auditorium sanctuary contiguous to a two-tiered multi-celled
Sunday School building. They were typically commissioned by newly affluent businessmen and
were frequently built in the Richardsonian Romanesque manner. This study is a social and
architectural examination of the Erskine Congregation's three church buildings of 1833,
1866 and 1894 and the 1937 alteration by Percy Erskine Nobbs (1875-1964) at the behest of
William Massey Birks (1868-1950) because of new conceptions of "churchliness".
The thesis contributes to the understanding of ideology on built form and the church
building practices of 19th-century Montreal Scots Presbyterians. It is the first study
devoted to this church type in Montreal.
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