The History of McGill University's Buildings

Description

In 1909, James T. Davis, a Square Mile entrepreneur, commissioned the renowned Canadian architects Edward and William Maxwell to design a mansion suitable for a man of his stature. The result was an Elizabethan Tudor style edifice of red brick on Drummond Street. This building, which features Dutch dormer windows, high gables, and steep roofs, shows the flexibility of the Beaux-arts trained architects. At the request of their patron, the Maxwells used a concealed steel and concrete frame to support the structure and supplied electric lighting to the house. The mansion has many interesting features, such as the dining room, which is a replica of a room in the Vatican, the Italian Renaissance style library, a seventeenth-century English dining room, and the chapel on the second floor.