John Lyle - Wynnstay Estate lecture

[hmagazine]

The Story of Ancaster’s Wynnstay Estate

An Illustrated Lecture by:

Sharon Vattay PhD, CAPHC, Associate, Goldsmith Borgal & Co. Architects

Thursday November 6, 2008.

7:00 pm reception, 7:30 pm lecture

Art Gallery of Hamilton, 123 King Street West Hamilton

Join us for a glimpse inside this magnificent heritage property designed for the Dalleys by John M. Lyle and Dunington-Grubb in 1925.

The site is now the Mount Mary Retreat Centre. The buildings and grounds were designed by the same group that created Hamilton’s Gage Park and the famous Parkwood Estate in Oshawa. Learn why this site is one of the most beautiful and significant designed landscapes in Ontario from the period.

Free Admission

[thistleclub]

From the Mount Mary website:



Worth checking out. Even a lot of locals have probably passed the arched entrance to Mount Mary Immaculate and never peeked inside. Especially notable for those who write off Ancaster's complaints of endangered heritage as a joke, since the estate grounds are in the process of becoming an enclave of 120+ upscale townhouses.

[flar]

Those grounds should not be developed, they are beautiful. I've been there twice wandering around. Both times I was kicked out because it's private property, but worth a look anyway.

[raisethehammer]

they're putting shlocky townhomes on that property??? Wow. Ancaster blows.

[thistleclub]

Can't remember who's developing it but I think they wanted to plop 200+ townhouses in there at one point and were talked down. (A similar numbers game went down with the Grange School site on Woodworth Drive near Robina, only there the prevailing wisdom was that single family detached homes were a better use of the space.) I think the concern was to do with traffic as much as anything… being a more-or-less hidden driveway 100 yards west of the intersection on a busy stretch of Wilson.

[adam]

And that pic doesn't even do the grounds justice. They are gorgeous... a real shame.

[SteelTown]

Architect John Lyle left legacy of style

May 04, 2009 04:30 AM
Christopher Hume

Had the Group of Seven been made up of architects, not artists, John Lyle would have been a member.

Lyle, who died in 1945.................

http://www.thestar.com/GTA/Columnist/article/628461

[ryan_mcgreal]

FYI Lyle was also the architect responsible for the magnificent High Level Bridge.

[drpgq]

Originally Posted by SteelTown

Architect John Lyle left legacy of style

May 04, 2009 04:30 AM
Christopher Hume

Had the Group of Seven been made up of architects, not artists, John Lyle would have been a member.

Lyle, who died in 1945.................

http://www.thestar.com/GTA/Columnist/article/628461

From reading that article and some of Hume's other work, I get the feeling Hume doesn't think much of the Hammer.

[SteelTown]

Doesn't really care much for outside of Toronto and Vancouver.

[drpgq]

I seem to recall him comparing Hamilton once to Gary, Indiana, which I didn't think was very apt demographically, to say the least.

[ryan_mcgreal]

Hamilton desperately needs its own Christopher Hume in the daily paper. The Spectator's Paul Wilson sometimes overlaps Hume's analytical jurisdiction, but Wilson's principal subject matter - the human stories of people living in communities - is a different beast altogether.

What we need is an unabashed urbanist in the mainstream newsmedia: someone who understands architecture, transportation, land-use design and urban economics, and is free to praise successes and call out the howlers. (I find that actual architects tend to refrain from criticizing each others' work.)

Former regional chair Terry Cooke often ranges insightfully into this territory in his Spec column, but it's not his only area of interest, and in any case he only writes once every two weeks (he seems to alternate with the always-entertaining Paul Benedetti). Cooke is also something of a lightning-rod for many Hamiltonians who remember his involvement and advocacy in the Red Hill debate (an advocacy that he now struggles to reconcile with his urbanist leanings).