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Benjamin Brown fonds
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Benjamin Brown fonds

  • ON00210 49
  • Fonds
  • 1902-1949, predominant 1920-1935

Fonds documents Brown’s design work and renovations of existing buildings through his original drawings, renderings, and building blueprints. The fonds consists of approximately 1500 drawings that are organized into about 150 projects. These projects include single-family residences, apartment buildings, commercial and industrial buildings, as well as synagogue and other community buildings. Many of Brown's buildings were designed in the Art Deco style, with some containing Georgian, Craftsman, Colonial Revival, Tudor and Romanesque elements.
Brown's most important commissions include the Beth Jacob Synagogue located on Henry Street, which was one the largest synagogues in Toronto, the Balfour Building, an office tower built in the Art Deco style, and the Standard Theatre, the first purpose-built Yiddish theatre in Canada. The designs of Mendel Granatstein’s mansion, which contained a retractable roof for Sukkoth, and a colour sketch of the Primrose Club, which is currently the University of Toronto Faculty Club, may also be of interest to researchers. The fonds also includes some of Brown's files containing articles and illustrations from architecture and design journals of the early twentieth century, which he used as a resource to assist him with his work.
Fonds also includes six photographs, one of the Balfour Building, one of Cumberland Hall, and four of Brown as a young man.