Francis Mawson Rattenbury (1867 – 1935)

Francis Rattenbury was born in Leeds, England to John Owen Rattenbury and Mary Ann Mawson. He studied at Yorkshire College in Leeds and in 1885 apprenticed with his uncle’s firm Mawson and Mawson, successors to the successful firm of Lockwood and Mawson. He won a national competition organized by the Royal Institute of British Architects and managed the Cleckheaton Town Hall (1892).¹⁾

Rattenbury immigrated to Canada in 1892 and worked in Vancouver on three commercial commissions in 1892 as an agent for a consortium of Yorkshire investors. In 1893, he won an international competition to design the new parliament complex in Victoria to house the BC legislative and government office. He abandoned supervision of the project at the end and was not present for the official opening in February 1898 because he was in Europe seeking backers for a project in the Yukon.²⁾

Rattenbury established the Bennett Lake and Klondyke Navigation Company Ltd.in the spring of 1898 and had three metal steamships fabricated and taken to Bennet Lake for assembly.³⁾ Two of the little sternwheelers, the Flora and the Nora, were named for his new bride Florence Eleanor.⁴⁾ They brought cargoes of livestock to Dawson for cattle dealer Pat Burns and then established regular passenger and freight service on the Yukon River during the gold rush years. Rattenbury combined the inaugural trip of the first steamboat finished with his honeymoon when he and his wife Florrie travelled to the Yukon.⁵⁾

Rattenbury invested in the Artic Express Company, an American transportation firm, and he acted as a Canadian agent for many years. He gained a reputation for northern experience from his Yukon enterprises. He spent ten years in British Columbia designing buildings for two railways, the Canadian Pacific and the Grand Trunk Pacific, the provincial government, and the Bank of Montreal. His buildings blended current British and American architectural fashions, dominated by Queen Anne and Renaissance Revival features in his houses. He employed beaux-arts and Edwardian classic styles for CPR’s Hotel Vancouver. He was among the most successful of a first generation of architects working in Canada and, with Samuel Maclure, developed a west-coast architectural idiom. He designed additions to CPR’s scenic hotels at Glacier House, Chateau Lake Louise (1902), and the Banff Springs Hotel. His 1905-08 Empress Hotel helped shape the landscape of Victoria’s inner harbor. He was also acclaimed for his courthouses in Nelson (1906-09) and Vancouver (1906-24).⁶⁾