From Lazaridis Hall to the Bricker Academic Building, Wilfrid Laurier University has seen quite a bit of change and improvement since its establishment 112 years ago.
The university’s original purpose was being Canada’s first ever seminary school intended to train young Lutheran ministers. It started off as one building, a house purchased from a local businessman at the corner of Albert and Bricker streets.
Laurier’s Waterloo campus now boasts seven main educational buildings, eight residence buildings, a library, a dining hall and a handful of administrative buildings. These buildings include a variety of Canadian and Ontarian architectural styles from throughout the ages. The original house purchased for the university followed the traditional late Victorian style aesthetic of architecture with some hybrid style elements. This style used an eclectic jumble of classic Victorian and Gothic traits, with a cross-gable style roof (a roof with two or more sections that intersect together at right angles) and French regency style windows (also known as porte-fenêtres, which means windowed doors).
Hybrid style, in this case, refers to a building that doesn’t subscribe to any specific aesthetic, but rather meshes them into one. With high-peaked roofs from the Gothic resurgence, the jutted front porch of the classical and the red-bricked walls with an l-shaped design create a cohesive building. As the campus grew and began to add more buildings, this would transition into a more Beaux-Arts style, tall symmetrical buildings that one would traditionally associate as the university style and seen more in school affiliated buildings. These buildings often were composed solely of brick, with straight mansard style roofs (known as a French roof, it is characterized by its rectangular flat top and sloped sides) and employed a key feature of formal symmetry. This Beaux-Arts style can also be seen in the first building Laurier established in Brantford, the Carnegie library building. Here, we can begin to see the same aforementioned aesthetics: the red brick walls, a mansard roof and a tasteful white dome embellishment.
As time went on, Laurier became acquainted with the modern international style, a cubist and rectangular aesthetic with concrete walls, flat rooftops and typical split level interior layouts. The best example of this style shown on campus is the Frank C. Peters Building. We see this through its composition of rectangle-shaped concrete walls, flattened roof, split layers and an attractive streamlined structure.
The Martin Luther University College creates a hybrid of this international style mixed with hints of old Romanesque, the epitome of mid-century modern architecture. The building underwent a large renovation in 2018 and the architects, Montgomery Sisam Architects Inc., intended to keep the original essence and exterior of the building while adding a new and modernized edge. The walls became windows to allow for a light-filled space and the outside boasts a central courtyard.
The most recent building erected at Laurier is the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects. The central atrium is another example of the international architecture style. Huge, paneled windows cover nearly every inch of the wall, including the grand skylight ceiling. The glass encased building has a large and spacious feel, with a steel and concrete finishing on the sections of wall absent of glass. While the exterior is flat, the building has a clear and expressive flow. When compared back to Laurier’s humble beginnings, the difference is unbelievable. One hundred and twelve years of architecture and renovation gives the campus a complex look filled with its many phases of history walking from building to building.
At Laurier, students flock to class on the same concrete that students walked 100 years ago and will continue to do so for hundreds of years to come. I am thankful to be one of them.
