BOVELL, James Howard (1880-1939) was born in Toronto on 8 November 1880 and he trained in the office Arthur R. Denison & Co. from 1899 to 1901 (City of Toronto Directory, 1899, 355). Denison was a successful architect who specialised in industrial and commercial buildings. After completing his apprenticeship, Bovell move to Chicago in 1902 to gain further experience in architectural offices there, and in early 1905 he returned to Toronto and joined the firm of Chadwick & Beckett as a draftsman and assistant (C.A.B., xviii, March 1905, 46). He remained with that firm for at least four years; his name was recorded as the "delineator" on the drawings prepared for the Toronto Hydro Commission for their design of the Power Transfer Station at Adelaide Street West at Tecumseth Street designed by Chadwick & Beckett in 1908.
In 1911 he formed a partnership in Toronto with George N. Molesworth in 1911. The collaboration between Bovell and Molesworth was a brief one; by November 1913 their office had been dissolved and Bovell had moved away to Owen Sound after 1914 to join his new wife. Her hometown was Owen Sound, and Bovell spent the next 21 years overseeing the work of the North American Bent Chair Co., an internationally successful furniture manufacturing company owned by his father-in-law John George Hay. Bovell later died at Sarasota, Florida on 9 November 1939 (obituary in the Owen Sound Daily Sun-Times, 10 Nov. 1939, 5; inf. Virginia Wright, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia).
BOVELL & MOLESWORTH
OAKVILLE, ONT., Community Arena and Gymnasium, 1912 (Const., v, July 1912, 79, illus. & descrip.)
TORONTO, ONT., rooming house for John E. Gray, Church Street at Shuter Street, 1912 (Toronto b.p. 34852, 14 June 1912)
HAMILTON, ONT., Griffin Opera House, a theatre for the Griffin Amusement Co., James Street North, 1913 (Spectator [Hamilton], 5 Sept. 1912, 11, illus.; and 16 Jan. 1913, 16, t.c.; C.R., xxvii, 29 Jan. 1913, 69, inf. Robert Hamilton)