JOY, Charles Edwin (1852-1928) was born in Webster, Massachusetts on 10 June 1852 and practised in Dover, New Hampshire from 1880 until 1885, then moved to Minneapolis, Minn. and was employed as a draftsman with Taylor & Craig, Builders. The following year he entered a shortlived partnership with Frank W. Fitzpatrick, and in 1888 he entered another partnership with Denslow Millard. During the next ten years the firm of Millard & Joy specialised in the design of hotels and railway stations for the Northern Pacific Railway. Their only work in Canada was a mature Romanesque Revival design for the Hotel Manitoba & Northern Railway Station, Main Street at Water Street, WINNIPEG, MAN., 1889-91; hotel burned February 1899; station later demolished in 1982 (Manitoba Daily Free Press [Winnipeg], 18 Jan. 1890, 8; and 19 Dec. 1891, 9 & 4, illus. & descrip.; and 8 Feb. 1899, 8, descrip.; Railway & Shipping World, ii, Feb. 1899, 49, illus.; Winnipeg, 1982 The Year Past, 1983, 51-2, illus.). This significant landmark was one of the first distinctive Chateau style hotels to be erected in Canada, and it preceded the design prepared by Bruce Price for the Chateau Frontenac Hotel in Quebec City by nearly three years.
In the United States some of the major works by Charles E. Joy include the Clinton Avenue Methodist Church, West St. Paul, Minn. (1891), the Northern Pacific Railway Station at Spokane, Wash. (1893) and the Syndicate Block in Fargo, North Dakota (1893). He also was a master at conceiving the lavish plans for the winter Ice Palaces in Minneapolis in 1887 and 1888 (F. Anderes & A. Agranoff, Ice Palaces, 1983, 53-62, illus. & descrip.). Joy died on 30 April 1928 at Detroit Lakes, Minn. (biog. in Alan Lathrop, Minnesota Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 2010, 96-7, illus.; inf. Foster Dunwiddie, Minneapolis, Minn.; inf. Ronald L.M. Ramsay, Fargo, N.D.)