GIBBS, Charles Lionel (1877-1934) was born in Newport, Engl. on 11 November 1877, received his early education in Sutton, and later attended St. John's College, Oxford. He enrolled at the Technical College at Newport in 1897 and later emigrated to Canada in 1907. Attracted to the rapid development and growth of western cities there, he settled in Edmonton, Alta. and practised under his own name for one year, then formed partnership with another English-born architect R. Percy Barnes (see list of works under Barnes & Gibbs). Their firm was active until 1914 and designed several ecclesiastical and commercial buildings in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Their best known work, the Arlington Apartment Block (1909), was among the first multi-storey residential buildings in western Canada, and served as a prototype of the standard double-loaded corridor plan used throughout the 20th C. in Canadian apartment construction (H. Kalman, History of Canadian Architecture, 1994, 640-1, illus.).
Gibbs was a founding member of the Alberta Association of Architects, and a knowledgeable and articulate spokesman for the City Beautiful Movement in pre-WW1 Edmonton. He published a lengthy essay on the subject entitled "Why Edmonton Should Take Up A Civic Planning Movement" (Saturday News [Edmonton], 25 Feb. 1911, p. 3 and p. 7), and he demonstrated his broad, wide-ranging knowledge of recent American city plans prepared by leading architects such as Cass Gilbert, Daniel Burnham (in Chicago), Frederick Law Olmsted (in Boston), and Alfred Clas (in Milwaukee).
Gibbs also served as an instructor in architecture and building construction at the University of Alberta in 1914-15, at which time the firm of Barnes & Gibbs was dissolved and Gibbs joined the Canadian Army where he served in Europe during WWI. After returning to Edmonton in 1919 he became involved in local politics, serving as a city alderman from 1924 to 1934. He was also active in the provincial labour movement, and was elected to the Provincial Legislature, at first in 1926, and again in 1930. Gibbs died in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. on 5 September 1934 (obit. Edmonton Journal, 5 Sept. 1934, 1; 6 Sept. 1934, 12; R.A.I.C. Journal, xi, Oct. 1934, 152; biog. and port Who's Who and Why in Canada, 1913, 274; University of Alberta Calendar, 1916-17, 15). A photographic portrait of Gibbs was published in the Saturday News [Edmonton], 10 Dec. 1910, 8.