DODGE, William Longley (fl. 1866-79) was active in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he was recorded as an architect and operator of a planing mill in that city. He operated an office as an architect in Hesslein's Building, Hollis Street, Halifax (McAlpine's Halifax City Directory, 1872-73), and resided on Tower Road in that city, where he designed his own residence, a distinctive Italianate villa only recently demolished in 1989. He may have collaborated with his brother John A. Dodge, who can be credited with a number of Gothic designs for ecclesiastical works in several towns in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
He is almost certainly the same 'Mr. Dodge, Architect of Halifax' who furnished the plans for the Anglican Church at Ellerhouse, near Windsor, N.S., in 1875 (Halifax Daily Reporter, 3 April 1875, 2), and later that same year he was noted as 'Mr. Dodge, an architect of Halifax', the designer of the Methodist Church at Amherst, N.S. By 1879 he appears to have returned to his home in Annapolis County and from there prepared the plans for a sophisticated Gothic design for the new Anglican Church in Pictou, N.S. A brief biography of William L. Dodge can be found in M. Rosinski, Architects of Nova Scotia: A Biographical Dictionary 1605-1950, 1994, 119 (inf. Gary Shutlak, PANS)
(works in Nova Scotia)
ELLERHOUSE, N.S., Episcopal Church, 1875 (Halifax Daily Reporter, 3 April 1875, 2)
AMHERST, N.S, Methodist Church, 1875 (Daily News [Saint John], 3 Nov. 1875, 2)
PICTOU, N.S., St. James Anglican Church, 1879 (A Lion in Thistle: A History of St. James Anglican Church, Pictou, Nova Scotia, 1979, 42-44, illus. & descrip.).