LENCH, Charles Harris (1888-1972), a native of Channel, Newfoundland, was born on 5 May 1888 and educated at the Methodist College in St. Johns, Nfld. He spent one year in the office of William F. Butler, and in 1909 he moved to Toronto where he attended courses in architecture sponsored by the Ontario Association of Architects, working simultaneously in the offices of Burke, Horwood & White, and for George W. Gouinlock, assisting him with designs for several pavilions on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition. In 1912 Lench left Canada and studied architecture at Harvard Univ., Cambridge in 1912-14, and in 1915-16, obtaining a masters degree in 1916. He then worked as a staff architect for Bethlehem Shipbuilding Co. before opening his own office in New York in 1919. His works included designs for churches, schools, auditoriums, clubs and residences, as well as plans for a church in Bonavista, Newfoundland where his father, Rev. Charles Lench, serves as a minister. From 1920 to 1940 he was listed as an architect in New York City (J. Ward, Architects in Practice: New York City 1900-1940, 1989, 47), and he was the author of The Promotion of Commercial Buildings (1932), a reference book on the relationship of the architect to the promotion and financing of income-producing buildings. This publication was based on series of lectures delivered by Lench at the School of Architecture at Columbia University in 1931. In 1947 Lench moved to Florida and continued to practise there. He died at Coral Gables, Florida on 27 June 1972 (death notice Miami News, 29 June 1972, 35; biog. in R. Hibbs, Who's Who In and From Newfoundland, 1927, 126).
(works in Canada)
BONAVISTA, NFLD., Methodist Church, 1918-19; opened in January 1923 (The Story of Methodism in Bonavista District, 1919, 112, illus.; inf. Shane O'Dea, St. Johns)
DIGBY, N.S., residence for Dr. Channing Lefebvre, 1930 (inf. Gary Shutlak, PANS)