Lawson, Arthur Wendell Phillips | Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada

LAWSON, Arthur Wendell Phillips (1898-1952), a skilled delineator and etcher whose illustrations of buildings were published in architectural journals including Pencil Points [New York], and in the R.A.I.C. Journal [Toronto]. Born in Toronto on 25 September 1898 he trained under Langley & Howland (1921-23), then moved to London in 1924 where he worked briefly as a draftsman and assistant to Sir Edwin Lutyens. Lawson relocated to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and returned to Toronto where he obtained his Master's degree from the Dept. of Architecture at the Univ. of Toronto in 1926. He later received the appointment of Assistant Professor of Architectural Design at Pennsylvania State College, and held teaching posts at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. and at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Lawson frequently exhibited his etchings and paintings in Canada, and collaborated with Ryerson Press on preparation of book of his sketches of historic buildings in Nova Scotia (unpublished). Many of those drawings are now held in the art collection of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia in Halifax. He died in Columbus, Ohio on 10 June 1952, and was buried in Toronto shortly after. (obit. Daily Commercial News [Toronto], 18 June 1952; R.A.I.C. Journal, xxix, Aug. 1952, 259; biog. Colin MacDonald, Dictionary of Canadian Artists, iii, 1971, 763; inf. Ontario Association of Architects)