HALL, John Roulstone (1826-1911), active in Boston, Mass. for more than fifty years. In Canada, Hall was credited as the architect of a large 5 storey hotel block located at the corner of Charlotte Street at King’s Square, SAINT JOHN, N.B. 1869 (Morning Freeman [Saint John], 4 Dec. 1869, 2, descrip.; Daily Morning News [Saint John], 4 Dec. 1869, 2; and 6 Dec. 1869, 2, descrip.). Nearly twenty years later, Hall completed a design for the Bank of Nova Scotia, Victoria Street, AMHERST, N.S. (Morning Herald [Halifax], 30 May 1888, 3; Daily Sun [Saint John, N.B.], 1 June 1888, 1, descrip.). This substantial red sandstone block, with a frontage of 57 feet, was designed to accommodate the bank on the ground floor, and the local YMCA branch on the second floor. The bank was altered by Darling & Pearson in 1906 (dwgs. Bank of Nova Scotia Archives, Toronto).
In Boston, Hall was the designer of the St. James Hotel, East Newton Street, Boston, Mass., 1868 (Donald Lyndon, Boston: The City Observed, 1982, 212), and in 1889 he remodelled the Hollis Street Church into the Hollis Street Theatre, a famous playhouse for several decades; Hall died in Roxbury, Mass. on 11 January 1911 (obituary Boston Evening Transcript, 12 Jan. 1911, 6; obit. Boston Globe, 13 Jan. 1911, 3; biog. H. Withey, Biographical Dictionary of American Architects, 1956, 258)