BARTLETT, Arthur Edward (1867-1933) was active in Calgary, Alta. during the period of 1911 to 1913 when the initial planning was carried out for the proposed campus of the University of Calgary. He submitted a design in the competition for the first buildings, and was placed first by the assessors, but the provincial government refused to grant the necessary legislation to allow the institution to grant degrees, preferring instead to support the provincially funded University of Alberta in Edmonton, and it would be nearly 50 years before the University of Calgary was formally sanctioned. None of Bartlett’s winning design was built.
Born in 1867, Bartlett trained a private pupil under Sir Reginald Blomfield, a leading Edwardian architect in London, from 1886 to 1889, and later studied architecture at the Royal Academy Schools and at the Architectural Association in London. After his election as a Fellow of the Royal Inst. Of British Architects in 1909, he practised in the USA before coming to Canada and settling in Calgary in 1911. While there, he joined the Alberta Assoc. of Architects that year, and later submitted the winning design for buildings at the Univ. of Calgary. The real estate collapse there in 1914, and the intervening events of WWI, prompted Bartlett to return to England, and he later served as architect to the War Graves Commission inn France in 1918-20. He continued to practise in London until after 1930. Bartlett died in London on 9 September 1933 (obit. R.I.B.A. Journal, xl, 14 Oct. 1933, 847; biog. and list of works in F. Chatterton, Who’s Who in Architecture, 1923, 23; biog. Directory of British Architects 1834-1900, 1993, 58-9)