McINTYRE, John (1879-1957) was a trained architect and town planner who held the position of Townsite Manager at Powell River, B.C. from 1920 to 1935. During his tenure he designed virtually every public building in the town for the Powell River Company, including more than 250 new houses for company employees. He favoured the Tudor Revival style, and developed standard house plans with various roof profiles and sited in imaginative ways to avoid monotonous streetscapes. As a town planner, he also laid out a major extension to the town site in the 1920’s, situating houses along a gently curved crescent that offered breathtaking views of the Malaspina Strait and the mountains of Vancouver Island.
Born in Stranraer, Co. Wigtonshire, Scotland on 31 January 1879, he articled in the office of Alexander H. Crawford in Edinburgh, and studied at the School of Applied Art and at Heriot-Watt College. He left in 1900 and took a position as draftsman in the Royal Engineers Scottish District Architects Office, but appears to have been working independently, accepting commissions for small jobs. His career received a boost in 1904 when he won the competition for St. Paul’s Church, Glasgow, and later designed private houses and commercial buildings in Earlsferry, Edinburgh, Leith and Stranaer. In 1910 he closed his Edinburgh office and move to Vancouver, B.C. where he worked under his own name, and, in 1911, in association with Gordon L. Wright, another Scottish architect who had trained in the office of J.J. Burnet (see list of works under Wright & McIntyre). In 1913 he became a supervising architect in the Building Dept. for both the Town of Point Grey, and the Town of Burnaby. In 1915 he moved to Powell River to take up the post of company architect and planner, and was appointed Townsite Manager in 1919. McIntyre held that post until 1935, and later worked in the Public Relations Division of the company.
McIntyre retired from the Power River Company in 1952 and died at Powell River on 21 June 1957 (obit. R.I.B.A. Journal, lxv, March 1958, 178; biog. and port. D. Luxton, Building The West: The Early Architects of British Columbia, 2003, 376, 510; biog. R.I.B.A., Directory of British Architects 1834-1914, 2001, Vol. ii, 103; inf. Gordon Fulton, Ottawa, Ont.; inf. Architectural Inst. of British Columbia, Vancouver).
(works in Scotland)
GLASGOW, St. Paul’s Parish Church, John Street, 1904 (The Builder [London], lxxxvii, 26 Nov. 1904, 551; Building News [London], lxxxix, 18 Aug. 1905, plate illus.;)
EARLSFERRY, CO. FIFE, Grange Neuk, 1905 (The Architect [London], lxxx, 11 Dec. 1908, Supplement, 15; Glen Pride, The Kingdom of Fife: An Illustrated Architectural Guide, 1990, 169-70, illus.)
EDINBURGH, “Littledene”, a residence for an unnamed client, Priestfield Road, 1908 (Academy Architecture [London], xxxiv, 1908, Part Two, 21, 70, illus.)
(works in Powell River, B.C.)
BOWLING ALLEY & GYMNASIUM, Ash Avenue, 1923; demol. 1963
POWER RIVER TOWNSITE, a tract of 150 new houses for the Powell River Co. Ltd., 1923-24 (Vancouver Daily World, 15 June 1923, 5; C.R., xxxviii, 16 April 1924, 55)
BROOKS PUBLIC SCHOOL, Marine Avenue, 1926; demol. 1994
DWIGHT HALL COMMUNITY CENTRE & PUBLIC LIBRARY, Walnut Street, 1927
BANK OF MONTREAL, Ash Avenue, 1931