WETENHALL, Edward Box (1870-1962) was active in Calgary, Alberta from 1903 to 1905, and in the Vancouver area from 1911 to 1912. Born in Stoke Newington, Co. Middlesex, England on 21 November 1870, he served a four year apprenticeship in London with the firm of Gordon & Lowther, Architects from March 1888 until 1892, then remained with that firm as a draftsman until after 1900. In that year he exhibited his design for "A House at Pinner", in Middlesex, at the Royal Academy Exhibition in London (Architect & Contract Reporter [London], lxiii, 4 May 1900, 283). He was nominated as an Associate member of the Royal Inst. of British Architects in March 1893, and later, after his return to England in 1922, he was elected as a Fellow of that Institute in 1924.
Wetenhall arrived in Canada in January 1903 and opened an office in Calgary (Daily Herald [Calgary], 9 Jan. 1903, 8). Within a few months of his arrival, he was invited by J. Llewellyn Wilson to form a partnership there (see list of works under Wilson & Wetenhall). Their collaboration was a brief one, however, and the firm was dissolved by mutual consent in late 1904 (Daily Herald [Calgary], 17 Oct. 1904, 5). Wetenhall then returned to London, England and in 1907 he was recorded as an architect with an office on Sackville Street (The Architects & Surveyors Directory & Referendum [London], 1907, 136). By 1912, he had returned to Canada, settling in Vancouver, B.C. where he operated his own office on Abbott Street (Greater Vancouver Directory, 1912, p. 1307). Only one commission by Wetenhall in British Columbia has been located, for a large commercial block in New Westminster called The Hill Block, for L. Claude Hill, Carnarvon Street, built 1912 and still standing as of 2018.
Wetenhall appears to have left Canada after 1914 and returned to England where he continued to practise from an office in Parliament Street in London (F. Chatterton, Who’s Who in Architecture, 1923, 266). He died at Eastbourne, Co. Sussex on 26 April 1962 (obituary Building [London], ccii, 4 May 1962, 918; biog. in Royal Inst. of British Architects, Directory of British Architects 1834-1914; 2001, Vol. ii, 964)
PINNER, CO. MIDDLESEX, ENGL., large residence for an unnamed client, on The Avenue, Royston Park, in the village of Pinner (near Harrow), 1901 (Building News [London], lxxx, 15 Feb. 1901, 227, descrip., with full page plate showing exterior perspective view and two plans)
NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C., The Hill Block [later called The Royal City Glass Co. Building], for L. Claude Hill, Carnarvon Street at Lorne Street, 1912 (Vancouver Daily World, 13 April 1912, 10, descrip.; Saturday Sunset (Vancouver), 16 Nov. 1912, 13, descrip.)