SEDGWICK, Robert George Hopkinson (1860-1928), active in Toronto, Ont. where he served as a senior staff architect with the Toronto Board of Education from 1909 to 1920. He worked directly under the supervision of Charles H. Bishop, Chief Architect to the Board, who later resigned under a cloud of suspicion in 1919. Sedgwick was born in Leeds, Co. Yorkshire, England on 3 April 1860 and was already recorded as an “architect’s pupil” in that city in the 1881 Census of England. He decided to emigrate to Canada in 1887, but no information has been found on his activity until 1899 when he appears in Toronto as a draftsman in the busy office of James A. Ellis. He remained with Ellis until 1906 when he joined James A. Harvey as an draftsman. In 1909 he took up the post of senior designer within the Architectural Department of the Toronto Board of Education where he produced plans for nearly 30 public school buildings, and collaborated with other designers at the Board including Hiram R. Barber, Franklin Belfry and A.D. Waste. After the dismissal of Bishop in 1919, his team of designers left the Board. Sedgwick continued work as an architect under his own name, but no references to his work after 1920 have been found.
Sedgwick died in Toronto on 7 January 1928 (death notice Toronto Star, 9 Jan. 1928, 28; obituary Contract Record [Toronto], 18 Jan. 1928, 70). The latter obituary article noted that Sedgwick was “…responsible for the design of many of Toronto’s schools” during the period from 1909 to 1920.
TORONTO, ONT., three pairs of semi-detached houses for Burton S. Blackwell, Jones Avenue near Danforth Avenue, 1914 (City of Toronto b.p. 8929, 20 Jan. 1914)