KEATING, Horace William (1812-1849), an architect from Barrie, Ontario who was credited with the design of an early provincial Court House in Barrie in 1840. Earlier that year, he had been appointed clerk-of-works to Thomas Young of Toronto to oversee his design for the Simcoe County Gaol. In September 1841 approval was granted to Keating of his own proposal for of the District of Simcoe Court House which was then constructed next to the Gaol. It was a decidedly modest work, an unadorned wood frame building resembling a barn which was later altered, with additions, by local Barrie architect George H. Brown in 1877.
Keating was, by all accounts, a knowledgeable and ambitious architect. In 1841 he was one of 13 architects from Canada and the United States who submitted a design in the important architectural competition for the Town Hall & Market Building in Kingston (J. Douglas Stewart & Ian Wilson, Heritage Kingston, 1973, 136, list of competitors, where Keating is erroneously referred to as “Mr. Horace Heating” [sic]). The proposal by Keating was set aside by the jury who awarded the First Premium to George Browne from Montreal. Keating was born in Brighton, England in December 1812 and baptised there on 25 July 1815. He arrived in Upper Canada before 1840 and continued to live and work in Simcoe County until his death in Barrie, Ont. on 11 December 1849 (Ontario Archives, GS 1-833, #72, 1850, Last Will for Horace W. Keating).
BARRIE, ONT., District of Simcoe Court House, Worsley Street, 1840-41; altered 1877; later altered beyond recognition in 1944 (OA, Minute Book of the Simcoe District, Feb. 1843, 13; May 1843, 33; M. Carter, Early Canadian Court Houses, 1983, 215, illus.; East Georgian Bay Historical Foundation, Barrie: A Nineteenth Century Country Town, 1984, 64, illus.)