TOLTZ, KING & DAY (fl. 1920-31) of St. Paul, Minnesota designed the Prince of Wales Hotel at the northern end of Waterton Lake National Park in southern Alberta in 1926 (Const., xxi, Aug. 1928, 260-64, 267-70, illus. & descrip.). This rustic Tudor Revival landmark was one of several major hotels constructed in Canada's national park system in the early twentieth century, but the design for the hotel is perhaps the most assertive and decidely Swiss-influenced of all the hotel designs.
Max Toltz (1857-1932) was a German born engineer who graduated from the Royal Polytechnikum in Berlin in 1878. He emigrated to the United States and later organized the Toltz Engineering Co. in St. Paul in 1910. His partner Wesley E. King (1880-1959) was born in Minnesota and studied engineering at the University of Minnesota. He became a partner in the Toltz Company in 1920 when Beaver W. Day (1884-1931) joined the firm. Day was the only experienced architect in the partnership and it is likely that the design for the Prince of Wales Hotel came from his hand. Day was born in North Dakota and graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He moved to St. Paul in 1912 and worked with Allen Stem, architect before joining Toltz & King in 1920. His major works included nearly a dozen court houses in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota, as well as schoolhouses throughout the northwest. Toltz died in St. Paul on 11 January 1932 (obit. & port. St. Paul Pioneer Press, 12 Jan. 1932, 1). King died on 4 June 1959 (obit. St. Paul Pioneer Press, 5 June 1959, 3). Day died in St. Paul on 28 February 1931 (obit. and port. St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press, 1 March 1931, 1). Biographies of all three partners in the firm can be found in Alan Lathrop, Minnesota Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 2010, 54-5, 129, and 212-14.