VALLANCE, Hugh (1866-1947) was born at Hamilton, Ontario in December 1866, and was the son of James Vallance, a carpenter and builder in that city. From 1883 he served an apprenticeship with the prominent Hamilton architect Charles W. Mulligan, and appears to have left Hamilton after 1886 when he travelled to Boston, Mass. to gain more practical experience and further his education. His name first appears in the Boston City Directory in 1887 as a draftsman employed by an unnamed architect with offices in the Court House Building in Pemberton Square. By 1891 he was employed by John Hasty of Boston and two years later he had joined the firm of Henry Hartwell and William C. Richardson (later Hartwell, Richardson & Driver) with whom he remained from 1892 until 1905. It was during this period in Boston that Vallance claimed to have studied under Eugene Letang (1842-1892) and Constant D. Despradelles (1862-1912), both of whom were talented French architects trained at the Ecole-des-Beaux-Arts and who later taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Vallance does not appear to have registered as a student at this Institute, however, and thus it may only be presumed that his studies took place at an atelier or in evening courses which were taught outside the M.I.T. campus.
In April 1906 he returned to Montreal and formed a partnership with David R. Brown, who he may have met when both were working as draftsmen in Boston from 1890 until 1894. Their practise flourished and their designs were highly sought after by institutional and corporate clients in Quebec, Ontario and in Saskatchewan (see list of works under Brown & Vallance). In late 1919 their partnership was dissolved and both continued with their own careers, and it was during this period that Vallance executed his finest work, the Crane Company Office Building in Phillips Square, Montreal, a self-assured triumph of Canadian modernism that deftly steps around the inside corner of the Square and exudes a formal, almost severe, restraint rarely found in other Montreal architecture from this period. It was one of few North American designs to be published by the Dutch author Prof. J.G. Wattjes in his landmark publication entitled Moderne Architectuur (1927) which included projects by luminaries such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut and Robert Mallet-Stevens.
Vallance was elected as President of the Province of Quebec Association of Architects in 1917 and nominated as a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1928. He was elected as an Academician of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1926 and his diploma work, 'A Suggested Design for an Extension to the Sun Life Building, Montreal' is now held in the collections the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. He was '.....an artist of rare taste and talent and an architect whose innate ability and force triumphed over technical and practical difficulties and welded all elements into a coherent design' (obituary in the R.A.I.C. Journal, xxiv, April 1947, 143). He retired from active practise after 1938 and died in Montreal on 13 March 1947 (obituary in the Gazette [Montreal], 14 March 1947, 14; Montreal Star, 14 March 1947, 22; inf. Charles Longley, Boston Public Library; inf. Royal Inst. of British Architects, London).
HAMILTON, ONT., St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church (now St. Paul's Presbyterian Church) James Street South at Jackson Street West, major extension of the chancel and interior alterations, with Frank Darling as Consulting Architect (Evening Times [Hamilton], 7 Sept. 1909, 7, detailed descrip.; Spectator [Hamilton], 18 Jan 1910, 3, descrip.; and 4 April 1910, 5, descrip.; M. MacRae & A. Adamson, Hallowed Walls, 1975, 151; inf. Robert Hamilton)
POINTE CLAIRE, QUE., club house for the Pointe Claire Boating Club, 1921 (C.R., xxxv, 13 April 1921, 68)
MONTREAL, QUE., Crane Co. Ltd. Office Building, Phillips Square, 1921-23 (C.R., xxxvii, 14 March 1923, 249-51, illus. & descrip.; Const., xvi, July 1923, 226-33, illus. & descrip.; Architectural Forum [New York], xxxix, Oct. 1923, 193, plates 65-7, illus. & descrip.; R.A.I.C. Journal, iv, Feb. 1927, 57, illus.; Montreal, Les Hotels Les Immeubles de Bureaux, 1983, 165-67, illus.)
POINTE CLAIRE, QUE., St. John's Anglican Church, Ste. Claire Avenue opposite Drayton Avenue, 1924; burned November 1992 (Gazette [Montreal], 17 Sept. 1924, 11; inf. Scott Edwards)
(with J. Melville Miller) MONTREAL, QUE., Shriner's Hospital for Crippled Children, Cedar Avenue, 1924-25 (C.R., xxxvii, 19 Dec. 1923, 46; Architecture [New York], l, July 1924, 234, illus.; R.A.I.C. Journal, iv, July 1927, 242-49, illus. & descrip.)
POINTE CLAIRE, QUE., Church of the Resurrection [Anglican], Mount Pleasant Avenue at Queen Avenue, in Valois, 1926-27; church later rebuilt c. 1960 (Montreal Daily Star, 31 Jan. 1927, 8, illus. & descrip.)
POINTE CLAIRE, QUE., rebuilding and major addition to the Beaconsfield Golf Club House, 1929 (Gazette [Montreal], 22 June 1929, 19, descrip.; C.R., xliii, 24 July 1929, 60; dwgs. at Canadian Architecture Collection, McGill Univ.; inf. Scott Edwards)
POINTE CLAIRE, QUE., Post Office, for the federal Dept. of Public Works, 1938 (inf. Gregory Utas)
COMPETITIONS
MONTREAL, QUE., Church of St. Andrew & St. Paul, Sherbrooke Street West at Redpath Street, 1929. Hugh Vallance was one of twelve Montreal architectural firms invited to submit an entry (R.A.I.C. Journal, vi, Dec. 1929, 442-3, illus.; inf. Scott Edwards). His proposal was set aside in favour of the modern Gothic design by Harold L. Fetherstonhaugh, who was declared the winner.