Gold medal winner at a Parisian World competition for architecture in the 1890s, Edward Colis Hopkins became the first Provincial Architect of Alberta in 1905 and a prominent Edmonton designer specializing in large commercial and industrial warehouses.
Magoon, Hopkins, & James (1907-1909)
Hopkins & Wright (1909)
Edward Colis (E.C.) Hopkins received his education in Montreal, his place of birth, and professional architectural training under his father, the well-known John W. Hopkins. This father and son team formed a business partnership in 1877 and designed several noteworthy buildings in Montreal. In 1881 E.C. Hopkins married Emma Jane Blow of Whitby, Ontario. Between 1894 and 1904 Hopkins worked in Boston and Quebec City before moving to Calgary, then Edmonton in 1905.
Hopkins found immediate employment with the Alberta Government and became the first Provincial Architect the year he arrived in the province. Hopkins was called upon to design Alberta's Legislature Building but his first design of the structure was deemed too similar to the British Columbia Legislature Building in Victoria. His second draft was also considered unsuitable. Hopkins resigned from his position as Provincial Architect as a result of these rejections and in 1907 became a partner with Herbert Alton Magoon, and Percy L. James. These associates went on to become two of the most respected architects in western Canada. By 1908 the partnership became simply Hopkins & James, and a year later Hopkins took up a business with Edmund Wright. This too was short lived and in 1910 Hopkins established his own firm on Jasper Avenue, specializing in large commercial and industrial warehouses. Most well-known is the 1910 brick-clad Romanesque Revival warehouse now known as The Boardwalk, and the impressive Edmonton Drill Hall - now the Prince of Wales Armouries – completed in 1913. At the time, the Edmonton Journal noted he had "created acoustic systems for auditoriums and theatres that have in turn created a demand for his handiwork". Perhaps this reputation, which included the design for the opera house in Vancouver, landed him the contract to design the Brown Block, the offices, frontage, and entrance of the Pantages Theatre in 1913.
Hopkins left his mark elsewhere in Canada as well and is noted for his design of the Montreal Ice Palace built for the visit of the Marquess of Lorne in 1900, Regina's City Hall, and the Normal School in Calgary. A charter member of the Quebec Association of Architects and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Institute of Architects, Hopkins was elected president of the Alberta Association of Architects in 1910. He died in Edmonton in 1941.