460 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 80 PART 3 MAY 2022
The Hooper-designed Vernon courthouse was built from 1911 to 1914 and
was, when built, the largest in the B.C. Interior. It replaced an 1892 courthouse,
which had distinguished itself by being “the first brick court house
erected in the British Columbia interior”.10 The Hooper-designed courthouse
was, however, of “classical derivation”, and originally featured not
simply substantial amounts of marble but also a glass dome.11 The Sun newspaper
(Vancouver) described it at the time as “the handsomest government
building in the interior of British Columbia”.12 (In the same column, the
newspaper glowingly described Vernon’s more general prospects, noting for
example that its “fruit trees are clean and free of disease or pests, and have
never before according to government experts, been so well budded out nor
have they promised so large a crop”.13)
In Vancouver, before Hooper was commissioned to prepare his courthouse
design, architect Francis Rattenbury had already designed the main
Francis Rattenbury’s portion of the Vancouver courthouse, from Hornby Street
(photographed circa 1912-1925) – City of Vancouver Archives, CVA 1376-128
body of the courthouse that we now know as the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Rattenbury’s portion was completed in 1911, in a neoclassical style that
included Ionic columns, a central portico and a substantial use of marble in
the interior. One commentator later noted, however, that Rattenbury “didn’t
quite achieve the order which lifts a classical composition above the ordinary”:
while “Rattenbury played all the right notes—a façade colonnade,
columned and pedimented portico flanked by imperial lions, and a Palladian
rotunda—to serenade the local judiciary with a flattering tune”, he
“lacked the skill and rigour, that hard edge of discipline and restraint, that
sounds the chord of perfect classical proportion”.14 These days the courthouse’s
pillars are also often obscured by banners advertising the gallery’s
latest exhibition, including as mentioned in this issue’s Entre Nous.