Darling and Pearson

Darling and Pearson was an architectural firm based in Toronto from 1895 through 1937. The firm was prolific and produced consistently fine work though the patronage of notable figures of the Canadian establishment, and is responsible for enhancing the architectural character and quality of the city, and indeed the rest of Canada, in the first quarter of the 20th century.

The firm was organized first as Darling, Curry, Sproatt, & Pearson in 1892, with partners Frank Darling, S. George Curry, Henry Sproatt, and John A. Pearson. From 1893 through 1896 it evolved into Darling, Sproatt & Pearson, then finally Darling and Pearson was founded as such in 1897.

Its heyday began with Darling's commissions from the Canadian Bank of Commerce in 1898, grand Edwardian buildings in Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal, and Vancouver, and dozens of smaller branches in smaller Canadian cities and towns. Darling's training with the English architect George Edmund Street and Sir Arthur Blomfield in the early 1870s brought a serious, substantial, Victorian influence, well-suited to large civic and institutional projects in the years of the nation's development.

Their subsequent projects included the first tall steel-frame building in Canada (the Royal Tower in Winnipeg, 1904), the tallest building in Canada for three decades (the 1930 Canadian Bank of Commerce Building in Toronto, with York and Sawyer of New York), and the largest single building in the British Commonwealth (the Sun Life Building, Montreal, Started in 1914 and tower added by1931).

After the deaths of Frank Darling in 1923 and Pearson in 1940, the firm was renamed Darling, Pearson and Cleveland with Darling's nephew as a partner.

197 Yonge Street, Toronto

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