“Not all conditions are favourable to best results, but all are deserving of best efforts.” 

– Sidney Rose Badgley, 1896  

There’s a certain joy that comes from finding out someone of influence is from St. Catharines, especially a revolutionary architect.  Sidney Rose Badgley grew up in St. Catharines and began his work here. He designed many buildings and monuments in the city. Who is the man behind the name?  

The architect of Massey Hall in Toronto, Sidney Rose Badgley was born in 1850 in Ernest Township, Ontario near Kingston. As a young boy however, the family moved to St. Catharines. Badgley attended Grantham Academy on Church Street, a building that still stands today and is home to Bridges Niagara. 

Windeyer in Toronto, a commercial architect who had many partnerships across Toronto and Montreal. Badgley began his architectural apprenticeship in 1871 and worked with Windeyer until 1875 when he returned to St. Catharines to start his own architectural firm. Business was soon booming! Badgley designed the Niagara Street Methodist Church in 1875, the Welland Avenue Methodist Church in 1877 to 1878, and the Connor House Hotel in Merritton in 1878.

Badgley is considered to have revolutionized church architecture. Many of his works are methodist churches, as Badgley was a methodist himself. His church proposals focused on community and religious spaces, contrasting the cruciform shape that had been standard at the time. Badgley’s plans utilized towers, porticoes, and assembly halls. He moved away from the traditional symmetrical designs and created plans for churches with Sunday schools and assembly halls, which integrated church and worship space with community spaces for church goers.

The Welland Avenue Methodist Church, devised by Badgley as his first real commission in 1875, became the Welland Avenue United Church in 1925. The Gothic style and new ideas for use of space gave him a reputation as an innovative designer. The tower for the church, with its 12 spires, was inspired by Magdalen College in Oxford, United Kingdom. The Welland Avenue United Church was deconsecrated in 2013 and is now home to Community Living St. Catharines, an organization which focuses on building community for the residents of St. Catharines.

A similar design completed by Badgley in 1894 for the Pilgrim Congregational Church in Cleveland, Ohio, would be exhibited in the Paris 1900 Exposition. Badgley’s drawings were chosen to exemplify the ecclesiastical architectural style that was appearing in North America around the turn of the 20th century. The Pilgrim Congregational Church was completed in a Romanesque style featuring a tower among other elements Badgley liked to include. It was one of the first churches in the United States created to be used for both religious and community needs.

Two other memorable Badgley projects are the Carnegie Library and the Oille Fountain located here in St. Catharines. The Oille Fountain was built in 1878 to celebrate the completion of the Waterworks Project, which provided clean and safe drinking water to the residents of St. Catharines. The fountain was a public water fountain and had a dog drinking fountain located at the bottom. It was presented to the city by the former mayor at the time, Dr. Lucius Oille. Like other Badgley works, the fountain created another meeting spot for citizens, located at the corner of King Street and James Street, one of the busiest intersections in the city and where it still stands today. At the top of the fountain is an urn which the St. Catharines Historical Society has used as part of an annual planting ceremony. It has become a tradition that a geranium is planted on top of the fountain each year in the spring, to show gratitude to Lucius Oille and the Waterworks Project.

Badgley moved his family to Cleveland, Ohio in 1887 and continued his architecture work there. Yet even being so far away, Badgley still continued work for St. Catharines. In 1901, the City of St. Catharines began correspondence with Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish-American industrialist who donated money to many cities around the world for the establishment of libraries. Carnegie believed that providing libraries and knowledge to people would help them achieve success and greatness. His only request was that the city would then take care of the library like they would a school or public theatre. In December of 1901, St. Catharines was promised $20,000 for the construction of their library. After a design contest, the city commissioned Sidney Badgley to build the new Carnegie Library. Each Carnegie Library had to have a lecture room, reading rooms for adults and children, a staff room, a centrally located librarian’s desk, twelve-to-fifteen-foot ceilings, large windows 6 to 7 feet above the ground, and Andrew Carnegie’s name had to be on the building.

Badgley, who wanted to give back to his city and help in the effort towards a library, told the City he would donate his time and resources for the plans of the library building. His neoclassical design had two sets of ionic columns on either side of the front doors. The library’s façade had a pediment and entablature in a geometric pattern. In 1903, the city wrote a letter to Carnegie stating that they could not get the construction costs below $20,000 and requested more money. They received $5000 dollars to complete the building. It finally opened in January of 1905. This building served generations of St. Catharinites but was demolished in 1977. Portions of the columns from the original building however, are on site here at the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre.

Badgley’s neighbour, a couple doors down from his home in Cleveland, was Hart Massey, a Canadian industrialist who wanted to gift the people of Toronto with a concert hall, partly to create a meeting place to hear choral music that wasn’t religious and to commemorate his son Charles, who loved music. This project was created by Badgley in 1894 after his previous works left him with a talent for acoustic design. Massey Hall still stands and is one of the most well-known concert venues in Canada, applauded for its amazing acoustics and neoclassical brick façade.

Badgley’s work is extensive across Canada. By the end of his career, he had completed 33 projects in Canada, 12 of which were in the Niagara area. He created many meeting places and his revolutionary church designs are still used today. Badgley died on April 28^th, 1917, in Wiloughby, Ohio, and his wife, Charlotte Jane Gilleland Badgley, died just 5 days later. They are buried together at Victoria Lawn Cemetery here in St. Catharines. Badgley’s works have all focused on, or led to, community driven interventions in the different projects he completed. Massey Hall is still a place for people to come together and listen to music. The Welland Avenue Methodist Church is now a Community Living Centre. The Oille Fountain’s ceremony has lasted long past the life of Badgley. His efforts and influence to expand spaces available for community gathering in the city are now his legacy.

Lorna Montani is a 2025 Summer Program Assistant Student at the St. Catharines Museum.