Chappell & Hunter, Architects

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Chappell & Hunter, Architects

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The Charlottetown architectural firm of Chappell and Hunter was composed of architects Charles Benjamin Chappell and John Marshall Hunter. For some years in the 1920s and 1930s the firm operated out of the Hughes Building on Queen Street.

Charles Benjamin Chappell was born in Charlottetown on 10 October 1857, the son of William Chappell and Mary Ann Turner. On 25 September 1878 Chappell married Louisa Jane Holman with whom he had two sons, Ernest C. and Frederick John, and two daughters, Carrie and Ethel. Although listed as a carpenter in the 1881 census, in just a few years he was a partner in the firm of Phillips and Chappell and receiving commissions for work in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. His earliest works were the Charlottetown City Hall in 1887 and many of the buildings on Richmond Street which had been destroyed by fire in 1884. He also designed the Herald Building in Halifax and, for a time, maintained an office in Sydney, Nova Scotia.

John Marshall Hunter was born in Lennoxtown, Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1881. He was married to Mary J. Taylor with whom he had at least one son, Joseph T. Hunter. After serving an apprenticeship as an architect with a Glasgow firm, he subsequently accepted an offer from the Canadian Pacific Railway. Later, as a member of a firm of Montreal architects specializing in church and home architecture, one of his first assignments was St. Dunstan's Basilica in Charlottetown to replace the church which had recently been destroyed by fire in 1913. Following the five year project, Hunter elected to remain in Charlottetown and went into partnership with Charles B. Chappell.

Together the two architects carried out many significant church and hospital architectural projects both in PEI and the mainland as well as designing and building residential, commercial, and public buildings on the Island. These projects included the Rena MacLean Veterans hospital erected on the grounds of Government House, the new Charlottetown Hospital, Antigonish Hospital, an addition to St. Dunstan's University, and renovations to the Court House in Charlottetown, Falconwood Hospital, and the Prince County Hospital. In addition, during the later years of his career, Chappell designed Heartz Memorial Hall, Zion Presbyterian Church, the Baptist Church in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and the Presbyterian Church in Amherst, Nova Scotia.

Charles Benjamin Chappell died in 1931 followed only a few years later by John Marshall Hunter in 1942.

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Revised to correct typos, 3 May 2023 (J. Toms).