Gordon W. Lloyd (1832-1904): the Canadian Churches of Detroit’s Architect

The province of Ontario is by no means short of ecclesiastical jewels thanks to the tenacity and fervour of nineteenth-century architects. Amongst the list of prolific architects working in this century though, there is a name that has frequently been omitted: Gordon W. Lloyd’s (1832-1904). Lloyd was born and trained in Britain, established an architectural office in Detroit, MI, and lived across the Detroit River in Windsor, ON. Although Lloyd designed various domestic, commercial and institutional buildings throughout his career, churches were his specialty, and all but one of his forty-two churches in America and Canada are Gothic. While Lloyd was an active architect during the latter half of the nineteenth century –even being referred to as the dean of Detroit architects at the time of his death – nothing has been published on him for nearly fifty years, the last being a brief survey of a select few of his Detroit buildings in W. Hawkins Ferry’s The Buildings of Detroit (1968). Although most of Lloyd’s buildings are in the Unites States – in Detroit more specifically – this paper will introduce his ten Canadian churches built throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century.