A.M. Jeffers

Allan Merrick (A.M.) Jeffers was the American-born architect who designed Alberta’s Legislature Building. Born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1875, Jeffers studied in Providence at the Rhode Island School of Design. Jeffers found inspiration in the Beaux-Arts style that flavoured the state capitol in Providence. This is a style that originated in Paris in the 19 th century and grew in popularity in North America between 1895 and 1920. Greek and Roman architectural elements like massive columns, doors, and windows adorned with arches and lintels and large domes seated above rotundas are characteristic of Beaux-Arts. Jeffers incorporated these stylistic features into his design of the Alberta Legislature; he supervised the construction of this building from 1907 to 1912. It was in 1907 that Jeffers moved to Edmonton where he replaced Edward Hopkins as the provincial architect. After completing his work on the Legislature, Jeffers was employed by the City of Edmonton as an architect until 1915 and then subsequently set up his own practice. Jeffers’s professional momentum was halted, however, because of the First World War. As Trevor Boddy explains in Modern Architecture in Alberta “The post-World War I recession meant grim times even for an architect of his [Jeffers’s] prestige and experience.” Like many other Albertan architects at the time, Jeffers left the province. First he moved to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and later migrated south to California. Jeffers passed away in California in 1925 at the age of fifty-one.

Trevor Boddy, Modern Architecture in Alberta(Regina: University of Regina and Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1987), 21.