"The Church of St. John the Evangelist was designed in 1887 and the main part of the church was built during the following year; the tower was completed ten years later, after sufficient funds were raised to complete the architect's plan.
There have been several additions to the church, mainly to the north and east of the original structure. In 1895 a church school building was erected to the north of the church, utilizing bricks recycled from the recently demolished boys' school/university building. In 1927, a two-storey parish hall was erected facing Wellington Street, forming a front addition to the earlier church school building; during the same year, an octagonal apse was added east of the chancel and a chapel just to its north. In 1955, a north aisle and narthex were built between the parish hall and the original church, and a substantial addition containing more classroom and office space was erected east of the church school building.
The architect who designed the original plans for the Church of St. John the Evangelist was a member of the St. John's congregation, Charles F. Cox. Cox had trained as an architect with the well-known local firm of Robinson, Tracy and Durand, but his career in London was brief. While designing St. John's, he was lured by the Saunders family to join them at the experimental farm in Ottawa, and only one other building, a church near Ottawa, can definitely be attributed to Cox.
The building is in the later Gothic Revival style as it was envisaged and promoted by members of the British Anglican Ecclesioligical movement. Cox' design followed numerous Ecclesioligical dictates: the main entrance to the church was through a porch on the south side of the church; the various liturgical spaces, such as the sacristy and choir, were clearly denoted through the shape of the eastern end of the building; and the heavy buttresses that were functional as well as ornamental.
The main façade of Cox' design, containing the porch and tower, faces St. James Street. Its major features in terms of massing are the broad, deep roof and the 128-foot tower that balances the roof. The roof is broken only by a row of small dormer windows, six on each side of the nave, each window containing a trefoil with the original stained glass and a wooden surround. Supported by high stepped buttresses, the tower terminates in parapet gables, surmounted by a slate-covered spire. Metal finials once decorated the top of the spire, the four corners of the tower itself, and the peak of each parapet gable, though two of the gable finials are now missing. A single, tall, narrow louvered arch, surmounted by a trefoil, adorns each side of the tower. It is flanked by vertical grooves and outlined on top by a hood-mould in the shape of a pointed arch. Corbels in the form of faces support each of the drip-moulds. A horizontal groove near the top of the tower wall corresponds with the ridgeline of the church, and a row of cogged brickwork runs across the upper part of each parapet gable.
At the base of the tower is a porch that echoes the shape and features of the porch at the west end of the St. James Street façade. Both have a gable roof and a doorway defined by superimposed pointed arches in different shades of red and buff brick, shaped to form the sculptured entrance way; the upper part of each entrance way is filled with a stained glass transom. A stone roundel containing a trefoil sits in the gable above each doorway. Intricate metal finials initially adorned both porches, the gable roof of the sacristy, and the peak of the gable over the choir; only that on the tower remains in place, while two others have been temporarily removed in order to be repaired. Iron lanterns above each door are attached to the arch by iron chains. Small lancet windows pierce the base of the tower and the sides of the porch. Between the tower and south porches are four sets of paired lancet windows, each pair situated between low, stepped buttresses; east of the tower, one round window and two small paired lancet windows light the sacristy, and three broad pointed windows pierce the choir wall above the sacristy roof. The octagonal apse to the east of the choir contains decorated windows. Beyond the apse, on the north side of the church, one can see ornamental brickwork in the top of a gable and the chamfered brickwork of the original chimney.
The west façade, facing Wellington Street, is dominated by a large window with decorated tracery in the centre, flanked by a lancet window on each side. A brick panel outlined in shaped and cogged bricks sits under the main window. Open ventilation grooves, a wooden strut design incorporating a fluted column and a capital, and a metal cross add visual interest at the peak of the west gable.
The church walls are formed of local buff-coloured brick, generally laid in English garden wall bond, with every fourth row consisting of headers and the intervening three of stretchers; in some areas, such as the porch and tower walls, the rows of headers may be separated by as many as six rows of stretchers. This was a common style of brickwork in London at the time. The foundation is of very light-coloured, rusticated, stone blocks. The buttresses, on the tower and around the rest of the building, are of brick, capped by red sandstone. Both the buttress caps and the red sandstone window sills of the building have rough-cut sides and more smoothly textured top surfaces. The original metal caps of the gables have been replaced with new aluminum caps that retain the shape of the old; these terminate in gablets containing trefoils. Shaped bricks outline the window openings. All windows have wooden surrounds and are filled with stained glass. The dormers, the tower and porch windows, the sacristy windows, and the exterior transoms, contain their original stained glass, featuring geometric designs. The only pictorial design in the original church was in the east window of the choir, which now forms the east window of the apse. All other windows have pictorial designs of later date."
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