While I can't say for sure that the St Thomas Post Office on Talbot Street was built with funds made available in support of Canada's Centennial, it certainly looks as though it could have been. Still there's a part of me that has a sneaking hunch that it might date back slightly earlier. I do aim to find out, though...
What is true is that the post office is an absolutely fantastic - and textbook - example of The International Style, whose leading adherent was arguably Le Corbusier (for purposes of comparison, check out this picture of a Le Corbusier factory, and this picture, the only building Le Corbusier ever designed in the Soviet Union.
All the hallmarks are there: rectilinear forms; light, taut plane surfaces, glass and steel, in combination with concrete, as well as a focus on achieving unity through standardization, as opposed to symmetry.
The bottom of the building is clad in a particularly impressive black marble, while the grid pattern of its construction is both relieved and enhanced through the device of making some panels opaque blue rather than settling on a simple expanse of glass.
Sadly, I have a strong suspicion that most St Thomas residents neither know nor care that they have such a superlative example of The International Style on their main street.
What is true is that the post office is an absolutely fantastic - and textbook - example of The International Style, whose leading adherent was arguably Le Corbusier (for purposes of comparison, check out this picture of a Le Corbusier factory, and this picture, the only building Le Corbusier ever designed in the Soviet Union.
All the hallmarks are there: rectilinear forms; light, taut plane surfaces, glass and steel, in combination with concrete, as well as a focus on achieving unity through standardization, as opposed to symmetry.
The bottom of the building is clad in a particularly impressive black marble, while the grid pattern of its construction is both relieved and enhanced through the device of making some panels opaque blue rather than settling on a simple expanse of glass.
Sadly, I have a strong suspicion that most St Thomas residents neither know nor care that they have such a superlative example of The International Style on their main street.
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