Long before chicken wings became a Buffalo signature, Ontario turned to the bustling business and shipping hub of the Great Lakes for something more enduring — an architect of note to design a new provincial parliament.

Preferably, one that would not burn to the ground as easily as two others.

“Buffalo was where it was at for a lot of the inspiration for this place,” says David Bogart of the legislature’s protocol and public relations branch, referring to a building boom in the Queen City.

“Toronto at the end of the 19th century was kind of a backwater, and to get a building like this constructed in the post-Confederation, still-pioneer age was absolutely monumental,” he adds, noting the city’s population and building activity was south of Queen’s Park at the time.

But it took some twists of fate — including a massive fire that devoured the legislature’s west wing in 1909 — to definitively link the legislature and Old City Hall, as anyone who has walked the intricately tiled, marbled and columned halls of the two Richardsonian Romanesque buildings can attest.

This tale has its roots in 1885 during a design competition for Ontario’s seat of government. Submissions failed to wow a judging panel headed by noted Buffalo architect Richard A. Waite, so he brazenly came up with his own drawings and got the gig.

“Waite somehow convinced them ‘you know who could do this properly and under budget? It’s me.’ All the architects were so upset and who can blame them? The government’s pretty much implying that there’s no architect in Ontario who can design our legislature,” says Toronto architectural historian Marta O’Brien.

Bogart says the fix was definitely in after most architects submitted drawings in an older Gothic revival style like the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.

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