I love discovering and photographing the wonderful brickwork seen on mid-Victorian era buildings in Toronto. Dichromatic (two-colour) brickwork is quite common.

Brickwork on the Chadwick Home, U of T campus

Although polychromy - the use of various colours in architecture - was seen all over nineteenth century Europe, at the time Toronto's main architectural influence was Britain. Polychromy was promoted and popularized in Victorian England by architectural theorist John Ruskin. Inspired by the coloured stones and marbles of Italian architecture, Ruskin endorsed structural polychromy (producing colour by using different shades of bricks and stones) over the mere application of colour.

British architects produced numerous influential polychrome buildings. William Butterfield's All Saints Church (Margaret Street, London) and George Edmund Street's St. James the Less Church (Westminster, London) are outstanding examples of brickwork. Along with Ruskin and others, their work was part of the Gothic Revival in British architecture.