Mansard Mansions


Mansard Mansions

Mansard roofs on second empire and Italianate buildings were all the rage in the high to late Victorian period.  Peterborough was thriving during this era, and the town was lush with gorgeous architecture.  The north side of Brock Street from George to Aylmer Streets was almost a full stretch of these elegant buildings.  While some of those mansions survive, none are in their original form, and the mansard roofs have long disappeared.  In Peterborough today, there are maybe half dozen scattered mansard mansions remaining intact.
One of Peterborough’s best preserved, the Richard and Robert Hall house, was built in 1877.  The iron cresting over the front entrance originally also graced the roof line.  The house survived as law offices for many decades, and now houses the John Howard Society.

The Judge G. M Rogers house, 1877, built for his fiancée, who tragically drowned.  The house was instead rented out, and later used as a girls’ school.


William Lech’s duplex mansion, 1885.



John J. Hall house, 1866.  The mansard roof was added in the late 1880s after the house was purchased by the Diocese of Peterborough for a parsonage.  Today it is known as the Rectory for the Cathedral of St. Peter-in-Chains.


Directly around the corner from the Rectory, is the Bishop’s Palace.  This grand home was yet another George A. Cox mansard construction, built in 1885.  It was purchased by the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Peterborough, Bishop Dowling, in 1887.  The original mansard roof was destroyed by fire in 1932 and replaced by the current roof.  The house was expanded in 1969.


Across from the Bishop’s Palace on Hunter Street West is the 1876 David Pentland house.  Recently restored and renovated, (the coach house has been completely redone), this house is currently for sale, listed at $1,475,000.



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