SHELL LABORATORY BUILDING

Firm: J. A. Cawston

Address: 2223 Centre Street NW

Date: November 1952

Status: demolished ca. 1983

Shell's laboratory building on Centre Street was quietly an excellent work of architecture. The one-storey building comprises a low, two-office section at the front with a covered entrance. The façade is clad in Roman brick and stucco. The conference room behind the planter has a large reeded glass window looking onto the entrance terrace. The higher rear section of the building, which comprises the laboratory rooms, is clad in buff brick.

The Shell laboratory is in a way a companion to the much larger research building Imperial built in Manchester around the same time (see Imperial Oil Research Building). I haven't found research and laboratory buildings that belonged to any of the other majors of the era.