Cooper buildings are woven deep into Hamilton’s history
Reprinted with the permission of The Hamilton Spectator
If there’s one name people connect to construction in Hamilton, it’s Pigott. There’s the 1928 Pigott building, the city’s first skyscraper and still the prettiest. Where King West meets the highway, there’s the Cathedral of Christ the King. J.M. Pigott got a personal thank you from the Pope for that one. So important is the Pigott name, the Art Gallery of Hamilton staged a show this fall on the company’s works.
But there’s another outfit worthy of a show some day soon. And while the Pigott company slipped away 15 years ago, Cooper Construction is still around. This year is Cooper’s centennial.
Consider this list of constructed-by-Cooper structures in Hamilton: The 1908 Landed Banking & Loan, that columned temple at Main and James; the 1933 art moderne TH & B station, now the Hamilton GO Centre; the 1953 Hamilton Harbour Commissioners building in the North End; the Medical Arts building on James South; the YMCA and YWCA downtown; the Hamilton Board of Education headquarters across from City Hall; the Royal Botanical Gardens, both the original in 1958 and the new look addition 20 years later; the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, built at cost in 1972; the Hamilton Golf and Country Club, 1929; St. Peter’s hospital, 1973; the engineering building at McMaster, 1958, one of 24 Cooper projects there over 35 years.
There are pictures of all these structures, plus many more, in a book just out to mark Cooper’s 100 years. It’s the work of Bill Cooper, president of the company, grandson of its founder. But we don’t find him in Hamilton.
His corner office is in an industrial park on the Oakville/ Mississauga border. The buildings here, constructed by Cooper, are of the cookie-cutter school. Cooper looks at that picture of the Landed Banking building, the first big project his grandfather built and just shakes his head. “We couldn’t afford to build that today. The stone alone could cost $4 million.”
In the beginning, there was W.H. Cooper, a brick mason who got his start by building houses for the carriage trade, up on Ravenscliffe and Turner and Bay South. In 1905, he formed the company that moved him into industrial construction.
W.H. was a man of high discipline. No cigars or alcohol at his house, a big brick place on Delaware at St. Clair. He was a Methodist, from which came the United Church. Religion mattered in those days. Protestants weren’t in the running for Catholic projects, be it a cathedral or a grade school. J.M. Pigott, however, was a staunch Catholic. W. H. built about a dozen Protestant churches in this town, including Melrose United on Locke Street in 1928.
A few years later, he had son R.W. working as superintendent on the big Sunday school extension to Melrose. It was a five and a half day work week then. So R. W. had to work the morning of June 18, 1932. At noon he hurried home, changed and got married. Out of that marriage came two daughters and a son.
Bill was born on the last day of the 1930s. He never considered another career. And he was with his father on that afternoon in November 1964. “Oddest thing,” his father said. “I’m having difficulty holding onto my pen.”
At the dinner table that night, he could hardly hold onto his fork and in the night, he collapsed. He couldn’t move, couldn’t blink. He was paralysed, head to toe. It turned out to be Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare nerve disorder. He eventually made a good recovery. He remained sharp, but the job became hard for him physically.
So at age 24, son Bill took over. Some 40 years later, he’s still in charge. In 1980, he moved the Cooper office towards Toronto. He had decided that just putting up buildings for someone else was not the best way to go.
The company got into assembling land, finding clients who would like to locate there, then designing and erecting buildings to meet their needs. Near Winston Churchill and Highway 5 they have done 35 projects on 50 hectares of empty land, building facilities for companies like Cadbury, Royal Bank, Moen, Home Depot. That land is full and Cooper has purchased more in Milton and Guelph.
Bill Cooper is 65. He has two daughters and a son, but they’re not inclined to carry on the family business. Cooper is not yet making retirement plans, but when he does, the dynasty could end.
In 1950, the Cooper company built a headquarters across from the TH&B. On the second floor, Bill Cooper’s father had a corner office, complete with dark paneling and mahogany desk. He died in 1994. “I let my father use his office for four or five years after he died,” Cooper says. He eventually leased out that space and not long ago, he finally sold the building.
The company with so much history in Hamilton finds its future on open fields beyond this old factory town.
