Thomas Fuller: Architect of Parliament

Born in Bath, England, Thomas Fuller was trained in the office of architect James Wilson and was, by his twenties, the designer of the Anglican cathedral in Antigua in the West Indies. By 1855, he had his own firm and designed the town hall at Bradford-on-Avon. Soon after, he won the competition to design the new Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. He later became Chief Architect to the Dominion of Canada, designing hundreds of buildings in Canada and the United States, including the New York State Capitol in Albany, the San Francisco City Hall, and the All Saints’ Anglican Church at 347 Richmond Road (built in 1865). Fuller died in 1898 and was returned to his family in Ottawa (he was buried in Beechwood Cemetery), where some of his descendants run one of the city’s leading construction firms, Thomas Fuller Construction.