A family's little house in the Prairie style

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Archiseek / Canada / News / 2007 / March 16

When Mohawk College architecture professor Shannon Kyles wants to check a fact concerning her long, low, Prairie-style split-level near Dundas, Ont., she calls dad. Award-winning architect Lloyd Kyles, 81, knows the place well: His father, Hamilton-Halton Construction Hall of Fame inductee John Douglas Kyles, designed and built it for himself in 1955. "He wanted a big place in the country," Ms. Kyles says as she takes in the intimate, prow-shaped living room of the modest 2,500-square-foot home, which she has owned since 1989. The telephone call is fruitful: It's confirmed that the room's fantastic, angled stone columns between the huge, south-facing windows are dolomite from the local quarry. "It's not a building stone," says a tinny-sounding Mr. Kyles over the tiny telephone speaker. "They don't sell it for construction purposes."

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