# Family gift to Daniels Faculty establishes the Harold Solomon Kaplan Lecture

**Source**: https://defygravitycampaign.utoronto.ca/news-and-stories/family-gift-establishes-harold-solomon-kaplan-lecture/
**Parent**: https://defygravitycampaign.utoronto.ca/

Mar 13, 2026

*Kaplan’s daughter and two of his grandchildren have endowed the Harold Solomon Kaplan Lecture at U of T’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.*

Landmarks of entertainment, worship and community defined the career and shaped the legacy of prominent Toronto architect, Harold Solomon Kaplan (1895–1973).

His daughter, architect Ruthetta Kaplan Reiss, the first woman to graduate from the architecture school at the University of Toronto, and two of Kaplan’s grandchildren, Jonathan Reiss and Rosemary Reiss, have endowed the *Harold Solomon Kaplan Lecture* at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

Harold Solomon Kaplan

The annual named lecture, part of the faculty’s [public program series](https://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/news/thu-jan-8-2026-all-day/daniels-facultys-winter-2026-public-program), honours Kaplan by exploring the architecture that fosters collective experiences.

“These spaces for gathering created by Kaplan for popular entertainment or for religious congregation and community, marks a significant moment in Toronto’s architectural history: Kaplan designed places for shared experiences,” said Robert Levit, acting dean of the Daniels faculty. “This gift by the Kaplan/Reiss family is significant, as it supports our mission as a public university and our building as place for discourse on design and design’s role in shaping the civic space of our cities and towns.”

Harold Solomon Kaplan

[The inaugural lecture featuring Peter Sampson and Liz Wreford, co-founders of the Winnipeg-based multidisciplinary practice Public City, is scheduled for March 26](https://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/events/1774564200/harold-solomon-kaplan-lecture-public-act).

## “A refined, elegant gentleman”

Born in Bucharest, Romania, Kaplan was a young boy when he and his widowed mother, Tillie Hohan, moved to Toronto, where his mother would meet his stepfather, Frank Kaplan.

The young Kaplan first learned drafting while staying with relatives in Philadelphia, PA. He then studied architecture and building construction during night classes at Toronto’s Technical School.

In this Kaplan family photo, circa 1909, H. Kaplan stands in the background next to his mother, stepfather and stepbrother. Photo courtesy of Kaplan Reiss family.

“When I think of my father, I remember him as a refined, elegant, gentleman – always immaculately dressed in a suit,” said his daughter, Phyllis Kaplan Pepper. “He worked very long hours, going to work at nine, coming home for dinner with the family promptly at six, then returning to the office for a night of work. He was a hard-working successful man, a loving husband, father and grandfather.”

Kaplan apprenticed with Toronto architect Henry Simpson and worked at the local firm Page & Warrington before establishing a partnership with [Abraham Sprachman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Sprachman) (1894-1971) in 1929, at the start of the Great Depression. Their modest office was located not far from the U of T campus at Dundas & McCaul Street, near the present site of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

In this Kaplan family photo, circa 1909, H. Kaplan stands in the background next to his mother, stepfather and stepbrother. Photo courtesy of Kaplan Reiss family.

Kaplan Reiss assisted in her father’s office as a high school student, eventually choosing architecture as her own career. “But my tastes were different; I liked the Bauhaus while his style then was mostly Art Deco,” she says.

[In 1949, Kaplan Reiss became the first woman to graduate from U of T’s newly established School of Architecture](https://archive.org/details/torontonensis49univ/page/214/mode/2up), which in years prior had been a department within U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, where she was one of only two women among more than 1,000 students.

She recalls that “Architecture students from about that time, including John Daniels, worked during summers at my father’s office.”

Daniels, who later founded The Daniels Corporation, is the benefactor after whom the Daniels faculty was named in 2008.

Kaplan & Sprachman became Canada’s leading designers of Art Deco and Art Moderne movie theatres from the 1930s through the mid‑20th century. They designed nearly 80 per cent of Canada’s marquee movie houses including Toronto’s historic Eglinton Theatre—now the Eglinton Grand venue—which won the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Bronze Medal in 1937. In 1936, they were tasked with the renovations of the Revue Cinema at 400 Roncesvalles Avenue, which continues to operate as an independent movie theatre today.

Ruthetta Kaplan’s graduating class photo (Torontonensis, 1949 by University of Toronto Students’ Administrative Council).

In addition to work spanning retail, residential and single-family homes, Kaplan & Sprachman shaped significant Jewish community institutions across Canada, including the Anshei Minsk and Shaarei Shomayim synagogues in Toronto, and Edmonton and Vancouver’s Beth Israel, and the Jewish Community Centres of Toronto and Hamilton.

Ruthetta Kaplan’s graduating class photo (Torontonensis, 1949 by University of Toronto Students’ Administrative Council).

## A legacy of impact

Kaplan’s granddaughter, Rosemary Reiss, recalls, “Though Kaplan and Sprachman were known for their theatre and other public designs, I most enjoyed the home my grandfather designed for his own family on Strathallan Wood, where we would stay as kids visiting from New York. I remember it as Prairie Style, long and low, with natural stone and wood. There was a wooded garden at the back where trillium grew that I found magical.”

In partnership with local firms, the architects contributed to developments of Baycrest, the new Mount Sinai Hospital, the Primrose Club on St. Clair, the Y on Bloor, and the Oakdale Golf & Country Club which was selected for the arts competition of the 1948 London Olympics.

Both Kaplan and Sprachman were posthumously named to Ontario Association of Architects’ Honour Roll (1989). Their records were donated to the [Ontario Jewish Archives](https://www.billgladstone.ca/architects-records-given-to-ontario-jewish-archives/) and the City of Toronto Archives. [Kaplan & Sprachman, Architects was designated as a national historic event in 2008](https://parks.canada.ca/culture/designation/evenement-event/kaplan-sprachman) by Parks Canada and the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.

“We at the Daniels are honoured that the Kaplan/Reiss family has chosen our faculty to remember Harold with a named lecture to celebrate his contributions to Toronto and to the field of architecture. His impact on communities here locally and across Canada cannot be understated,” says Levit.

*[By Nina Haikara](https://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/news/wed-mar-11-2026-all-day/family-gift-establishes-harold-solomon-kaplan-lecture-honour-prolific)*

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