Commemoration
Rockwood was built in 1842 as a country vila for
John Solomon Cartwright (1804-1854). Designed by George Browne, architect of the Kingston City Hall, in a monumental phase of the Regency style, it is a stone structure covered with stucco but lined to suggest ashlar masonry. Cartwright began to practise law in Kingston in 1830 and in 1831 became president of the Commercial Bank of the Midland District. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada in 1836 and of Canada in 1841. The government acquired this property in 1856 as a site for a “Criminal Lunatic Asylum”. With another building erected in 1859, it became the nucleus of the present psychiatric hospital
Background
John Solomon Cartwright was a businessman, judge and politician. He was born in Kingston in 1804. He was an opponent of responsible government for the colony as advocated by the radical politicians of the time. He prosecuted some of the Upper Canada rebels. He died of tuberculosis in 1845.