page_title: Joseph Pigott
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Pigott / Career
caption_attribution_description: Pigott Building (Condos), James Street South, downtown Hamilton, Ontario
context_page_description: Joseph M. Pigott was a prominent Canadian businessman, who jointly ran Pigott Construction Company, responsible for some of Canada's largest industrial plants and finest buildings.
context_section_description: He was born in Hamilton, Ontario on February 23, 1885, the son of a prominent Irish contractor (Michael Pigott, himself the founder of Pigott Construction Co. and the son of an Irish farmer who emigrated to Canada and settled near Guelph).  
  In 1903 he began working for his father's construction company. In 1909 Pigott travelled to Saskatchewan with his younger brother Roy where they secured a large contract to build St. Paul's Hospital in Saskatoon. 
  While in the West, Pigott met and married Yvonne Prince, daughter of the Honorable Joseph Benjamin Prince of Battlefield, Saskatchewan.  They had 6 sons: William, Jean-Jacques, Joseph, Patrick, Ronald and Paul.   
  Together the brothers would direct Pigott Construction to fortune and fame.  Roy looked after the engineering and Joseph took care of the business administration.  The first $1,000,000 year came in 1926, and in 1930, Hamilton's earliest skyscraper, the 18-storey Pigott Building, was completed. 
  After the Second World War, Pigott Construction was Canada's largest privately owned construction company, amassing more than $113,000,000 in business in a single year. 
  Pigott built some of Canada's largest industrial plants and finest buildings: the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; Crown Life Insurance Company head office, Toronto; Bank of Canada, Ottawa; a plant for General Motors, Oshawa, and buildings for A. V. Roe Company in Malton.  In Hamilton, buildings built by his firm included: the Canadian Westinghouse offices, Banks of Nova Scotia, Royal and Montreal, McMaster University, the County Court House, Westdale Secondary School, St. Joseph's Hospital, the Pigott Building, the new City Hall and the Cathedral of Christ the King.
caption: Piggot Building, "Hamilton's first skyscraper"
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