Thank you to everyone who attended Building Storeys at the Gladstone Hotel from February 17-22. Due to the overwhelming success of the show, the exhibit will be shown again this year at other venues. Dates and locations will be announced in the near future. 

About the Show:
A collaborative effort by Heritage Toronto and members of Toronto's Shadow Collective, "Building Storeys" is a visual documentation and anecdotal exhibit of our city's cherished - and in some cases, somewhat unknown - heritage buildings and sites. The exhibit highlights both past and present, and ponders their place in Toronto's future.

About the Shadow Collective:

The Shadow Collective is a photography collaborative devoted to the exploration and exhibition of forgotten spaces. Members exhibiting in "Building Storeys" include Jeff Cutler, Robert Dyke, Rick Harris, Tammy Hoy, Timothy Neesam, Olena Sullivan, and Toni Wallachy.
www.shadowcollective.com

Photography from the show is available for purchase through the Shadow Collective website.

To view photos from the exhibit:  http://www.shadowcollective.com/Exhibit.htm

Featured in Building Storeys:

All Saints Church Community Centre
The Canary Restaurant/Palace Street School
The Site of First Parliament
George Streetscape (295 and 305 George Street)
William Goodwin House
The Guild Inn
Loblaws Groceteria Company Building
Maple Leaf Gardens
Milne House
Royal Canadian Military Institute Building
Stanley Barracks/New Fort
The Talbot Apartments
Union Station
199 and 205 Yonge Street (the Banks of Yonge Street)

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The Guild Inn

By Gary Miedema

The Guild Inn, 2008, by Olena Sullivan.

If you grew up in Scarborough, you likely know what the "Guild Inn" is. Until it was closed in 2001, it seems like 3 degrees of separation connected everyone to the place, located roughly where Eglinton Avenue runs into Lake Ontario in Scarborough. Like the Inn on the Park in Don Mills, it was a magnet for wedding receptions, anniversaries, and photo shoots.

And for good reason. The Guild Inn was a place of romance and loaded with charm. A rambling collection of additions upon additions, the core of the Inn itself was the country estate house of Colonel Harold C. Bickford. Born in what is now Trinity Bellwoods Park in a demolished house called ‘Gore Vale‘ (Bickford's family name was given to another park along the Garrison Creek between College Harbord and Bloor), Harold became a military man, fought in the in South Africa during the Boer War, rose to the position of Brigadier-General in World War I, and then led western anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia. He built his house in Scarborough in 1914, with stables for his horses and a garage for his cars. It was a perfect spot on the edge of the Scarborough Bluffs, on beautifully forested land. From his windows and lawns, Bickford and his large family enjoyed stunning views over Lake Ontario.

The former Bickford house prior to expansion as the Guild Inn. Photo courtesy of Guildwood Village Residents Association

For a few years at least. Bickford sold the home in 1921, and the building first became a house for Roman Catholic missionaries destined for China, then the home of a wealthy businessman. Then, after sitting empty for a few years, the rambling estate was purchased by the daughter of a leading Ontario family and the heiress of a Brantford shoemaking company, Rosa Breithaupt Hewetson.

The year was 1932 - the darkest year of the Great Depression. Meeting Spencer Clark, a young man who shared her vision, Rosa got married again and began "The Guild of All Arts" in earnest.

Rosa and Spencer Clark in the 1930s. Photo courtesy of Guildwood Village Residents Association

At the heart of the Guild of all Arts was the Clarks' commitment to the arts and crafts as elements necessary for the fullest enjoyment of life. Influenced by Roycroft in New York, Rosa and Spencer invited artists and craftspeople to the Guild of All Arts, where they were provided room and board in return for sharing their work and skills with the Guild and its visitors. Some of the original 40 acres of the guild lands were converted to fields in order to produce food on site and as cheaply as possible. Goods produced at the Guild - everything from weaving to leatherwork and sculpture - were sold in its gift shop. Further income would be gained from visitors who would come to take courses from the skilled artists and craftspersons on site, and to enjoy the beautiful surroundings on top of the bluffs.

The plan struggled at first. The arts and crafts never made as much money as hoped, but much of the art and furniture at the Guild was produced on site. The Clarks themselves invested their wealth in the place, converting Bickford's stables and garages into studio buildings, building new cottages and studios, and purchasing hundreds of acres of additional surrounding land. Best of all, visitors came, and the Clarks began to develop an Inn that did make money. To make room for more guests, the Clarks themselves moved out of the original Bickford house in 1934. It was then extended dramatically on both sides in the '30s and early '40s to accommodate guests.

The Guild Inn after extensions and additions. Photo courtesy of Guildwood Village Residents Association

During WWII, the Guild of All Arts was requisitioned by the Canadian Government, and served as a training centre for the Women's Royal Naval Service, then as a military hospital. But the Clarks got it back in 1947 and picked up where they left off. Having acquired nearly 500 acres in the area prior to the 1950s, the Clarks then lead the development of about 400 acres of their land into what is now "Guildwood Village" - a small scale version of Don Mills, complete with the idealism and attention to detail of that landmark of urban planning, but without its industrial zone.

At centre are the old Guild Inn buildings, with the looming 1965 hotel addition above. Photo courtesy of Guildwood Village Residents Association

Some of the income from that development must have been invested in the new six storey concrete hotel tower the Clarks added to the east of the old Inn in 1965. That six storey addition sticks out on the grounds today - a "what were they thinking" kind of structure. But it really embodies what the Clarks were about. At the time of its building, the couple were known as architectural preservationists. Members of numerous historical societies, they fought to save Toronto's landmarks, and when many of those fell, they claimed or purchased some of their significant architectural elements. They then hauled those carved chunks of stone out to Scarborough, where they hired stonemasons and craftspeople to reconstruct them around the grounds. The Guild became a beautiful graveyard for remnants of some of Toronto's grandest late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century buildings.

The 1965 addition through sculptural remnants, 2008, by Timothy Neesam

In their heart of hearts, however, the Clarks were never people committed to a historical era. They were, instead, people committed to ideals which transcended particular dates - "Let us mingle the beautiful with the useful" read the motto of their now classic ‘50s suburb, Guildwood Village. When developing that village, the Clarks insisted that each home be designed by an architect in the latest modern style, and they had those homes placed on winding streets, minus sidewalks, that were influenced by the latest theories of urban planning. Little wonder, then, that when it came to expand their hotel, they virtually ignored the historic architecture of the site, and went for the latest and best - a high rise concrete structure with flowing balconies looking out over the lake.

The 1965 hotel tower in 2008, long past its best days, by Rick Harris

Over the years, the Guild played host to an array of Canadian artists, craftspersons, and musicians - including Frances Gage, Sir Ernest MacMillan, A.J. Casson. Visitors included Glenn Gould, Sir Lawrence Olivier and Lester B. Pearson. Provincial and Federal governments held cabinet retreats on its beautiful and historic grounds.

By the late 1970s, however, the Clarks were aging, and they were eager to secure the future of their lives' work after they were gone. The best way to do so, they must have calculated, was to put the Inn in public hands. In 1978, they convinced the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority to purchase the site (largely for the shoreline and bluffs), and Metropolitan Toronto to control it, at a price of eight million dollars. As part of the deal, the Clarks would continue to manage the Inn, without pay, for the next 5 years. Rosa died in 1981 at the age of 93. Spencer carried on with the place until his hold on its management expired in 1983. He died in 1986.

Without the lofty ideals and impressive commitment of the Clarks, the Guild Inn languished in need of a future. It became a series of failed plans as governments struggled to find a vision and tenant for the aging property - someone who would invest in it, and not just run it. Delta Hotels managed the place for a couple of years, followed by CN Hotels, until Metro Toronto signed a 95 year lease with a company that planned to add two more hotel towers and two new parking garages to increase the number of rooms from 96 to over 400.

The surrounding community pulled together to fight that plan, and have worked hard to shape its future since. The development never broke ground, the lease was broken, and another suitor stepped in. Somehow, the Inn continued to function until 2001, when in the chaos of amalgamation it was closed at the end of the season in October. The City of Toronto has carefully maintained the Sculpture Garden and grounds since, but the Inn itself has remained boarded up, and has badly deteriorated. As the city issued multiple requests for proposals for the site (and actually moved to alter the historical designation of the site in order to demolish the crumbling Inn itself), urban infiltrators and paranormal enthusiasts have found their way in to document its crumbling interior and rumoured (ghostly) inhabitants.

Today, after years of exhausting and divisive arguments over its future, the Guild Inn seems close to finally getting the life the Clarks hoped it might have. Last year, the City of Toronto entered negotiations with Centennial College, which hopes to acquire the site as a home for its new Institute of Culture and Heritage Management. In what appears to be a textbook perfect example of adaptive re-use, Centennial wants to use the restoration of the old Inn and its operation as a boutique hotel, restaurant, and conference centre as a training opportunity for its students. Above and beyond that, Centennial seems at least interested in City plans to spend millions to turn the Guild Inn into a "Cultural Precinct" - to bring artists and craftspeople back to the site which, for over 50 years, played an important role in the development of the arts and crafts in Canada.

The latest plans call for the demolition of the 1965 concrete tower. And in a cruel twist of fate, the former stable of the Bickfords - converted into artists' studios and later a reception centre by the Guild Inn - burned to the ground this past Christmas. The rest of the Guild, however, is perhaps poised to finally rise from the ashes.

 

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295 and 305 George Street

By Gary Miedema

295 George Street, 2008, by Olena Sullivan 

A few years ago, I was on my bike heading up to Allan Gardens and thought I'd bypass Jarvis by riding the residential streets to the east. When I hit George Street going north off of Dundas, my legs stopped peddling and I coasted, trying to make sense of the view - a line of neglected buildings including two that have been abandoned, windows boarded or gaping black over garbage strewn lawns.

My guess is that most readers of this website will already know that Jarvis Street, one block to the west, used to be one of Toronto's finer neighbourhoods - a fact made clear by the architectural pedigree of its remaining homes. "Of all the avenues extending south from Bloor Street to the Bay," judged the writer of Toronto:Past and Present in 1882, "the noblest are Church, Jarvis and Sherbourne Streets", with the latter two boasting "the mansions of the upper ten." George Street, squeezed between them, caught "the refined tone of the neighbourhood" as it passed north of today's Dundas Street, and stopped at one of the city's gems, Allan Gardens.

It may not be surprising, then, that three of the 14 buildings photographed for the "Building Storeys" exhibit can be found in this neighbourhood. Step inside All Saints Community Centre on the corner of Dundas and Sherbourne, and you can see that this former parish church once had wealthy patrons. Completed in 1874, the church is a beautiful example of the exuberance of the High Gothic style of the Victorian period.

All Saints Community Centre, 2008 by Toni Wallachy

Back on George Street, only two blocks away, the two vacant and derelict homes, numbers 295 and 305, are among the city's oldest - dating to circa 1856 and 1858. The home at 295, in fact, was early enough to appear on the 1858 Boulton's Atlas, and has been catalogued in ERA Architects' presentation at Harbourfront Centre about both the atlas itself and of all the buildings in it that are still standing today.

The homes at 295 and 305 were constructed shortly after the death in 1853 of William Allan, the man who owned Park Lot V, which stretched all the way from just east of Jarvis to Sherbourne, and from Queen to Bloor. George Allan, William's son, moved back into the estate house called Moss Park (which was later demolished, and which is now the site of the Moss Park Arena and community centre). George subdivided the land to the immediate north of Moss Park, then played out his love for horticulture and made his subdivision that much more saleable - in 1861, he donated what is today "Allan Gardens" to the Toronto Horticultural Society.

While the "Botanical Garden" (as Allan Gardens was first called) was being planned, the home at 305 George Street was built for Thomas Meredith, a grain merchant who had a strong association with the Gooderham and Worts Distillery. Now a dull grey, painted brick home with slider and boarded windows, it once was a gracious example of the Italianate style of residential architecture, complete with a red brick façade with buff (or yellow) brick detailing. The Meredith family owned the house until 1911. Though it has no doubt been a rooming house and is now vacant, the elaborate plaster mouldings and six of the seven fireplace mantels (that's right, seven fireplaces) are still largely intact. A recent photo of the back of the home still captures some of its former beauty.

Rear of Thomas Meredith House, 305 George Street, in 2006 by Scott Weir

Interior of Thomas Meredith House, 2008 by Timothy Neesam

Interior of Thomas Meredith House, 2008 by Timothy Neesam

At 295 George, the story is very different. With its neighbour at 297, the home seems to have been constructed in about 1856 as a rental property. Its original appearance is hard to figure out, but my guess is that it was once the mirror image of its neighbour, with a window where the grand front door is now and a regular door where the window on the right now appears (a close look shows no stone lintel over that window). Beneath its paint are hints of the same red and yellow brick of Thomas Meredith's house.

For its first few years, 295 George changed owners and tenants frequently. Then, in the mid-1880s, it was acquired by Toronto businessman William Gooderham and donated to W.C. Fegan, a British man who had begun bringing destitute British boys to Canada to give them a better future. In 1887, the home became the Fegan Boys Distributing Home, and it is more than likely that the long addition of rooms to the rear of the original house (and perhaps the mansard roof on the third floor) were added thereafter to house the boys until they were lined up with a home and a job. I would assume that the Tudor style woodwork on the façade was a later addition as well.

295 George Street in 2006. Note the total lack of a roof (since partially repaired) by Scott Weir

By 1939, when the Fegan organization left 295 George Street for new digs on Broadview Avenue, something like 3,000 British boys had found new lives in Canada. The house at 295 George then became the new location of the "Society of Crippled Civilians."

Today, 295 George Street must be on its way to collapse. It was apparently torn apart for renovation a few years back, the roof partly rebuilt, and then abandoned. With windows and the roof open to the weather, it cannot survive.

Interior of 295 George Street, 2008. Open to the elements, with ladders still standing in place by Timothy Neesam

Interior of 295 George Street, 2008 by Toni Wallachy

The context of these homes explains their plight. According to an article in the National Post last year, the streets surrounding and including George Street have the highest concentration of shelters and substance-abuse facilities in the city. Just a few doors up from 295 and 305 George is Seaton House, with beds for 600 homeless men.

That makes for a tough neighbourhood, and makes the condition of these historic homes heartbreakingly appropriate.

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Milne House - 1185 Lawrence Avenue East, Concession 4E, Lot 5

By Gary Miedema and Mary Ann Cross

Milne House (2008), photographed by Olena Sullivan

What do you do with an abandoned historic farmhouse that's listed on the City's Inventory of Heritage Properties, and now nearly strangled by bush in a Don Valley conservation area?

Next time you are stuck in northbound traffic on the Don Valley Parkway between Eglinton and Lawrence, you'll be in a great place to ponder that question. After the railway underpass just past Eglinton, you'll descend down into the bottom of the valley, which quickly widens out. Not far away, on top of the valley wall on the left, are 1950s Don Mills homes with backyard swimming pools. Invisible on the crest of the valley to the right are the sprawling industrial buildings of Railside Road. Down in the valley, where the highway is only a few feet above and beside the river, you are cruising through the ghosts of Milneford Mills.

Detail from the 1878 Illustrated Historical Atlas of York County showing Milneford Mills (circled) in its larger context. Yonge Street, punctuated by the communities of Eglinton and York Mills, runs up the left side of the map.

Detail from the 1878 Illustrated Historical Atlas of York County with today's Lawrence Avenue detouring to cross the Don River at Milneford (centre of map). Black dots represent buildings. "S.M" represents the Milnes' saw mill, "W. Mill" their woolen mill.  

Details from the 1878 Illustrated Historical Atlas of York County showing a (no doubt embellished) Milneford, the 1878 Woolen Mill, and a Milne residence

In its heyday in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, Milneford Mills was a cluster of some 16 buildings. (An embellished lithograph made in 1878, shown above, portrays an idyllic valley scene). What is now Lawrence Avenue detoured down along the east valley wall, curved through the settlement, crossed the river, and made its way up the other bank to rejoin the straight concession line. Evidence from the census returns and period maps indicate that in addition to two water-powered mills, one a rare woollen mill, Milneford Mills boasted a dry goods store, a wagon shop, and workers' housing. The homes and barns of the Milne family, proprietors of the whole business, joined them. Their fields stretched out of the valley, but an aerial photograph from 1939 still shows fields in the valley itself. According to an 1851 census, the Milnes grew wheat, peas, oats, potatoes, turnip, hay and apples. In around the homes and barns were "bulls or oxen, milch cows, horses, sheep and pigs". Wool, fulled cloth, butter and pork completed the farm produce.

Only one Milneford building still stands today - barely. You can just see it from the DVP - a flash of white siding in the bush at the bottom of the valley wall off to the right. If you get off on Lawrence and head east, you can drive down old Lawrence Road into the Charles Sauriol Conservation Area in the valley. The house is in the trees nearly straight ahead before you take the turn at the bottom.

Though detailed records no longer exist, Milneford was likely already 30 years old when the house was built - between 1860 and 1865. The first Milne, Alexander, had already passed on the family business to his son, William, who would later pass it on to his son again. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century photographs show the home to be a classic Ontario Gothic Revival farmhouse - one full storey with the second under a pitched roof, and the façade marked by a central door flanked by two identical windows with a gable above. This house deviates from the norm, in that its front and back façades were a mirror image of each other - complete with off-centred gables and full-length porches. One side faced the road as it came down the valley side. The other side faced south to look down the valley to the woollen mill, no doubt the pride of the family. Photographs show farm buildings nearby, the valley wall behind the house (now forested) almost completely cleared of trees, and an elegant picket fence and gate posts separating the road from the house.

Milne House, showing much of its original detail circa 1955. North York Historical Society

Given the history of the area, its something of a miracle that the home still stands. When one of Toronto's worst floods tore through the valley in 1878, this house - perched close to the edge of the valley wall - survived. The lovely red and buff brick mill closed in 1911 and was demolished in 1946. Nearly all of the other remaining buildings were demolished in 1953 by Don Mills Development as they cleared the site for other uses. This home survived, and after being empty for more than a few years, was renovated back into a functioning home. Then, a decade later, the view out of the front windows of this remaining home took in the bulldozing of the valley for the Don Valley Parkway. With rushing traffic drowning out the sound of the river, the home's view now took in the new ski hill behind the house on the east valley wall.

But for the rusting poles of the ski lift, the ski hill has since disappeared, and the Charles Sauriol Conservation Area has emerged. A process of naturalization is now underway. The gardens surrounding the home, long since abandoned, have been slowly reclaimed by the forest, nearly right up to the house's walls. Milneford is all but gone.

Even the sole surviving house is but a sad shell of its former self. The home was occupied and in private hands until 1992, when it and a sizable bit of surrounding land was acquired to complete the Conservation Area. Sitting empty since then, water, fire and human beings have taken their toll. Never ornate on the outside, the little old home has nonetheless been stripped bare of its porches, summer kitchen, and finials on the gables. It is covered with modern siding, but a clear gap shows where the porch was once attached to the house. Doors and windows are boarded up, but people have on occasion torn holes through the wide nineteenth century planks of its walls and damaged the interior.

Milne House, 1983. City of Toronto

Milne House, 1997. City of Toronto

That said, this old farmhouse has a survival streak a mile wide. A 2003 study argued that it was still a good candidate for restoration or renovation. Much of the tall sculpted mid-ninteenth century trim, for example, is still there, as are some original doors. Though owned by the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, the house is the responsibility of the City of Toronto, and City staff have been trying to keep the building from deteriorating further. A four year old roof keeps the water out, and fresh boards and screws cover old holes torn in the walls.

What this important little house begs for is a plan for reuse attached to money. It has no connection to City sewers and, in effect, it's in a public park. But it's bigger than most condos (600 sq. ft. per floor), and the view over river valley meadows should be fabulous. Above all, it is the last surviving touchstone to a long and important era in this valley's history.

 

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Union Station - 65-75 Front St. W

By Derek Boles

Toronto Union Station is the largest railway station ever built in Canada and occupies the entire block south of Front Street between York and Bay Streets. The station was built during World War I to replace an older facility located west of York Street, sections of which dated back to 1873. The site for a new station became available following the Great Toronto Fire of 1904. The architects of the new station were the firm of Ross & Macdonald, Hugh G. Jones of Montreal and John M. Lyle of Toronto.

Union Station 1949 - Ontario Archives C 3-1-0-0-589

The station consists of two distinct segments built several years apart by the Toronto Terminals Railway. The headhouse encloses the Great Hall and is fronted by a façade of 22 Doric limestone columns flanked by two office wings. This was built between 1915 and 1920, when the east and west office wings were occupied by the Post Office and the railway companies. The centre block containing the actual railway station remained empty for the next seven years since there were no train tracks entering the station.

The railways and various government agencies spent several years arguing about how the tracks should be built and construction began in 1925 on an elevated viaduct that would raise the railway corridor eighteen feet above the roads and sidewalks that intersected it and bring the tracks into Union Station. In August 1927, the still incomplete station was officially opened during the royal tour of HRH Edward, Prince of Wales, who was visiting Canada to help commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation.

Photo by Rick Harris

Construction on the train shed, the ten tracks underneath it and the passenger concourse was finally completed in 1930, just in time for the Great Depression. With declining passenger volume during the 1930s, the facility was underused until World War 2 when wartime traffic taxed the facility to its limit. In an era when almost all intercity travel was by train, some of the most famous people in the world passed through Union Station, including King George VI, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Winston Churchill.

The number of passenger trains using the station declined in the decades following the war until 1967, when GO Transit began operating a new commuter service along the Lakeshore. In 1968, the railways announced the massive Metro Centre project, which would have required the demolition of Union Station. Despite an almost universal effort on the part of big business, government and local newspapers to replace the facility, Union Station was rescued by a coalition of heritage advocates and concerned citizens who deplored the loss of one of Toronto's most distinguished architectural treasures.

In 1975, Union Station was declared a National Historic Site because "It is the finest example in Canada of stations erected in the classical Beaux-Arts style during an era of expanding national rail networks and vigorous urban growth."

In the years since, a constant challenge for Union Station has been its conversion from primarily an intercity train terminal to a commuter rail station. In 2000, the railways sold the headhouse to the City of Toronto and the rail corridor and trainshed were acquired by GO Transit.

Photo by Toni Wallachy

Today Union Station is Canada's busiest transportation hub, handling more passengers than Pearson Airport. Every weekday, 183 GO trains carry 160,000 passengers through the station. As well, 50 VIA Rail trains transport approximately 5,000 passengers a day into and out of Toronto. Add to that the many thousands who use the Union subway and streetcar stations to attend events at the Air Canada Centre, Harbourfront, the Rogers Centre and the Convention Centre.

The City of Toronto, GO Transit and the TTC are currently embarking on a $1.5 billion restoration, renovation and revitalization of the station that will unfold over the next several years. The goal is to transform Union Station into one of the most efficient transportation terminals in the world while enhancing its value as a heritage destination and tourist attraction.