Elmsley Place tetrahedron
From the University of St. Michaels’s College in the University of Toronto Alumni Magazine:
In a 1972 book of architectural walking tours of Toronto, a young architect named George Baird—who is now the UofT’s Dean of Architecture, Landscape and Design—described Elmsley Place as “the most touching of all the relics of the former residential neighbourhood. It comprises still almost an entire street, and serves as a domestic front gate to the whole St. Michael’s precinct.”
As the density of the neighbourhood has increased dramatically, Baird’s characterization seems even truer today than it was 35 years ago. And happily, that’s not about to change. The four Victorian-era houses on the west side of Elmsley Place— in recent years known as Gilson House (No. 8), Maritain House (No. 6), McCorkell House (No. 2), and Sullivan House (96 St. Joseph St.)—are about to get a renovation and restoration that is expected to take at least a full academic year, possibly a full calendar year, and cost about $4 million.
The Elmsley Place houses were once suburban villas. This was one of a number of enclaves for professional and managerial families that began springing up in Toronto in the 1890s. It was also one of the city’s earliest subdivisions, laid out by Remigius Elmsley as an exclusive residential precinct. And so it remained until about 1920, when the city decided to extend Bay Street north to Davenport Road and issued by-laws effectively expropriating about one-third of the College’s land. St. Michael’s fought this on several fronts, finally winning at the Supreme Court of Canada, with the following outcome in 1926: the College would remain exempt from expropriation (as it argued it had always been); the city would pay compensation for the land taken, plus the loss in value of the remaining property, plus losses incurred in the demolition and replacement of buildings that had stood on the lost land, plus five-years’ accrued interest on all of that.
That compensation allowed St. Michael’s to purchase title to the land on Elmsley Place, which had originally been conveyed by leasehold. The campus would from then on extend from Bay Street to Queen’s Park. (At about the same time, it purchased properties on the south side of St. Joseph Street. As well, St. Joseph’s College had bought the mansion built in 1882 for William Christie, who made good cookies, at the corner of Wellesley and Queen’s Park Crescent.) But while the College had possession of Elmsley Place land from 1926, the houses remained in private hands until after World War II, with some notable residents living in them.
They also have interesting architectural connections. Maritain House and Gilson House—one structure, two addresses—were built later than most of their neighbours, in 1904. The architect was A. Frank Wickson, also responsible for the Berkeley Street Firehall, now home to the Alumnae Theatre. The 1892 tax roll credits the design of the corner house— Number 2 Elmsley Place/96 St. Joseph Street—to “Aylesworth, architect,” likely either Edward Aylesworth or Marshall B. Aylesworth, in either case probably a builder, not an architect. However, four years later, the house was dramatically altered with the addition of the protruding bay with its cut stonework and the extended wing and second-storey oriel. The architect for those was one of the city’s foremost, Edmund Burke.
Earlier, Burke and a partner had designed the acoustical treasure on Bloor Street now called Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church. In 1894, Burke became president of the Ontario Association of Architects, that year also forming a partnership with J.C.B Horwood. In 1895, Burke & Horwood designed what is now The Bay, at Queen and Yonge Streets, one of Toronto’s first steel frame buildings, and in 1913 they did the spectacular Wesley Building for the Methodist Book and Publishing House, now the Queen Street West home to Citytv. Most student residents in the Elmsley Place houses have known they had a special address. In 2006, the Student Levy fund paid for many improvements to the street itself, including an interlocking brick road surface that beautifully complements the old houses.
Currently, the four houses accommodate 43 students and four dons, though with many double rooms, especially in McCorkell house. That will change. Students today expect singles. According to St. Michael’s Dean of Students, Duane Rendle, most universities now guarantee single rooms after First Year. Former Elmsley Placers will also envy some other changes coming: each room now getting a high-speed hard-wire connection to the university’s digital “backbone,” a cable-TV hook-up, and a phone linked to the St. Michael’s switchboard.
None of that will be apparent to passers-by, though, for whom Elmsley Place will still seem a quiet, throwback to another era—bosky, human-scale, its eccentric old houses making it a more treasured “front gate to the St. Michael’s precinct” than ever.
This High Dynamic Range panorama was stitched from 64 bracketed photographs with PTGUI Pro, tone-mapped with Photomatix, processed with Color Efex, then touched up in Aperture.
Original size: 20000 × 10000 (200.0 MP; 1.05 GB).
Location: University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Elmsley Place tetrahedron
From the University of St. Michaels’s College in the University of Toronto Alumni Magazine:
In a 1972 book of architectural walking tours of Toronto, a young architect named George Baird—who is now the UofT’s Dean of Architecture, Landscape and Design—described Elmsley Place as “the most touching of all the relics of the former residential neighbourhood. It comprises still almost an entire street, and serves as a domestic front gate to the whole St. Michael’s precinct.”
As the density of the neighbourhood has increased dramatically, Baird’s characterization seems even truer today than it was 35 years ago. And happily, that’s not about to change. The four Victorian-era houses on the west side of Elmsley Place— in recent years known as Gilson House (No. 8), Maritain House (No. 6), McCorkell House (No. 2), and Sullivan House (96 St. Joseph St.)—are about to get a renovation and restoration that is expected to take at least a full academic year, possibly a full calendar year, and cost about $4 million.
The Elmsley Place houses were once suburban villas. This was one of a number of enclaves for professional and managerial families that began springing up in Toronto in the 1890s. It was also one of the city’s earliest subdivisions, laid out by Remigius Elmsley as an exclusive residential precinct. And so it remained until about 1920, when the city decided to extend Bay Street north to Davenport Road and issued by-laws effectively expropriating about one-third of the College’s land. St. Michael’s fought this on several fronts, finally winning at the Supreme Court of Canada, with the following outcome in 1926: the College would remain exempt from expropriation (as it argued it had always been); the city would pay compensation for the land taken, plus the loss in value of the remaining property, plus losses incurred in the demolition and replacement of buildings that had stood on the lost land, plus five-years’ accrued interest on all of that.
That compensation allowed St. Michael’s to purchase title to the land on Elmsley Place, which had originally been conveyed by leasehold. The campus would from then on extend from Bay Street to Queen’s Park. (At about the same time, it purchased properties on the south side of St. Joseph Street. As well, St. Joseph’s College had bought the mansion built in 1882 for William Christie, who made good cookies, at the corner of Wellesley and Queen’s Park Crescent.) But while the College had possession of Elmsley Place land from 1926, the houses remained in private hands until after World War II, with some notable residents living in them.
They also have interesting architectural connections. Maritain House and Gilson House—one structure, two addresses—were built later than most of their neighbours, in 1904. The architect was A. Frank Wickson, also responsible for the Berkeley Street Firehall, now home to the Alumnae Theatre. The 1892 tax roll credits the design of the corner house— Number 2 Elmsley Place/96 St. Joseph Street—to “Aylesworth, architect,” likely either Edward Aylesworth or Marshall B. Aylesworth, in either case probably a builder, not an architect. However, four years later, the house was dramatically altered with the addition of the protruding bay with its cut stonework and the extended wing and second-storey oriel. The architect for those was one of the city’s foremost, Edmund Burke.
Earlier, Burke and a partner had designed the acoustical treasure on Bloor Street now called Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church. In 1894, Burke became president of the Ontario Association of Architects, that year also forming a partnership with J.C.B Horwood. In 1895, Burke & Horwood designed what is now The Bay, at Queen and Yonge Streets, one of Toronto’s first steel frame buildings, and in 1913 they did the spectacular Wesley Building for the Methodist Book and Publishing House, now the Queen Street West home to Citytv. Most student residents in the Elmsley Place houses have known they had a special address. In 2006, the Student Levy fund paid for many improvements to the street itself, including an interlocking brick road surface that beautifully complements the old houses.
Currently, the four houses accommodate 43 students and four dons, though with many double rooms, especially in McCorkell house. That will change. Students today expect singles. According to St. Michael’s Dean of Students, Duane Rendle, most universities now guarantee single rooms after First Year. Former Elmsley Placers will also envy some other changes coming: each room now getting a high-speed hard-wire connection to the university’s digital “backbone,” a cable-TV hook-up, and a phone linked to the St. Michael’s switchboard.
None of that will be apparent to passers-by, though, for whom Elmsley Place will still seem a quiet, throwback to another era—bosky, human-scale, its eccentric old houses making it a more treasured “front gate to the St. Michael’s precinct” than ever.
This High Dynamic Range panorama was stitched from 64 bracketed photographs with PTGUI Pro, tone-mapped with Photomatix, processed with Color Efex, then touched up in Aperture.
Original size: 20000 × 10000 (200.0 MP; 1.05 GB).
Location: University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada