Wondering What Your House Should Look Like? “Put Down the Big Box Plastic Fense… “

The Cabbagetown Historical Preservation Association takes the preservation of Toronto’s Victorian housing seriously and with good reason – Cabbagetown is the largest stretch of Victorian housing in North America. On their homepage they have made available the resource, “What Style is My House” which is good reading for anyone who can’t identify the historic home [...]

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West Toronto Junction Home Tour

West Toronto Junction, or just “The Junction“, is unique in stade Toronto “The Good”. The Junction, named for the crossing of the Canadian National (CNR) and the Canadian Pacific (CPR) railways, was a booming prosperous late 1890s town with businesses breaking the bulk of the railway, lumber yards, stock yards, a flour mill, a foundry, [...]

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Ugly Things Done to Old Houses or “Old House Atrocities”

Take a walk in any urban neighbourhood and you are going to find old houses that have been “destroyed” in any number of ways. Here is my list of some of the worst offences, that is not meant to offend, but will. Feel free to disagree or add your own old house atrocity. This list, [...]

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The Bay-and-Gable Style of Victorian Toronto

Three story homes with ten foot or higher ceilings in the public rooms resulted in eccentric narrow and tall homes in both semi and row figurations.
The Bay-and-Gable homes of Toronto are unique within the world of Victorian architecture, in part due to taxation laws of the time that assessed annual taxes based on the width [...]

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