The Guild Inn, 2008, by Olena Sullivan. EDITOR'S NOTE: This is Heritage Toronto's Gary Miedema final post in his series on at-risk heritage structures around the city included in their upcoming “Building Storeys” exhibit at the Gladstone Hotel that runs February 17-22. - - - - - - - - - - - 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.

295 George Street, 2008, by Olena Sullivan EDITOR'S NOTE: Heritage Toronto's Gary Miedema will be making a series of posts on structures around the city included in their upcoming “Building Storeys” exhibit at the Gladstone Hotel that runs February 17-22. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 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.

Milne House (2008), photographed by Olena Sullivan ED: Heritage Toronto's Gary Miedema will be making a series of posts on structures around the city included in their upcoming "Building Storeys" exhibit at the Gladstone Hotel that runs February 17-22. 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.

The Gibraltar Point Lighthouse, 1909 Hop on your bike some day and head over to Hanlan's Point. As you exit the ferry, ignore the statue of one of the world's great rowers, Ned Hanlan, and don't be tempted to read the plaques off to the right about the former baseball stadium and one of the greatest baseball players of all time, Babe Ruth. That's all recent history. Ride down the road towards what is oddly named “Gibraltar Point” (it's a sandbar as flat as a pancake), and as you round the corner heading left and east, keep an eye out through the thick trees and brush to your left. Hiding in the foliage is the real story about this part of the island — one of maybe two pre-1810 buildings in the old City of Toronto still in its original location, and one rich with tales about murder, storms, and shipwrecks. It is, of all things, a lighthouse - a lovely, picturesque, grey limestone building, about 75 feet high, with an old red door and a big iron key and a red cage for the light on top. In fact, it's the oldest surviving lighthouse on the Great Lakes, and the second oldest surviving lighthouse in Canada. And in a few weeks, lighthouse junkies from around North America are coming to celebrate its 200th anniversary. Torontonians generally don't even know the lighthouse exists, but that's not particularly surprising. We remember what means something to us — what helps makes sense of our place. Today, lighthouses symbolize the Maritimes or Lake Superior — places we think of as defined by big water, and by sometimes treacherous journeys over it. Toronto hasn't much thought about shipping for about 40 years now. And without any context of heavy lake travel, lighthouses have slipped from our point of reference. When I think of Lake Ontario, I think of empty expanse dotted with a few small pleasure boats. I don't think of nervous men on ships trying to make their way around the shallow shoals of the island and through sandbars (not concrete “gaps”) into Toronto harbour. Gibraltar Point Lighthouse is forgotten, I would argue, precisely because the era it defines, not to mention nearly all of its original landscape, has been lost. It belongs on a red cliff in P.E.I. - somewhere with wind and water and space — not surrounded by trees and bushes with no water, and no inspiring views, in site. But this is what makes that marooned stone lighthouse so important to this city today. The lighthouse is our very rare touchstone — a portal, if you like — to a town not even yet called Toronto. When the lighthouse was constructed in 1808-09, Toronto was the Town of York, a tiny settlement of about 650 people, clustered by the lakeshore east of today's St. Lawrence Market, and bounded by forest north of Queen (then Lot Street). With “roads” little more than cart tracks through often impassable mud, travel was preferably by water. South of Front Street, a couple of wooden piers stretched into the water. Ships were the life-line of the town. The lake was the way in, and the way out. Without a lighthouse, the Town of York was like a city today without a signed highway. More than that, it was a community that put its travellers, and itself, at risk. Very shallow shoals stretched a good ways out into the water from the island — a fact noted in early maps of the harbour, but also by much later photos of Victorian kids standing up to their knees in water far off Hanlan's Point. Getting into Toronto's harbour was no easy trick in good weather and in light. In darkness or in storms, Toronto became invisible. Even after the lighthouse, more than a few ships, like the Monarch in November of 1856, found themselves wrecked on Toronto's shores. And more than a few epic moments of heroism resulted from rescue attempts by the equivalent of today's firecrews — men paid to launch rowboats into violent storms to save lives. Shipwreck of the Monarch, 1856

Looking east on Queen Street from Bathurst Street, 1924. The three- storey and two-storey buildings on the right were destroyed in the fire. Media coverage of the fire on Queen West noted the historic nature of the buildings, and the considerable loss of the built fabric of Queen Street West. The loss of the personal contents of those buildings is nothing short of tragic, and downright scary. The loss of the buildings themselves is less personal -- but significant, nonetheless, to our public space. As far as city tax assessment records tell, ...

Toronto has its share of odd historic artifacts scattered about town. Some of the most quirky bits, perhaps, are a couple of big stone medallions, back to back, on the northeast corner of Jarvis and Front — just kitty-corner from the South St. Lawrence Market. Those massive medallions are connected to a large wall of carved stone panels in the side yard of Mackenzie House, a city museum at 82 Bond Street. In both places, the beautiful reliefs seem too grand for their pedestrian setting -- and for good reason. The medallions and stone panels are surviving remnants of a large monumental arch, built above Niagara Falls in the dark days of the Great Depression, and created by some of Canada's best known artists and craftsmen in the inter-war period. How they were created, and how they got to Toronto, is one of those great little back stories about public commemoration and heritage preservation. Known by a number of names, including the Clifton Gate Pioneer Memorial Arch, what might be called Niagara's down-sized Arc de Triomphe, was erected as part of a Depression era, make-work redevelopment of provincially-owned land on the edge of the Niagara gorge, including the construction of the Niagara Parkway. The entire project was the under the direction of T.B. McQuesten, Ontario's Minister of Highways and Public Works in the mid-1930s, who was also responsible for the reconstruction of numerous historic sites around the Great Lakes, such as the QEW. Top: View of the Memorial Arch and surroundings. The Falls View or Honeymoon Bridge brought American tourists directly to the foot of the Arch. In January 1938, the bridge collapsed, and was replaced with the new Rainbow Bridge, considerably downstream. Bottom: The Memorial Arch. Note the panel depicting Mackenzie on the inside of the arch, and the medallion on the top right. Built at the entrance to the new Niagara Parkway, the Memorial Arch was intended to provide a majestic welcome to American visitors who poured over an adjacent bridge to have the Canadian view of the falls. The structure was designed by Toronto architect William Lyon Somerville, who created a distinctly pared down, modern take on its European (and earlier Roman) ancestors. The carved stone reliefs, for their part, were designed by the Toronto painter C.W. Jeffreys (the man responsible for many of the artistic recreations of historic events in old Canadian history textbooks), and translated into stone by Toronto sculptor Emanuel Hahn.