St. Lawrence heritage study inventories Old Town buildings

Dennis Hanagan –

If you live in the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood and you’ve seen people outside your home making notes chances are they were volunteers with the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood Association.

They’ve been studying buildings in the neighbourhood hoping to have it designated a Heritage Conservation District (HDC) under Part V of the Ontario Heritage Act.

That would provide additional safeguards to preserve buildings that have “cultural heritage value” and make them less vulnerable to the whims of developers who want to build structures unsuitable to the neighbourhood’s historic character.

After all, this is where the sprawling city of Toronto began 220 years ago, in 1793, as the Town of York. A city of Toronto website describes the neighbourhood as “Toronto’s historic heart.”

An HCD designation “will make it much easier in the future, when we get development applications, to actually say this doesn’t fit here because this is a Heritage Conservation District,” said Dave Crawford as he and fellow SLNA member Suzanne Kavanagh toured streets early one October evening to fill in their study forms.

Buildings from Yonge to Parliament, and from Adelaide to the railway tracks, will be evaluated for—among other things—craftsmanship, artistic merit, association with a historic event or person, value as a community landmark, or because a structure has a historic religious importance.

In York’s early days a ten-block townsite was laid out between Front, George, Adelaide and Berkeley streets under the direction of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe.

Kavanagh was surprised to learn Toronto’s birthplace wasn’t already designated for its heritage importance years ago. “This study gives us the opportunity to capture all this information and get it designated.”

“As we go through this we know it will be ironclad and any future development will have to follow this designated area and the guidelines that go with it,” she said.

King West architects FGMD & Associates is helping with the study along with Archaeological Services Inc. on Bathurst and planners Bousfields Inc. on Church.

Sarah Corey of FGMD met with community members Oct. 3 at St. Lawrence Hall to brainstorm about preserving St. Lawrence’s heritage. “We were really pleased with the attendance and enthusiasm people had,” said Corey.

Crawford raises another concern called “facadism.” That’s when a developer retains only the exterior walls of a heritage structure and builds a tower behind it.

It’s happening at 251 King Street East at Sherbourne with the historic National Hotel—said to have been the oldest surviving hotel in the original Town of York—where a 17-storey condo is under construction.

“Until it’s finished it’s hard to know if it will work … I am very doubtful,” Crawford said in an email.

George Brown College student Brittany Marsden, in her second of a three-year architectural technology program, is helping with the study.

She said local resources have helped volunteers with their work. “We’ve gone to the library in the St. Lawrence area and they’ve pulled books and different articles and set them aside for us.”

The study has taught Marsden something not even a lot of St. Lawrence residents know. “I didn’t realize this part of the city was built up over the years. That’s not the original shoreline that’s there now.”

When York was established Lake Ontario’s shoreline reached to just south of Front St. The lake was gradually filled in during the 1800s to pave the way for port and industrial uses.