Home’s domed tower a landmark for 125 years

One of the community’s oldest homes is also one its most distinctive. Facing the Blessed Sacrament schoolyard on Bedford Park Avenue, the house is dominated by a large shingle-domed tower on the front east side.

When it was built in the mid-1880s, probably by Henry Mason, there was nothing else around it. The Mason farm, which ran between today’s Bedford Park and Woburn avenues, from Yonge to Bathurst, included just one notable feature: the gutted mansion that had belonged James Metcalfe (Blessed Sacrament school stands on the site).

To get to Mason’s imposing house, it was necessary to cross a wooden bridge spanning Lawrence Park Creek (now flowing beneath the schoolyard and the municipal parking lot). It was the first house to be built on the dirt road that was soon named Bedford Avenue and later changed to Bedford Park Avenue. Looking from his windowed tower, Mason had an unobstructed view to Yonge Street. To the south was Samuel Lawrence’s farm and a few houses at the Yonge-Lawrence intersection. These included the small-but-busy general store that had just been taken over by John E. Atkinson.

The house is actually better known as Houle House, named after Albert Houle, a florist who bought it in 1907. He moved into the neighbourhood after becoming manager of the Bedford Park Floral Company on the east side of Yonge. Although he held the job for only a year or two, he continued to operate as a community florist and remained in the house until 1922.

During that time, Houle’s family watched as a growing number of houses sprang up on Bedford and the streets to the north. This was largely the result of the major housing development by his neighbours across the street — Philip and William Ellis — who had restored the old Metcalfe place.

During the 20s the house sat vacant for a few years and was then owned by Norman Lockhart. In 1928, Toronto manufacturing agent James Bolton Reade bought the house and lived there for the next two decades. When he first moved in, the house number was changed from 34 to 31. The renumbering of houses in the early days wasn’t unusual. Reade’s house likely needed a new number to fall in line with Toronto’s practise of using odd numbers on the south side of streets and even ones for the north side.

In 1950, lawyer Frank Hogg bought the home and lived there until the mid-50s. He was followed by Toronto musician John Levis and teacher Hugh Fraser. Levis owned the house until the end of the 1980s. In the 90s, the home was largely restored to recapture its original grandeur.

This article, written by Gary Schlee, originally appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of Community Life.

St. Germain farm included an Old Orchard Grove

The 185-acre farm of former Toronto publisher Alfred St. Germain may have had a Yonge Street address, but the estate itself probably wasn’t visible from the road. Despite its vista view from a height of land, the house was buried deep within the property.

The farm lane — which, no surprise, is today’s St. Germain Avenue — ran west of Yonge for more than a kilometre. At the beginning of the lane, off to the right, was a small two-storey white house that likely served as a farm worker’s home. After all, St. Germain’s property was a ‘hobby’ farm, not the sort of place a retired businessman would be operating himself.

The worker’s house still stands, one of the oldest buildings in the area. Located on the west side of the alley behind the Yonge Street stores between St. Germain and Melrose, the house also once served as the manse for Dewi Sant Welsh United Church around the corner.

St. Germain’s farm lane continued west, past today’s Elm Road and up the hill to what is now Avenue Road. The house was probably located around today’s Safari Bar and Grill. In 1907, the Toronto World newspaper described the home as having “two acres of lawns and a gravelled driveway, together with a brick carriage house.”

In time, the carriage house probably served as a garage for St. Germain’s automobiles, like his Still topless auto — probably one of the first cars in the neighbourhood. His interest in horseless carriages was evident when he ran a newspaper ad in 1898 promoting his planned First Canadian Autocar that would hold 25 people and effortlessly chug up the hilly ravines north of his farm. Nothing seems to have come of it.

The Toronto World article went on to talk about the estate’s “well-kept garden, with 6 acres of orchard.” That apple grove, to the north of the farmhouse, explains the name of the street two blocks north of St. Germain — Old Orchard Grove.

Alfred St. Germain became one of the publishers of the Herald in his hometown, Kingston, while still in his early 20s. He left it behind to follow the promise of the California gold rush, and later ended up in Toronto where he started Canada’s first one-penny daily newspaper, the Toronto Evening Journal.

The newspaper, which supported the party of John A. Macdonald in its march towards Confederation, helped make St. Germain’s fortune by attracting plenty of advertising at low rates and serving about 5,000 readers. When he retired in 1882, he began buying up most of the property on Yonge Street’s Lot 8 West, north of the Bedford Park Hotel.

In the 1890s, St. Germain played a leading role in North Toronto’s opposition to the high fares, poor service and shady practices of the Metropolitan Railway Company that had recently extended its electric railway service past his estate to Hogg’s Hollow. His letter-writing campaign helped prompt an inquiry, but neither fares nor service improved much in subsequent years. It’s a good thing St. Germain had that Still parked in his carriage house.

St. Germain died at his farm in 1908 and the following year his property was sold to the Melrose Realty Company to create a subdivision.

This article, written by Gary Schlee, originally appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Community Life.