Time versus the Sylvan Apartments
Christopher Watt – Open File
Designated a heritage site by the city, the Sylvan Apartments are celebrating their 100th anniversary by growing more decrepit each day.
“It’s definitely kind of mysterious to me,” says neighbour Geoff Piersol, looking across the street at the abandoned building one overcast morning.
When the 30-year old information professional was thinking about moving to Dufferin Grove last year, the view of the vacant two-storey structure on the corner of Sylvan Ave. and Havelock St. hardly registered. But once Piersol moved in across the street, he took some photos of the “seriously spooky” property for a guest post on his girlfriend’s blog.
From Piersol’s perspective, the Sylvan Apartments only get more intriguing with time. It’s no a surprise that they’re in rough shape, he says, but that they remain standing at all.
Some municipal history may be in order. Fire insurance maps show that east-west Sylvan Ave, and north-south Havelock St. were joined up by an extension to the former in 1910. In that year, most of the Sylvan Apartments were built. A 1927 addition to the structure running south down Havelock established the property as the corner’s main architectural feature.
It wasn’t until 2006 that Toronto city council designated parts of the Sylvan Apartments, which ended up totalling 16 units, as being of cultural heritage value. A bylaw notice described it as a “well-designed early 20th-century apartment building with features of Edwardian Classicism by Toronto architect James A. Harvey.”
In 2007, the Ontario Municipal Board heard from property owner JDC Property Management on grounds that city council had understandably failed to respond within 90 days to a rezoning application made by JDC that would have left the Sylvan Apartments open to demolition. While JDC tabled a no-fault settlement in the weeks before the hearing that would have preserved at least some of Harvey’s work, city authorities refused. As one expert for the defence said before the OMB, according to public documents, Toronto doesn’t do “facadism.”
The Sylvan Apartments had been contested for a number of years already. In 2003, JDC acquired the property from the estate of one Jean Gwendoline Hutson. (“Miss Hutson” a poem by former resident John Skaife, is here.) Local heritage aficionados soon took issue with the prospect that 42 condominium units might one day appear on the site.
From his side of Sylvan Ave., Piersol describes the changes he’s noticed across the street since he moved in, the kind of subtle changes to which century-old properties seem prone.
Vandalism is clearly increasing. He points to a second-storey window, where someone got inside and spray-painted four letters — ELYK — on the interior of the glass. (It seems cryptic, but consider an alternate scenario in which some squatter-artiste named Kyle seeks local fame.)
A minor epidemic of ground-storey graffiti seems to be getting worse, Piersol says, though not long ago someone stopped by with a roller and some brown paint.
The building has been vacant since 2006 but has not been totally forsaken. Someone mows the lawn on a fairly regular basis. A magnolia tree presides over the property’s unlikely backyard, an open greenspace without an interior fence.
“I was back here in late May, early June. It was amazing,” Piersol says, walking around the southernmost units on Havelock, bringing a row of somehow English-seeming garages into view. The garages are notable at least partly because the driveway leading up to them is so overgrown that it has all but disappeared.
But for Piersol, real insight into the Sylvan Apartments’ past has been fleeting. Walking up Havelock a few months ago, he says, he noticed what looked like a hydro bill on the ground, and now wishes he’d taken a photo because the balance owed was something like $3,000.
Odd items abound in the backyard. The head of a stuffed animal lies decapitated on the grass, perhaps forgotten by whoever was setting off fireworks behind the building some weeks back. A wooden staircase that once connected to a second-floor balcony has been torn down and now resides on a ground-floor deck near a not-quite-empty can of Tuborg beer.
A newly broken pane of glass on the second floor catches Piersol’s eye. “When I first came here, none of this debris was here. None of these windows were broken. I hate to see this stuff,” he says.
At some point the Sylvan Apartments start looking less like a relic of early 20th-century Toronto, frozen in time, and more like a symbol of 21st-century life in a city where there’s money to be made when buildings fall apart.
“Parts are so damaged that in the best-case scenario, maybe some kind of architectural salvage is possible. But it probably has to be torn down. That’s what I think, anyway,” Piersol says. Indeed, the Havelock side looks like it’s starting to sag.
Asked if he considers the Sylvan Apartments an eyesore, Piersol is quick to emphasize that he doesn’t mind the property this way and actually finds it interesting.
“You can kind of see some details inside when the light is right. I’d love to [see more] in there,” he says.
Update, Aug. 16:
The Sylvan Apartments redevelopment is held up by the owner’s stalled plans to develop 16 rent-geared-to-income units on Dovercourt Rd. north of Dundas St. W., explains Chris Gallop, a staffer in Ward 18 councillor Adam Giambrone’s office.* That development was put on hold by the recession.
“The holdup is at his end,” Gallop says. “His approvals stay in place for perpetuity.”
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416-388-1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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i was part of the group that appeared at the OMB to oppose this development. it would be possible of course to build an attractive townhouse (NOT STACKED TOWNHOUSES!!!) project at this site, but this is one ignorant (IMHO of course) developer and i am totally in agreement with the previous poster, even falling down the existing building is going to be more attractive than the eyesore about to be built in its place. no imagination whatsoever on the part of the architect, developer, or planner involved.
Such is the case across the city. Are there any developers or architects who can think outside the glass/steel box? Get creative, give us something to like and to fall in love with. How hard is it? Not very… Every time I drive past High Park and look at those lovely old houses, just waiting to be replaced by — you guessed it — more glass and steel. If I had the money to get into development, let me tell you, I would certainly do my part to make this city attractive again.
the developer wants to tear down the building (he is obviously at this point merely allowing it to demolish itself through neglect) and put up a (in my opinion) ugly run-of-the-mill condo building with underground parking (ugh). the problem for him being that he had to get rid of the long-term tenants which he did partially through such pleasantries as turning off the heat in the middle of the winter a few years back. don’t be too keen to see this building demolished because even in its current state it will be a lot more attractive than what is planned in its place. all of this IMHO of course.
I am with you 100%. Toronto has committed architectural genocide over the past 50 years. Especially in the 1950s through the 1970s, anything with any historical value was destroyed. And some bland concrete block was erected in its stead. Look at University Avenue in the early 1950s, the new city hall location, Front Street, etc. This city should be ashamed.
There are no more big crimes, it is all little acts here and there. On side streets, it happens in secret. But for Walnut Hall collapsing a few years back, no one even knows about it.
And there is nothing we can do about it… which sucks.
Just to let you know that James Arthur Harvey was my grandfather. He designed all the houses on Olympus Ave which was the driveway up to his house known as Harcroft where Moses Znaimer now lives. He also designed the Elbow Beach Hotel [one of three] in Bermuda [where we all learned to sail with the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club] and the house on the north east corner of Yorkville and Avenue Road among a few thousand other buildings. How can we save the olde Sylvan building?
I wish I knew. I think it might be too late, as the property is owned by a developer with plans and permits to build. The only recourse is to appeal to them, though that has already been done. But personal stories such as this only add ammunition to take to the developer and plead the case.