Kaleigh Rogers – Toronto Star

The past cen­tury has seen many influ­en­tial peo­ple — John Diefen­baker, Brian Mul­roney and Hal Jack­man among them — pass through the heavy wooden doors of the Albany Club. The air of his­tory is evi­dent as you step over the thresh­old: oak pan­elling, rich brass fix­tures and plush Tory-blue car­pet­ing inscribed with the club’s insignia.

But this down­town land­mark with its lime­stone façade is fac­ing an uncer­tain future.

Located in the mid­dle of a cov­eted block of King St. E., mem­bers of the Con­ser­v­a­tive pri­vate club are cur­rently con­sid­er­ing a devel­op­ment pro­posal that would see their four-storey build­ing replaced with a 47-storey condo.

The club’s quar­ters are cur­rently not des­ig­nated a her­itage build­ing, but the city’s Her­itage Preser­va­tion Ser­vices recently approved a staff report to clas­sify it and other build­ings on the block as her­itage sites.

The report goes to city coun­cil in the fall. If it is approved, any devel­oper would be unable to tear down those build­ings and any devel­op­ment pro­pos­als would likely have to be revised.

The Albany build­ing, between Vic­to­ria St. and Church St., stands as a sturdy mon­u­ment to its past as the haunt of Tory heavyweights.

“The build­ing breathes his­tory itself. … It does glue every­thing together, there’s no ques­tion about that,” said Gord Haugh, a mem­ber for 31 years.

“It’s really tough in these times for most pri­vate clubs to main­tain a base, but the Albany Club has man­aged to do that and I think it will con­tinue to do that for as long as I can see.”

That’s cer­tainly the plan, at least accord­ing to club gen­eral man­ager Chris­t­ian Diotte. “We intend to con­tinue the club’s pres­ence on the site after any rede­vel­op­ment occurs.”

It’s not the first time the club’s loca­tion has cre­ated hur­dles, accord­ing to Joe Mar­tin, long­time mem­ber and club historian.

The club itself was estab­lished in 1882 and the mem­bers moved into their cur­rent loca­tion at 91 King St. E. in 1898.

How­ever, with the con­struc­tion in 1899 of the new city hall — now known as Old City Hall — the city’s hub shifted from east of Yonge St. to west of it. Sud­denly the young and urbane of the day con­sid­ered the Albany out of the way. That made it dif­fi­cult to attract and retain mem­bers, Mar­tin said.

In the 1950s, the club faced another hur­dle when Ontario’s liquor laws were eased.

“In the old days, peo­ple used to belong to clubs so that the guys could get a drink at noon. Once the liquor laws were relaxed, you didn’t have to belong to a club,” Mar­tin said.

In the late 20^th cen­tury, other polit­i­cal clubs faded away as mem­ber­ship and finances dried up. But the Albany per­se­vered and remains Canada’s only pri­vate polit­i­cal club to this day.

The Albany, too, had its finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, but Mar­tin said two back-to-back pres­i­dents — David Walker, later a sen­a­tor, and news­pa­per baron Roy Thom­son — came up with a plan in the late 1940s and early 1950s that saved the club after spy­ing a notice that club bonds were sell­ing for 10 cents on the dollar.

“Mr. Walker spoke to Mr. Diefen­baker, because they were very close friends, and got his advice,” Mar­tin said. “Diefen­baker said, ‘You get (for­mer prime min­is­ter) Arthur Meighen call­ing peo­ple, a lot of the rich mem­bers down in Florida, and you tell them to cash in their bonds and give them to the club.’ “

Accord­ing to a 1982 pub­lished his­tory of the club, the exquis­itely appointed upstairs din­ing and meet­ing rooms con­tain plenty of Tory art and mem­o­ra­bilia. There are por­traits of mem­bers who served as prime min­is­ters or as Ontario pre­miers. There’s a statue and bust of Sir John A. Mac­don­ald. A mas­sive cher­ry­wood table in the Cartier Room was so large it had to be cut in half to get it into the room.

“There’s just an awful lot of tra­di­tion there and tra­di­tion is very impor­tant to the club,” Mar­tin said.

It’s some­thing the club wants to pre­serve. Whether the condo devel­op­ment pro­ceeds, the Albany Club wants to remains at the King St. loca­tion in some way. Early designs of the devel­op­ment pro­posal would reserve lower floors in the new build­ing as club quarters.

Per­haps Heather Zordel, club vice-president and finance com­mit­tee chair, said it best:

“We’ve been there for over 100 years. We plan to stay there.”

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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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