Tag Archives: art gallery of ontario
Grange Park
Grange Park is a small downtown neighbourhood bounded to the west by Spadina Avenue, College Street on the north, University Avenue to the east and on the south by Queen Street West. It is within the Kensington–Chinatown official City of Toronto district; its name is derived from the Grange Park public park south of the Art Gallery of Ontario.
The Grange Park neighbourhood has become synonymous with Toronto’s Chinatown district. Grange Park’s street signs, telephone booths – and even the local police station – all have signage in Chinese as well as English. Grange Park is also home to a large number of artists – which makes sense considering The Art Gallery of Ontario, Ontario Crafts Council and Ontario College of Art are all located in Grange Park.
Grange Park’s narrow tree-lined streets are full of ornate Victorian row houses, most built in the 1870s through to the 1890s. These houses feature all the Victorian trimmings. You will find many homes rented out to students of the Ontario College of Art & Design, located on McCaul Street, as well as the University of Toronto to the north.
Grange Park Real Estate Map
Condo buyers should check out Village-by-the-Grange. Built in 1980, this is one of Toronto’s first mixed use developments. It features condos, retail and offices, all in the same complex. This city landmark is currently being revitalized by the Grangetown development which will incorporate urban townhouses into the Village-by-the-Grange.
South of Village-by-the-Grange is the Beaver Hall Artist’s Co-op. Beaver Hall has 24 apartments and a large communal studio space. It was designed to provide local artists with affordable live and work space.
In the western section of Grange Park, the businesses of Chinatown extend east from Spadina along Dundas to nearly Beverly, while the streets remain residential.
The homes on the east side of McCaul Street were demolished and the Village by the Grange residential and commercial complex was built. It was built in 1980, and was a rare example in Toronto of a low rise apartment complex; there are mixed commercial uses being built after several decades of high rise apartment building construction in the downtown core.
The Art Gallery of Ontario and OCAD
There is a commercial enclave that has developed around Baldwin Avenue, between Beverley and McCaul Street. It has been named “Baldwin Village”; it is a converted residences housing, restaurants, art stores and curios. The residences of the north side of Dundas Street have all been converted into art galleries.
Grange Park was Toronto’s first elite neighbourhood. It is named after Grange House, built in 1817, by D’Arcy Boulton Jr., a member of one of early Toronto’s wealthiest and most prominent families. Grange House is now part of the Art Gallery of Ontario and the mansions on Beverley Street are the sole reminders of this neighbourhood’s period of affluence.
In the late 1800s, Grange Park’s upper class gentry headed for the newer more fashionable suburbs in Parkdale, Rosedale and the Annex. By the early 1900s, Grange Park’s large estates had been transformed into rows of modest workers’ houses that became home to many new Canadians.
Jewish immigrants were followed by Eastern Europeans and most recently the Chinese; who migrated to Grange Park after Toronto’s first Chinatown at Dundas and Elizabeth Street was razed in the 1960′s, to make room for the new City Hall.
Grange Park is great neighbourhood in Toronto, and it holds some of the greatest art galleries in Ontario. Anyone living in this neighbourhood should be proud to be surrounded by such history.
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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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John Street hub of thriving community
Christopher Hume – Yourhome.ca
John Street could well be one of Toronto’s best-kept secrets – except that it’s no longer a secret. Indeed, north of Queen Street, it’s now becoming the main drag of a thriving downtown neighbourhood.
Of course, there’s still a big commercial element; one need look no farther than the fabulous pink Umbra outlet, a design store that puts its money where its mouth is in a most un-Toronto-like manner.
Though the architectural standards on John aren’t wildly elevated, the elements fit together. That’s the important thing. Though most buildings were probably built as offices, they have found new life in recent years.
King West and John Street in 1949
There was a moment back in the ’90s, for example, when the street became home to some of the city’s most important art galleries. Given its proximity to the Art Gallery of Ontario, perhaps that’s not surprising.
Though the new AGO is still under construction – it doesn’t reopen until mid-November – it’s a landmark even from behind. Overlooking Grange Park, the gallery presents a new image for those whose vantage point is John, not a main street. But that’s exactly what makes it so interesting, even compelling.
Streets such as John give residents and visitors alike an alternative view of the city and familiar sights such as the AGO. In the normal course of events, the gallery is its main Dundas Street facade. The beauty of John lies in its closeness to these sorts of destinations – the Ontario College of Art and Design and Queen Street West as well as the AGO – while being slightly off the beaten track.
For Toronto, a city in the midst of a rebirth, John is one of hundreds of streets that will provide the space for intensification to happen. In time, they will be seen as the saviours of the city.
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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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For the real film lover
Designed by KPMB Architects, the Festival Tower has a rooftop pavilion with a pool and glass balcony fencing
Lauren Ferranti-Ballem, National Post
I had no problem jamming a hard hat over my curls or trading my ballet flats for steel-toed boots. Stepping into a hoist elevator — one of those rickety wood-and-metal boxes you see attached to a steel spine, rising up on the exterior of condos under construction — that was a different matter altogether.
Up I went. I held on where there was no handle, did not raise my gaze from boot level and tried my best to breathe as we made our way noisily, ungracefully and painfully slowly all the way up. The condo in question is the Festival Tower, the residential side of the building of the moment, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Bell Lightbox. Our final destination: the 46th-floor penthouse.
On this day in mid-August, the sky was a perfect, cloudless blue and there was mercifully very little wind as we stepped out on to a south-facing balcony. There’s not much I recall, numb as I still was with fear, and my hand trembled so violently I couldn’t keep notes. But I do remember the view. It was stunning and spectacular and made the trip up (almost) worth it.
From its position at King and John streets, in an area thick with condo towers, Festival exists inside an odd, almost eerie clearing — no other building can block this southern view.
“You see that in the distance?” says Tom Dutton, senior vice-president of Daniels Corp., the project’s developer, as he gestures to what looks like a faint cloud hovering over Lake Ontario. “That’s the mist rising up from Niagara Falls.”
As at this point the four penthouses are little more than concrete and glass, there’s nothing to see but the city on all sides. To the north, Will Alsop’s Ontario College of Art and Design looks like a box of matches. And as I connect the dots — the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Film Board, the CBC, Roy Thomson Hall and theatre row — I realize how utterly well-placed this building is.
“This is where the arts intersect,” says Bruce Kuwabara, the project’s architect and founding partner of KPMB. “Maybe there’s another location for this, but I can’t think of a better one.”
Some 50 years ago, the land upon which the Lightbox and Festival Tower now stand, was purchased by post-war Czechoslavakian immigrants, parents of Canadian film director Ivan Reitman. They operated a dry-cleaning business, and then a car wash here. When TIFF was on the hunt for its new home, Mr. Reitman and his sisters donated the property in honour of their parents. The other piece of the equation was the developer John Daniels, president and founder of Daniels Corp. He was one of the first benefactors to TIFF before it was TIFF in the 1970s.
“Ivan [Reitman] calls this interconnectedness kismet,” says Mr. Kuwabara, “the way things all seem to align to create good fortune.”
This good fortune is far reaching. With 98% of Festival suites sold, residents will enjoy an exclusive three-year film fest membership, which includes such perks as private screenings and preferred pricing to more than 100 Lightbox events a year. For inspiration on the mix, Mr. Kuwabara looked to New York City, where condo towers are well-integrated with cultural destinations, like the ones built into Carnergie Hall and the Museum of Modern Art — occupants there can relish privileged access to Matisse and Pollock, away from the common folk. “This is a city of film — the festival is embraced and well attended by Torontonians,” Mr. Kuwabara says. “Residents will become a part of the story of this building.”
For a bit of distance from the hoopla, they will find their suites from the condo’s entrance on John Street (whereas the Lightbox opens on to King) where they can tune into the TIFF closed-circuit TV channel. And since streamlined Miele kitchens favour fancy over function — penthouses excluded, the only ovens are of the convection-microwave variety and fridges are a fraction of standard ones (“They’ll have very small Thanksgiving turkeys,” Mr. Dutton says) — hunger pains can be answered by a quick call to one of two Oliver & Bonacini restaurants below. Straddling King and John, O&B’s casual Canteen and fine-dining Luma are just another part of this “vibrant hybrid of residential, cultural and commercial components,” Mr. Kuwabara says.
Ordering up a lobster burger with cucumber slaw from Luma is just one of the celeb-style à la carte services guests will enjoy. With the help of the resident services director, they’ll also be able to arrange for housekeeping, dog walking and spa services in the building’s private treatment rooms. Those rooms are part of the Tower Club, amenity space that spreads over the 10th and 11th floors of the building and includes the 55-seat Tower Cinema, designed after the five hyper-modern screening rooms in the Lightbox — sleek, black, silent and sealed cocoons. There are three lounges, the main one opening on to a landscaped outdoor terrace and bar area within prime paparazzi range of TIFF’s outdoor terrace. And to help balance all those O&B meals, there’s a fitness centre, yoga studio, outdoor meditation garden and an indoor pool room with hot tubs, saunas and a dramatic floor-to-ceiling waterfall.
Sumptuous amenities, slick suites, sweet views and an important cultural institution (and perhaps a Clooney sighting) right next door — residents are in for quite a show.
First comes the film festival, then occupancy — by the end of November, the first residents are expected to move in. Lucky for them, they’ll have a proper elevator, too.
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960
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