Jean Sibelius Square Park official opening Sunday, June 10, 2012 at 3:30PM

The new entrance at the north-east corner of Brunswick and Wells Avenues.

By West Annex News | After years of community consultation and construction,  a revitalized Sibelius Square is ready for its coming out party.

The park’s official opening will be held this Sunday, June 10th. Live music starts at 3:30PM, with remarks from Councillor Adam Vaughan and others at 4:15PM, followed by a free barbecue.

Public consultation for Sibelius Square’s redesign June 18, 2008, Working Group Chair Patrick Kennedy at right.

The opening is a chance to thank the neighbours who brought the redesign to fruition: Patrick Kennedy, the steadfast chair of the working group, together with group members Ginny Brett, Fred Freedman, Tom Friedland, Caroline Harvey, Julie Markle, Kristina Reinders, and Ted Watson.

Together they spent six years consulting with the community, and wrangling with off-leash dog advocates, city bureaucrats, and the city-imposed landscape architects. The result is the park’s refreshed playground, field house, playing field, pathways and central plaza.

The natural skating rink on the west field of Jean Sibelius Square Park, 2010

Also present at the opening will be Brian Green, City Parks supervisor. Brian devoted hours of his personal time to the much-loved Sibelius Square natural skating rink to ensure its survival after the City stopped maintaining the rink in the late 1990s. He trained the community volunteers who now build and flood the rink each year.

Community volunteers Simon Freedman, Fred Freedman and Tom Friedland building the Sibelius Square natural skating rink in January 2011

Sibelius Square was at a low ebb in 2006 after a failed off-leash dog experiment left the park almost deserted, with its playing fields devoid of grass, a magnet for local drug dealers.

Kennedy enlisted the support of newly elected councillor Adam Vaughan to use section 37 monies from a nearby Walmer Road development for the community-lead redesign.

Councillor Adam Vaughan, left, at the Gwendolyn MacEwan Park re-opening July 20, 2010

Vaughan has made community-lead design and control of local parks a cornerstone of his tenure at City Hall. Several major parks in Ward 20 are being re-designed and re-constructed with local residents making the design decisions. Sibelius Square is the third Annex park to complete this process, with a renewed Gwendolyn MacEwan park opening in 2010, and Taddle Creek Park in 2011.

Sibelius Square Park, then known as Kendal Square, on October 9, 1913

The City purchased the lands of the park–bounded by Wells, Brunswick, Kendal and Bernard– in 1906 and named it Kendal Square.

The park in July of 1939

The city renamed the 1.22 acre park after the composer Jean Sibelius in 1956, after City Council was lobbyied by members of the Toronto Finnish community.

 

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Other related articles:

St. Alban’s Square: A historical primer

Sibelius, St. Alban’s Squares to face further attacks from off-leash advocates

Doors Open Toronto May 26 & 27, 2012 | The Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr, 100 Howland Avenue

The Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr, 100 Howland Avenue in Toronto’s West Annex will be open for Doors Open Saturday and Sunday, May 26 and 27, from 10:00AM to 4:30PM

By Jane Beecroft and Louise Morin | Walking north from Bloor Street up Howland Avenue in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, one soon comes across a surprising sight: looming above the rooftops of  this house-lined street is one quarter of a 19th century cathedral. Built out of rose-purple Credit Valley sandstone, the magnificent building is abruptly truncated on its west end. There a hodge-podge of modern structures have been awkwardly tacked on to the Norman-inspired Neo-Gothic architecture of the cathedral.

How did this partial cathedral come to be?

The story begins in the early 1880s, when the Howland Land Syndicate acquired a four and a half acre parcel of land just north of the Toronto city limits at Bloor Street, between Bathurst Street and Brunswick Avenue, in order to develop a residential subdivision.

To attract buyers to build outside the city, the Syndicate struck a deal with the Anglican Synod to build a cathedral for Toronto’s Anglicans. The congregation of St. James had consistently refused to serve as the cathedral for Toronto diocese as they had fully paid for their own church and did not want their parish facility taken over by the diocese.

After passage of a special act of the Ontario legislature to qualify the site as the cathedral for Toronto, the Synod agreed to buy one of the six city blocks in the subdivision–bounded by Barton, Wells, Howland and Albany Avenue . The Syndicate in turn gave funds to the Synod to start building the cathedral named for St. Alban the Martyr. The Syndicate named the residential subdivision in the cathedral’s honour: St. Alban’s Park.

The ambitious plans for the Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr at 100 Howland Avenue, including a    135 foot tower. How much is left for future generations to enjoy?

Architect Richard Cunnigham Windeyer drew ambitious plans, inspired by the Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr in Hertfordshire, England. Construction of the cathedral–the first building in the subdivision–began in 1884. In November 1889,  one quarter of the cathedral–the choir and crypt–was finished and regular services began. See House, where three Anglican bishops of Toronto would live, was completed next door at 120 Howland.

See House, 120 Howland Avenue, where three Anglican bishops of Toronto once lived.

In The Annex, The Story of a Toronto Neighbourhood Jack Batten continues the story:

That may have been St. Alban’s most triumphant moment. Its history was not all downhill from there, but neither did it come close to the hopes and plans that Archbishop Sweatman and the congregation imagine to be the cathedral’s due. The building as it stood in 1889 was in the form it retains in essence to this day: one quarter done, lacking the 135 foot tower that was fundamental to Windeyer’s design.

Windeyer died in 1900 and this blow, along with world-wide depression, the Boer War, and other factors slowed down fundraising.

In 1911, parishoner Sir Henry Pellatt took charge of seeing the cathedral to completion. In  1913, he hired architect Ralph Adams Cram to complete the construction of the cathedral. Cram got as far as laying the foundations for the balance of the building when funds ran out yet again. By now the diocese of Toronto was having financial trouble: it was expanding rapidly and needed funds for new churches elsewhere.

The cathedral suffered a further setback when a sudden fire damaged the interior in 1929.

On April 8, 1929 the interior of the Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr was damaged in a sudden fire | Photo by J. Karl Lee 

Firefighters battle the 1929 fire at the Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr | Photo by J. Karl Lee

In 1936, Bishop Derwyn Owen cancelled cathedral status for the unfinished building, demoting it to a local parish church. The Synod turned ownership of the church property to its congregation. It sold off the gardens and playing fields to the north of the cathedral as residential lots. It transferred the parkland to the south, St. Alban’s Square,  to the city.

Despite these setbacks, the congregation thrived. Among other good works, it established St. Alban’s Boys Club (now St. Alban’s Boys and Girls Club) headquartered today in Seaton Village.

In 1964, the congregation rented out buildings to St. George’s College, a private boys’ school said to be looking for  temporary premises only, while the school sought “a satisfactory (out-of-town) site for a permanent residential college.”

But St. George’s settled in, and began a series of expansions. The 89 students enrolled in 1964 grew to 253 by 1970, to 361 in 1991. The student body spread to the other church buildings. A brutalist-style cement gym was built at the back of the cathedral, on top of the nave foundations.

A hodgepodge of additions made by Royal St. George’s College on the unfinished foundations of the Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr

Soon the ever-expanding St. George’s College coveted more of the property for themselves. In January 4, 1994, the school headmaster John Latimer assured neighbours about a proposed severance of Church lands to permit the sale of properties by the Diocese to the college:

“The Church will retain ownership of the church building itself and the lands on which it is located. The building will continue to be the home of the congregation of St. Alban the Martyr, your local parish.

The purpose of this letter is simply to assure you that the effect of the severance and transfer of the facility to the School itself will not result in any change in use, will not result in any increased traffic and so far as we are aware, will have no impact on the neighbourhood.”

But the local parish opposed the plans of St. George’s, and launched a court proceeding to prevent the sale by the Diocese.  While the legal maneuvers dragged on, the size of the college’s student body swelled again, to 417 in 1996, and to 440 in 1998.

Although the Cathedral and See House had been designated as being of architectural and historical value and interest under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1992, this did not stop them from falling into private hands. In 2000, the parish’s legal avenues exhausted, the church brass dis-established the congregation and sold the entire property to St. George’s College.  The Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr became the private chapel of the college.

Constant construction has been the hallmark of Royal St. George’s College’s stewardship of the    Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr and its related lands and buildings.

Slowly but steadily, St. George’s College built upon the foundations of the unfinished portion of the cathedral, for more classrooms, a library, a music room, an exercise studio, and a theatre, obscuring the original unfinished foundations of the cathedral. Today, only one small fragment of the unfinished foundations remains, on the west end of the property, opposite 104 Albany Avenue.

Foundations for the never-completed nave of St. Alban the Martyr Cathedral, opposite 104 Albany Avenue.

On September 18, 2010, careless workman working for the College left oily rags in the cathedral. They ignited, causing another devastating fire.

Damage from the September 18, 2010 fire. | Photo credits Royal St. George’s College.

While insurance monies provided the funds to restore the blackened woodwork, plaster and stained glass, original carved English oak furnishings from the 18oos were destroyed, as was a large portion of the original floor.

The restored cathedral re-opened in the spring of 2011 for the private use of students, faculty, parents, and alumni of the college, and their invited guests.

The famous double-hammer beam ceiling of St. Alban the Martyr Cathedral, restored after the 2010 fire.

Doors Open 2012 is the first time the Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr–described in the Doors Open program as “truly a national treasure”–has opened its doors to the general public since the College acquired it in 2000. Don’t miss the opportunity to visit this embattled but enduring building.

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See the Doors Open website for more information about visiting the Cathedral of St. Alban’s the Martyr the weekend of May 26 & 27, 2012.

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Offline sources:

Jack Batten, The Annex: The Story of a Toronto Neighbourhood, 2004, Erin, Boston Mills Press.

The Community History Project brochure, St. Alban’s Park Subdivision

Other related articles:

St. Alban’s Square | A historic primer

What is the West Annex

The Weekly Wrap for Friday, February 4, 2011

A new condo for Bathurst and Bloor? The former Loretto College property at 783 Bathurst Street has been sold for $6.97 million by the Catholic District School Board  to H & R Developments. [Urban Toronto]

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A new strip mall for Dupont? Bert Archer reports on an application to rezone Leal Rentals at 555 Dupont, across the street from Loblaws . [YongeStreet]

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A visual history of Yonge and Bloor. Derek Flack looks the changes to this intersection through historic photographs dating from the 1920s to today. [blogTO]

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The new owner of 69 Albany Avenue talks about his house. [Town Crier.ca, h/t to Ring Around the City]

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Who you gonna call? Lisa Day profiles Ward 20 councillor Adam Vaughan’s office staff. [InsideToronto.com]

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Urbanism in the the age of climate change. An excerpt from Peter Calthorpe’s new book. [SF.Streetsblog.org]

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The Annex Shul aka the cool shul welcomes its first full-time spiritual leader, with a celebration Shabbat Saturday, February 12th. [Jewish in Toronto]

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Every Friday, the Weekly Wrap collects articles from around the web about or of interest to residents of the West Annex.

For previous weeks’ columns, visit the Weekly Wrap archive.

The weekly wrap for January 28, 2011

“One of the best pizzas in the Annex”. Renée Suen praises Bar Mercurio’s excellent pie. [Toronto Life]

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The inner city is a safer place to raise children than the suburbs. Tamsin McMahon looks at the not so surprising data on the safety of downtown. [National Post]

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With pluck and grit, a Globe food critic roughs it on the Bloor-West Annex strip. Joanne Kates bravely endures the lack of a coat check to enjoy bargain-priced omakase at Sushi Couture. [Globe and Mail]

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A History of Toronto in 8 Millimetres, screening Sunday, January 30 at 7:00PM at the Bloor. Jason Anderson recommends this compendium of amateur Super 8 films that provide glimpses of life in Toronto between the ’30s and the ’70s.[thestar.com]

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Robert Baldwin is the greatest Torontonian ever. Derek Smith tells Steve Paikin how Baldwin–the scion of the family who owned the lands immediately east of the West Annex–brought responsible government to Canada. [TVO]

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Every Friday, the Weekly Wrap collects articles from around the web about or of interest to residents of the West Annex.

For previous weeks’ columns, visit the Weekly Wrap archive.

The weekly wrap for December 17, 2010

“Does the Annex really need another budget-friendly Japanese restaurant?”  Apparently yes. Gizelle Lau loves the fresh ingredients and home made stock at Kenzo Ramen. [Toronto Life]

Kenzo Ramen | 372 Bloor Street West

“We wanted to bring in city bikes from Holland that are upright, fashionable, and can function as your car.” Wyndham Bettencourt-McCarthy profiles Eric Kamphof, manager of Curbside Cycle.  [torontoist]

“The Green Room . . . a place so dirty that a health inspector found even its license completely covered in cockroach feces.” David Topping calls out the Green Room as one of torontist’s Villains of 2010.  [torontoist]

Beer was still 15 cents a glass and big old homes yet to be gentrified were cheap rooming houses. Jim Henshaw recalls David French and the Annex theatre scene of the early 1970′s.  [Legion of Decency]

Still looking for the perfect gift for that left-wing bike-riding pinko kook in your life? Get your commemorative T-shirts from Biking Toronto and buttons from spacingtoronto.  The buttons are also available locally at the Outer Layer, Curbside Cycle, and Sweet Pete’s.

First came the stagecoach stop in 1876. Eric Murtrie explores Brunswick Avenue at Bloor, and environs. [spacingtoronto]

They tested Model Ts on the roof. Matt Bubbers uncovers the storied history of the Faema Building (and former Ford automobile plant) at the corner of Dupont and Christie.  [Sympatico.ca Autos]

“You get to the point when you see so much pain in people’s lives, you have to do something.” Eileen Donnelly profiles Harbord Collegiate Institute teacher Michael Ericson’s work to establish a shelter for Toronto’s homeless LBGTQ youth.  [The Toronto Observer]

“One of Toronto’s oldest cinemas has been nestled in the Annex for almost a century.” Tracey Chen recounts the history of the Bloor Cinema, AKA the Madison Picture Palace.  [Heritage Toronto]

The Madison Picture Palace, now the Bloor Cinema | Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives

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Every Friday, the Weekly Wrap collects articles from around the web about or of interest to residents of the West Annex.

The John Lyle Studio

The John Lyle Studio at 230 Bloor Street West in 2006

Strolling along Bloor Street in as late as 2008, just west of the Intercontinental Hotel, one could turn north up a narrow alleyway and after only a few dozen steps come across a little piece of urban paradise, the elegant John Lyle Studio building.  Adjacent to a peaceful, sunshine- and art-filled courtyard, the studio and grounds were a quiet refuge from busy Bloor Street.

Royal Alexandra Theatre | Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The studio was built by John Lyle in 1920 as the atelier for his architectural firm.

Lyle was one of Toronto most distinguished architects in the late 19th and earliest 20th century.  Born in Ireland in 1872, he came to Canada as a young boy, and settled initially in Hamilton, Ontario, where he was a student at the Hamilton School of Art.  He studied architecture first at Yale University, and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris France.  Upon his graduation in 1896, he worked for a number of distinguished architectural firms in New York City.  He was involved in the design of the New York’s Beaux-Art gem, the New York Public Library.

Upon returning to Canada in 1905, Lyle developed a uniquely Canadian style.  Deeply inspired by the work of the Group of Seven “[Lyle] and his cohorts took as their self-imposed mission the creation of a Canadian architecture, one that reflected the county, its value, history and culture” observed Christopher Hume, The Star’s architecture critic.   “What makes him so timely” said Hume “was his focus on the city.  As part of the City Beautiful movement, he argued for an enhanced public realm of new civic squares, boulevards and grand entrances.”

Union Station | Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Among Lyle’s most accomplished buildings are the Royal Alexandra Theatre (1907), Union Station (1921) and the Runnymede Branch of the Toronto Public Library (1930).

Lyle continued his architectural practice from the studio until his retirement in 1943.  He died in 1945.  His studio continued to be occupied by various tenants, most recently by Cara Operations Inc.

In about 2004 the studio lands were included in a proposal by Lanterra Developments and MCE Developments  to erect a 32 story condominium tower they called One Bedford.  The construction of this tower would necessitate the demolition of all of the buildings on the north side of Bloor Street from Bedford Avenue east to the Intercontinental Hotel, including the Lyle studio.

Despite being listed in the City of  Toronto Inventory of  Heritage Properties, the developers obtained all necessary permissions to tear down the studio in 2006.  Eleventh-hour protests by local historians and the community brought only one small concession, the preservation of a fragment of the building facade, to be placed on the exterior of the condominium’s inner courtyard.

John Lyle Studio facade pasted on the One Bedford courtyard interior

The One Bedford condominium is nearing completion.  The fragment of the Lyle Studio facade on the Bruce Kuwabara/Shirley Blumberg and Sol Wasserman/Vlad Losner-designed tower has just recently been unveiled.  It demonstrates all of the weaknesses of facadism.   Derided by preservationists as vandalism that reduces the original building to a folly, the facade fragment of the once-elegant Lyle Studio appears like a small brown turd under a squatting gray man, diminishing both buildings, the old and the new.

The sad demise of the John Lyle Studio is but another episode in Toronto’s ignominious history of heritage preservation.

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St. Alban’s Square: a historical primer

 

By Jane Beecroft | In about 1885, a plan of subdivision was advertised which would convert part of the farmlands of Colonel Joseph Wells into a six-block residential neighbourhood, stretching from Bloor to Wells Avenue, between Brunswick and Bathurst Streets.

St. Alban’s Park.1885 plan of subdivision | Click to enlarge and see the original lozenge-shaped park

As the entire upper central block, between Barton and Wells, Howland and Albany had already been sold to the Toronto Diocese of the Anglican Church for the construction of the first cathedral of Toronto, to be named for St. Alban the Martyr, the surrounding subdivision was named “St. Alban’s Park”.

As the Cathedral was built, it was set apart from the other blocks along its south side by a lozenge-shaped park encircled by Barton (then named Lowther) on all sides.  The intention was to provide a beautiful southern exposure of the cathedral’s architecture since the east, west and northern sides already benefited from the gardens and grounds surrounding the cathedral on those three sides.

St. Alban’s Cathedral ran into financial problems and its cathedral status was cancelled before the building was finished, demoting it to local parish church status in 1936.  The gardens and playing fields to the north of the cathedral and its other buildings were sold off.

St. Alban’s Square in 1913, courtesy of City of Toronto Archives | Click to enlarge

At the same time, the unfinished but then already beautiful cathedral architecture still merited an appropriate setting.   An arrangement was stuck between the Anglican Synod and the parish and the City of Toronto to enlarge and preserve the parkland by transferring it to the City of Toronto in return for closing the street which ran between the park and the cathedral’s south façade.  This had the effect of retaining a garden-like setting for the cathedral’s architecture and for parish activities, in what is properly understood as a “sitting out” park.  The parishioners petitioned the City, and the parkland was formally named St. Alban’s Square.

St. Alban’s the Martyr Cathedral with Jacobs’ Ladder rose walk in the foreground, planted by Grassroots Albany in honour of neighbour Jane Jacobs

In about 1990, local residents lead by the environmental group Grassroots Albany undertook a long-term project for the beautification of the parkland, some of which was to honour local resident and park user Jane Jacobs.  A magnificent rose walk was planted along the wrought iron fence that defined the northern boundary of the park, and native species of plants and shrubs were attractively set out in beds around the park.

In 2000, local residents successfully fought to prevent the conversion of the park into playing fields for the private boys school Royal St. George’s College.  In 2008, residents successfully battled again to prevent the partition of the park for the  imposition of an off-leash dog run.

St. Alban’s Square is part of a rich and important history and has a major role to play in part of a Toronto notoriously deficient in parkland. It should retain its role as a “sitting out” park and not be converted into a sandbox park, playing field, drug centre, or bathroom for street people or dogs.

 

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Related articles:

The Cathedral of St. Alban the Martyr, 100 Howland Avenue

Local heroes Grassroots Albany celebrate 20th anniversary

Sibelius Square: history and official reopening