FRIDAY,MARCH6,2020 | THEGLOBEANDMAILO REALESTATE | H5
I
t’s not often that one experi-
ences a heritage emergency.
But, last Labour Day, it hap-
pened to Graywood Develop-
ments’ Neil Pattison.
The September sun beating
down on his heavy coat, the fire
marshal said that the wall at 314
Jarvis St. had to come down; his
people needed to get inside to
check for evidence of arson, and,
perhaps, for victims.
For Mr. Pattison, it wasn’t so
cut-and-dry. That wall – and most
of the rest of the handsome 1902
house near the corner of Jarvis
and Carlton Streets – was desig-
nated as heritage, and therefore
protected from demolition. And,
since the house had already sur-
vived an earlier fire in January,
2016, Mr. Pattison didn’t want an
unsympathetic backhoe ripping
into what remained.
The police detectives weren’t
making things any easier. They
were peppering Mr. Pattison with
questions, hoping he’d slip up
and say something incriminating
- don’t most developers want to
be rid of problematic historical
buildings?
The thing is, Mr. Pattison, a
vice-president at Graywood, isn’t
like most developers. After ac-
quiring the property in July, 2019,
with Phantom Developments,
he’d spent the summer strategiz-
ing with his colleagues on how
best to incorporate the Beaux-
Arts house – once owned by two
very prominent Torontonians –
into a new condominium devel-
opment. Should it be retail? An of-
fice? An amenities space?
However, with the fire marshal
breathing down his neck, those
questions had to be shelved for
the time being. What was needed
was a heritage professional to
show up, and quickly.
“It was quite the intense expe-
rience,” Mr. Pattison said on a cold
February morning a few weeks
ago.
Thankfully, Joe Muller, pro-
gram manager at the city’s Heri-
tage Preservation Services, was
only a phone call, and bicycle ride,
away.
After much back-and-forth
with Mr. Muller, a cherry picker
deposited a Graywood engineer
and architect Chris Borgal of Gold-
smith Borgal & Co. into the char-
red ruin from above. While Mr.
Borgal pointed to what was heri-
tage and what was not, the engi-
neer tagged what needed to be re-
moved for safety’s sake and what
needed to be reinforced, regard-
less of heritage, while fire profes-
sionals and Mr. Pattison cooled
their jets in the empty lot beside
the house.
“This happens at a glacial
pace,” Mr. Pattison explained. “It
took us all day to say, ‘okay you
can take this wall down,’ because
they had to go back to city hall and
get the approval.”
They are important walls. De-
signed for Dr. Charles Sheard
(1857-1929) when in his mid-40s
and Toronto’s chief medical offi-
cer (sources suggest – but can’t
confirm – his architect brother,
Matthew, was responsible), the
home was one of many along Jar-vis – the city’s Champs-Élysées in
the late-1800s and early-1900s –
occupied by the professional
classes. The upper portion of the
street was reserved for the very
rich. When Dr. Sheard purchased
the property as a newlywed in
1885, it had been a much smaller
wood-framed home that he and
wife Virna (née Stanton) occu-
pied; four sons by the turn of the
century meant a larger house was
necessary.
Just before that home was con-
structed, Mrs. Sheard (1862-1943)saw her first poems and stories
published, many of them in The
Globe and Mail. By the time the
couple were picking out furnish-
ings, her second book,A Maid of
Many Moods, was published.
While Mrs. Sheard would achieve
great status as author and poet –
penning five volumes of poetry –
by the time she was widowed, the
status of her beloved neighbour-
hood was changing. A 10-storey
apartment house, Frontenac
Arms, was being constructed just
to the south (it became a hotel,
and still is today) and many of her
neighbour’s homes had been con-
verted to rooming houses. After
the Second World War, this trend
would increase as the city strug-
gled with a housing shortage.
Eventually, the Sheard resi-
dence would succumb as well and
have much of its interior unsym-
pathetically rejigged; it would re-
main a rooming house until the
2016 fire.
The owners at that time, Toron-
to Ward 13 councillor Kristyn
Wong-Tam said, were “horribly
combative” and “didn’t care
about the Sheard heritage house.”
“When 314 Jarvis went up in
flames, it felt like a big middle fin-
ger to the city and neighbour-
hood,” she continued. “Toronto
Fire, Toronto Building, City Plan-
ning and my office were all deal-
ing with the owners and they did
the minimum to keep the house
safe.” In contrast, Graywood/
Phantom “has been pro-active in
their communication, courteous
to their neighbours and respon-
sive to city requests.”
Perhaps that’s because Mr. Pat-
tison is a self-confessed “nerd”
when it comes to history. While
only a coffered ceiling, some
moulding, a small staircase and
the ornate radiators remained
when he first walked through, theplan was “to preserve the entire
structure, all four walls, and try
and reinstate some of the original
pieces back into it.” The second
fire, however, destroyed most of
that, and the need to gain access
to the basement (no bodies or evi-
dence of arson was found) means
Graywood/Phantom had to
switch gears.
So, today, the keen aficionado
who finds herself walking past
will notice only the north and east
walls standing. After the backhoe
had its way with the south wall
and the rear, west-facing wall was
deemed too weakened, a compro-
mise was made with the city: Doc-
ument those walls with detailed
architectural drawings and then
take them down. The curved-and-
columned front porch will get the
same treatment, although in that
case samples have been saved in
order to reproduce it to exact
specifications (the original roof-
line and dormer window will also
be rebuilt). If our aficionado looks
closer, she’ll note waterproof caps
on exposed walls, cinder block
and steel bracing added here-and-
there for reinforcement, and re-
placed or re-pointed brick.
“What you see today, all the fire
damage and all the restoration,”
said Mr. Pattison, “it’s about half a
million dollars’ worth that’s been
sunk into this.”
From glorious to glum, and
from almost-lost to rising,
literally, from the ashes, one could
say a rose will soon return to Jarvis
Street. Well, Mrs. Sheard may have
put it that way:From out the limbo where lost
roses go
The place we may not see,
With all its petals sweet and half-
ablow,
One rose returned to me.
The Gleaner,1913Theheritagehouseat314JarvisSt.inTorontoisseencircathe1970s.GOLDSMITHBORGAL
Aftertwofires,aroserisesfromtheashes
Developertreadslightly,
spendsheavilyto
preserveabitof
Toronto’sonetime
Champs-Élysées
DAVE
LeBLANC
ARCHITOURISTTORONTO
Onlythenorthandeastwallsarestillstandingat314JarvisSt.afterthesecondfire.DAVELeBLANC/THEGLOBEANDMAILFirefightershadtoremovethehouse’ssouthwallafterthefire,andits
westwallwasdeemedtooweakafterward.GRAYWOODDEVELOPMENTS