The most obvious sign that remains of Homewood is a bend in the road. To most people travelling on Wellesley Street East, this gentle curve is an odd and inexplicable diversion in Toronto’s otherwise straightforward grid system. It isn’t a surveyor’s error (an incorrect meeting of two grids), but an indication of the pattern of early settlement in the area. The land between Queen and Bloor streets had been originally laid out as large estate lots, called park lots, which were gradually subdivided to accommodate urban development. The Allen family owned this park lot, and it was the younger Allen, George, who built his villa Homewood on this site. Homewood, which had been built in 1847 to the designs of the noted architect Henry Bowyer Lane, remained standing until 1964. In 1900, it was the first house in Toronto to have electricity, and when its grounds had been reduced to 4 1/2 acres, it was converted into the first Wellesley Hospital, which was formally opened by Sir Wilfrid Laurier in 1911.

The gentle curve in the road marked the gracious front yard of the estate. Homewood Avenue created a central, axial corridor from the house down to Allen Gardens, the horticultural grounds donated by the Allen family to the city as the central focus of their park lot development. This corridor continued further south as Pembroke Street, leading to Moss Park, the estate of George Allen’s father. This plan of linked gardens and estate lots with landscaped lawns, orchards, greenhouses and tennis courts gradually became the framework for the existing city fabric. It underlies this part of Toronto, like an almost forgotten memory, a dream of a pastoral city.

Michael McClelland