Designed in 1983 and completed in 1986, this Lilliputian 18-unit apartment block was the third and final phase for the community-based Church-Isabella Residents’ Co-operative Inc. It was the first project of substance by its architect.

Paul Kane, famous for his 19th century oil paintings depicting North America’s native people, built a Georgian home on the site in 1856. Later, to please a more Victorian eye, a side bay window, a two-storey porch, and a peaked roofline were added. In the 1930s, the house was completely obscured by the construction of an addition to house a church for the deaf. A developer purchased the property in the mid-1970s, intending to build a high-rise structure. The church was demolished and, suddenly, the long-forgotten Kane house was again exposed to public view.

Community pressure prevented the ultimate destruction of the Kane house, and the City eventually purchased the property, transferring the developer’s density rights to an adjacent site. In 1983, after the house had suffered several years of vacant neglect, the Church Isabella Co-operative successfully answered a City proposal call with a scheme to lease the rear of the site for residential use and landscape the front as a public park.

The front wing of the house has been renovated to contain multi-level three-bedroom units. The fire-damaged rear wing has been demolished to make way for a four-storey addition containing eight lower units with tiny rear gardens and eight upper units with roof terraces. Corridors on the first and third levels are singly loaded and have operable windows facing the park. There is a kitchen window surveying the corridor next to the front door of every unit. The front facade expresses the collective nature of the co-operative, while the rear expresses the individuality of each unit.

The rehabilitation of the Paul Kane house addressed three goals: it found a reuse for a historic building, provided affordable family housing close to a subway station, and created a public park in an area chronically short of green space.

Paul Reuber