Spruce Court represents the first deliberate attempt to create low-income public housing in Canada. It was the product of an early public and private partnership initiative, which identified the need for low-income housing, arranged for financing, and administered the project until 1980. Spruce Court is also notable because it exhibited the design attributes, architectural style, and high quality of construction usually associated with single-family housing.

The complex is located at the corner of Spruce and Sumach streets, near Dundas and Parliament. Spruce Court comprises 78 various-sized flats in two- and three-storey buildings. All the flats have a front door and porch to the outside. They face either Spruce Street or Sumach Street, or face one of two courtyards open on one side to the street. The first half of the project formed the Sumach Street courtyard in 1913. The Spruce Street courtyard followed in 1926. Riverdale Courts, constructed in 1913, was a larger but similar project on Bain Avenue, also designed by the architectural firm Eden Smith and Sons.

The funding and planning for Spruce Court was arranged by the Toronto Housing Company (an earlier version of Cityhome) in 1913, in response to a need for rental housing closer to the industrial heart of the city. The effort involved a partnership between the business community and the Canadian Manufacturer’s Association, with the Toronto Board of Trade, the Guild of Civic Art, the Local Council of Women (who were especially concerned about the welfare of working single mothers), and the Toronto City Council.

Eden Smith (1858–1949) was a sought-after Toronto architect. Most of the 2,500 single-family houses he designed and constructed were built in the English Cottage Style. Concurrent with Spruce Court, for instance, Smith was involved in the planning of the site, and the architect for six notable houses, in what is known today as Wychwood Park.

The English Cottage Style used at Spruce Court evoked in the popular mind the image of a simple and domestic, country life. This romantic association took the form of steep shingled roofs, broad eaves, tall chimneys, brick and stucco walls, half- timbered gables, large roofed verandas, arched brick porches with stone steps, heavy wood front doors, and, within the site’s restrictions, verdant courtyards and gardens. Equally important to the character of the buildings are the quality of materials, for example, the solid wood doors, the heavy brass hardware, the stone thresholds in the porches and the play of voids and solids. The latter is created by the shadow in the porch archways, the roofed verandah, the shadowed eave on otherwise simple building volumes, and the large and divided windows with deep reveals. The interiors also contain enduring materials, such as hardwood floors, decorative wood mouldings, doglegged hardwood stairs, and plaster walls. Interior and exterior details and rich materials were used sparingly but to great purpose.

The Spruce Court buildings were an immediate success with the new residents, and they continue to provide a rare level of domestic pleasure in public housing.

Wins Bridgman