Every corner of every city has a story to tell.

The history of Spadina Road between Dupont and Davenport tells a remarkable story of urban development, of social and political history, of poetry and personal tragedy.

The site of the Castle Hill development, south of the IROQUOIS Escarpment – the shoreline of a vestigial glacial lake that is now Lake Ontario, was occupied by more than one DAIRY: Acme Farmer’s, and Sealtest. Just west, at the corner of Bathurst and Davenport, currently occupied by public transit service yards, commercial gardeners marked the landscape with FURROWS to grow food for the local community. William Baldwin, who built and lived in Spadina House, was responsible for the SURVEY of Spadina AVENUE, Toronto’s original grand avenue. Sir Henry Pellatt, Baldwin’s neighbour at his eccentric Casa Loma, was president of the Toronto Power Company which provided both the physical and political POWER that contributed to the growth of the city. Documents that record these and many more local histories are housed in the Toronto ARCHIVES, located on the east side of Spadina, south of Davenport.

Every building in every city has a story to tell.

The history recalled by the Castle Hill development is one of a time and place far removed from the corner of Dupont and Davenport. Castle Hill’s story evokes the Georgian period in England, stylistically interpreted by John Nash’s neo-classical Park Crescent Terraces in London and by John Wood’s Royal Crescent in Bath. Here, on Spadina Road, the Castle Hill marketing materials applied names such as “The Regency,” “The Knightsbridge,” and “The Cambridge” to the three-storey, stone-and-stucco row houses and spoke of a “Georgian-inspired community which echoes the old world overtones of Casa Loma … every feature focused on making your life more comfortable and your entertaining more elegant.”

Because it attends to aspirations that are similar to Sir Henry Pellatt’s Casa Loma, Castle Hill makes a questionable selection of the history it chooses to include and that which it omits. A few short years after the construction of Casa Loma, Sir Henry was unable to maintain the financial opulence of his dreams and was forced from his home. Rather than allowing the industrial history of the site inspire the project, Castle Hill reminds us of Sir Henry’s tragic story of unsustainable folly.

Castle Hill has a story to tell.

One can only wonder why it is the recounting of the Georgian period in England and not the story of an evolving community and its relationship to the local landscape.

Words capitalized above are part of an artwork titled Spadina Line (Brad Golden and Norman Richards, 1991) which recalls the history of the site. Spadina Line runs between Davenport and Dupont, on the west side of Spadina Road.

Brad Golden and Lynne Eichenberg