Next to the Scott Mission is the Waverley Hotel, which has played host to the changing population of Spadina Avenue, from periods of Jewish immigration to the hippie days of Milton Acorn to elements of today’s Toronto Native community. Originally the site of Robert Milligan’s market garden, by the 1870s four small cottages were located on the then pastoral site. The cottages were demolished and replaced by the local YMCA in 1882, which was itself replaced by the Waverley. The building was enlarged in 1925, and by the late 1920s, it housed the Toronto Tourist and Convention Association. After its lounge license was granted in 1955, followed by the creation of the Silver Dollar Room in 1958 (also known as “The Buck”), the Waverley became entrenched as a representative form of single-resident occupancy in the city.

Today, the Waverley Hotel is a 65-room building that rents rooms on a monthly and weekly basis. Daily rates are also available, but the Waverley fits into the category of hotel that speaks of its “residents” rather than its “guests.” Once inside the glass doors, there is a large and harshly lit waiting room with a small television and a few smoking souls whose origins and purpose are not evident. Signs abound outlining strict moral codes of conduct as well as precautionary notices. Upstairs, the rooms are dilapidated, yet remarkably clean, and many are claimed by long-term residents.

From 1970 to 1977, one of Toronto’s famous poets, Milton Acorn, lived in the Waverley Hotel. He was known for constantly changing rooms because he was suspicious that the RCMP were bugging his room. The Waverley is a form of housing that attracts transients and individuals whose lives are less grounded than most Toronto citizens, and in this respect Acorn fit in with the typical Waverley resident.

The nondescript building is noted more for its colourful history than for its architectural features. Downstairs, the Silver Dollar Room is preparing for another night of revelry to the sounds of Blues and Rock. The nostalgic murals, redone in 1994, punctuate the bar’s tight, no-nonsense space. It’s a “straight, no chaser” kind of place. In Ellmore Leonard’s novel Killshot, reference is made to the Waverley Hotel as a place where men would end up drinking too much, partly because of the Silver Dollar downstairs and partly due to their personal circumstances. He describes the hundreds of light bulbs on the sign outside the bar, and the rooms upstairs with so many cracks in the ceiling that road maps seem to appear for the forlorn staring skyward. The challenge is to find the crack that leads out of the Waverley and out of a difficult life. The Waverley Hotel is an important part of Toronto’s architectural history, but of a somewhat less than glorious nature.

Ian Chodikoff