‘Victorian’ is not a style…
Homes are often described as Victorian, but that isn’t actually a style – it’s a time period, during the 60-plus-year reign of England’s Queen Victoria, in which various housing styles were popularized or brought back from other times. 'Victorian' architecture generally describes styles that were most popular between 1835 and 1900. Many homes combine the elements of several different styles and are not easily distinguishable as one particular style or another.
Getting over the hurdle
Gingerbread House by WikiMedia commons
…But it has common features
Victorian architecture can be said to encompass several different styles, but there are some common elements to look for. First, the buildings are constructed in brick, stone, and timber, using a sometimes-eclectic mixture of Classical and Gothic motifs. Lovely Victorian residences and small commercial buildings like the ones found in Cabbagetown often include such features as:
- bay windows
- stained glass
- ornamental string courses
- elegant entrances
- light, bright colours
- gingerbread trim
- ornate porches
- decorative cornices
The most prominent type of Victorian architecture anywhere in Ontario was the home. Whether it was a large farm in the country, a small worker's cottage or a town house in a growing urban centre like Toronto, the residences could boast good solid craftsmanship and decorative touches. The typical Victorian house builder (even the Gothic Revivalists) wanted to ‘dress up’ the house with frills, swirls, patterns and details – just as the Victorian dress maker worked with lace, puffs, ribbons and crinolines as well as fabrics. This led to criticism by some European factions who considered the styles to be unnecessarily cluttered and complex. Though there was doubtless a tremendous mixing of the architectural styles throughout the period, the final product always seemed to have a unity of design that made everything work.
Photo by slworking2
The Cabbagetown Victorians are born
Unlike in today’s subdivisions where multiple houses are built by the same builder in not-too-subtle variations on the same theme, the builders of what was Toronto’s first suburb were a very eclectic and imaginative bunch. These developers began looking north of Queen Street for building lots in the 1830’s, and found that the land north of Queen and west of Parliament had been logged and cleared for farming. These empty ‘park lots’ would eventually house the homes of some of York’s (as Toronto was formerly known) most prominent officials, including Thomas Ridout, whose home, north of Carlton, was called Sherborne, and tycoon William Allan (part of whose land is today’s Allan Gardens and whose home, Moss Park, still lends its name to an area just south of the Cabbagetown heritage area).
1830’s-1840’s
The earliest Cabbagetown buildings were farm houses and a few cottages. The first building lots were sold in 1845 along Sherbourne Street, with the land being subdivided into a grid pattern of streets by city surveyor John Howard. Buyers generally purchased narrow building lots that were between 15 and 20 feet wide – no swimming pools here - making attached or row houses the most practical housing type. But a more extravagant early Victorian example is Allandale, the house at 241 Sherbourne Street. Built in 1848 to be the home of brewer and philanthropist Enoch Turner, it is wide by comparison to other houses in the area, with a big rustic front porch, ornate trim and two-toned brick in decorative patterns. Another example of early Victorian construction in the area is 424 Ontario Street, in which the ornate gingerbread trim on peaks and porches threatens to overshadow the delicacy of the overall design.
Allandale house, photo by Simon Pulsifer
1860’s-1870’s
By this point, wealthy families were building big estate homes along Jarvis Street. Sherbourne Street became an alternative, where wealthy merchants and gentry built spacious two and three-storey brick homes alongside the skinny row houses. Serious development of homes in the nearby streets really got off the ground about the time of Canada’s confederation in 1867. Because electricity, running water and indoor plumbing would not be introduced into private homes until after 1880, the deep rear yards of the early homes often featured outdoor sanitary facilities and wells for water. At least the area was an early adapter of indoor gas lighting, thanks to the Consumers Gas plant at the foot of Parliament Street.
1880’s
By the mid-1880s most of Seaton and Ontario streets were fully lined with homes, each built individually from patterns that originated in England and Scotland. Carpenters built each house to be unique; even homes attached in rows have subtle differences in their windows, roofs and trim that make each one a custom work of art. The homes, bought by professionals such as bankers, doctors and lawyers, were built using the finest materials and techniques available to home builders of the day – which has contributed to the longevity of Cabbagetown’s Victorians. Most of the lumber was cut locally from old growth pine and maple trees; walls were covered in lath and plaster that had horse hair added for extra durability; and much of the distinctive buff yellow and rose red brick was made locally, in the brickyards in the Don Valley.
Pairlament St., by WikiMedia commons
1900
Almost all of today’s Cabbagetown streetscapes were complete by 1900. The streets were not originally paved, but there was public transit; first in the form of horse-drawn trams and later streetcars running along Parliament, Sherbourne and Carlton as they do today. From about 1895 to 1915, middle-class tastes turned away from the clutter and closed off rooms of the traditional Victorian home to more open, flexible spaces: the living room replaced the parlour. Simpler wood furniture and interiors displaced the former upholstered and multi-layered look typical of the Victorian home. At the turn of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, working-class and middle-class homes reflected contrasting material standards.
Go back to Victorian architecture in Toronto
