ACO Toronto - The Grange

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The Grange

LAST UPDATE: December 13 2022 login to edit this building

The Grange on July 9, 2021. (Photo credit: Alessandro Tersigni.)

(Photo credit: Alessandro Tersigni.)

The Grange's brickwork is constructed using a Flemish bond, common among 18th and early 19th-century colonial buildings in the British Empire. (Photo credit: Alessandro Tersigni.)

(Photo credit: Alessandro Tersigni.)

(Image courtesy of Alessandro Tersigni.)

The Grange in 1865. Sarah Anne Boulton can be seen sitting on the porch with an umbrella. The horses and lawnmower were staged specially for the photograph, a relatively new invention at the time. (Image via Liz Lundell´s The Estates of Old Toronto, 1997)

The Grange between 1900 and 1940. (Image courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives.)

The Grange around 1990. (Image courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives.)

The Grange in 1910. (Image courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives.)

Goldwin Smith in his study in The Grange in 1909, the year before his death. (Image courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.)

Cottages on The Grange´s grounds on Grange Road at John Street in the first decade of the 1900s, when the two roads still intersected. (Image courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.)

The Grange around 1885. (Image courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.)

The Grange in 1897. (Image courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.)

The Grange in 1900. (Image courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.)

Looking south from The Grange´s main entrance in 1920, through the Classical stone portico commissioned by Goldwin Smith and designed by Walter Reginald Strickland in 1885. (Image courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.)

BUILDING INFORMATION

Name & Location:

The Grange
317 Dundas Street West
Toronto
Kensington-Chinatown

Year Completed:

1817

OTHER IDENTIFICATION

Alternate Name:

D'Arcy Boulton Jr. House, Art Museum of Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario

Notes:

One of a handful of Toronto houses that predate 1820 and the oldest one made of brick, The Grange is a rare surviving example of the Town of York's once-prominent Georgian architecture. It traces this region's urban lineage to the twilight of the Georgian period and reflects the early influence of 18th-century British aesthetic conservatism on the foundation of modern Toronto.

The Grange was built for D'Arcy Boulton Jr. and his wife Sarah Anne – members of the Upper Canadian political elite known as the Family Compact – on one of 32 separate 100-acre estates laid out north of the town by Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe in the 1790s. With these land grants, Simcoe hoped to entice English aristocrats to settle in his remote new capital and build the types of country manors that signified status, security, and prosperity back in Britain. The Grange, named for the Boultons' ancestral home in England, is one such manor that was built and survives today.

The house's hints of Classical Revival design, particularly its bold cornice trim, pedimented gable, and bull's-eye window, offer slight deviations from then-waning Georgian simplicity and foreshadow the impending indulgences of Victorian design. It has undergone multiple additions and renovations over the course of its 204-year life. Boulton Jr. added a bathroom wing addition in 1840. His son's widow, Harriette, married the Anglo-American scholar Goldwin Smith in 1875; a decade later, Smith constructed a library wing designed by Walter Reginald Strickland, Victorianized the residence's interior, and built a stone portico to replace the original wooden one. The entire building was restored by Peter John Stokes in 1973 and renovated by ERA Architects and Gehry International in 2008.

The Grange was given to the Art Museum of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario), which operated a gallery within between 1913 and 1918 (when a new structure was built nearby). From 1918 to 1973, the building housed offices. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1970 and was opened as a historic house in 1973.

(Research and text by Alessandro Tersigni.)

Companies:

The following companies are associated with this building

Architect - Peter John Stokes <-- More buildings by this architect.
Architect - Walter Reginald Strickland <-- More buildings by this architect.
Architect - ERA Architects Inc. <-- More buildings by this architect.

Building Type:

Manor

Current Use:

Cultural

Heritage Status:

National Historic Site

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The Grange

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