Heaps Estrin's Blog

The Davenport escarpment holds deep historical importance in Toronto’s evolution, from its origins as Lake Iroquois’s shoreline and an Indigenous trail to its more recent history as an escape from the city’s increasing smog. During the latter, the South Hill neighbourhood emerged, featuring a significant home designed by one of the city’s most renowned architects.

Traversing the hilly, winding track of Poplar Plains Road, you’ll pass the historic Macpherson Avenue Substation, and a collection of quaint cottages. Below leafy canopies, you might just miss a set of elegant Edwardian-era gates tucked back from the road. Behind these gates is a small grouping of homes that occupy an important place in Toronto’s architectural and social history, including one by Arts and Crafts architect Eden Smith.

Born in 1858 in Birmingham, England, and arriving in Toronto in 1888, Smith had both an education in the increasingly popular Arts and Crafts movement and a keen awareness and intuition as to how it could be adapted for our city. Over his nearly three-decade career, Smith designed more than 2,500 homes across the city, with collections on Indian Road and throughout Wychwood Park and South Hill. It was during his most prolific period around 1910 that he was commissioned to design a residence atop the Davenport escarpment for Sir Byron Edmund Walker, president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. Walker’s success in finance fuelled his passion for art and philanthropy, and he became a co-founder of the Royal Ontario Museum and Art Gallery of Ontario. His collection of artworks, including dozens of pieces by Rembrandt and other European masters, was donated to the AGO after his death.

Upon completion of the house, his son Ewart and his wife Claire moved in, naming it Garthmore, a nod to Sir Walker’s former home known as Long Garth (garth being an Old English word translating to “an enclosed yard or garden”), once located at 99 St. George Street but since demolished.

The design of Garthmore is quintessential Eden Smith, firmly rooted in the English Cottage tradition but on a grand scale, featuring sloping roofs that ground the structure and are punctuated by two large chimneys servicing the home’s six fireplaces. The simplicity and informality of the design belies its close to 10,000 square feet of living space behind the brick and stucco facades.

Taking full advantage of the unique southwest exposure that the home’s location affords, Smith placed the primary entertaining rooms at the rear of the house, looking out to the gardens, flooding the rooms with daylight and giving the upper storeys sweeping vistas. Additions by Ralph Smith—Eden’s son and business partner—in 1924 included an extension of the drawing room, a garage and additional bedrooms for the growing Walker family.

The family resided at Garthmore until the 1960s, a testament to the ease of living and deep sense of home conveyed in many of Smith’s domestic commissions. In 1966 the house was sold to the Shea’s Theatre Company, and in 1976 transferred to Michael and Patricia Vaughan. Michael was a municipal and land use lawyer and a tireless advocate for heritage conservation. He led walking tours of the surrounding South Hill neighbourhood and advocated for livable, walkable and vibrant communities.

Garthmore continues to stand stoically proud, overlooking the Davenport escarpment, and has recently welcomed a new family who—like the home’s first residents, Ewart and Claire Walker—fell in love with the property over Christmas, a fitting conclusion to its recent history, and a firm foundation for the next chapter of this storied home.