Bay n’ Gable

by

Anthony Salvalaggio

When he visited Toronto to shoot an episode of The Layover, the late Anthony Bourdain, with characteristic bluntness, kicked things off by bemoaning the state of the downtown core. “It’s not a good-looking city,” he said. He went on to amplify his reservations, declaring (I’m paraphrasing here) that the city had fallen victim to the worst architectural fads of the mid-twentieth century. Then, he made his way to the Saint Lawrence Market for a peameal bacon sandwich.

It may sound ridiculous (it does sound ridiculous), but I took this personally. How dare that lousy New Yorker say such a thing? Not that I knew enough about architecture to say that he was wrong. I still don’t know enough about architecture to say that. In fact, I think there are times when I’ve agreed with him. And – okay, it’s not like Anthony Bourdain is the first person ever to say such a thing. Friends of mine, when visiting from out of town, have made similar observations. Not to mention those of us who actually live here – we’re as ready to criticize as anyone: “Toronto has no respect for its history”; “Toronto just tears everything down”; “Toronto was so much nicer back when …” etc., etc., etc.

True, there have been some interesting casualties over the years. I’d love to go back and get a glimpse of the northwest corner of Queen and Bay circa 1925, when Shea’s Hippodrome (one of the world’s largest vaudeville theatres) occupied the spot where Nathan Philips Square now stands.1 And yeah, Sunnyside Amusement Park seems like it would’ve been a little easier on the eyes than the Gardiner Expressway. But talking about the city as though everything is a structural tragedy? Let’s not delude ourselves: we’ve had some close calls – some narrowly avoided disasters – to be grateful for. The original plan for the Eaton Centre involved demolishing the majority of Old City Hall.2 CN Rail’s aborted plan for “Metro Centre” (a major redevelopment of the rail yards between Yonge and Bathurst) called for the destruction of Union Station. In the end this proposal was significantly re-written and reduced, saving our transit hub and producing the building that now renders Toronto’s skyline instantly recognizable.3 And whether you’re a fan of it or not, the CN Tower is the defining feature in the centre of every panoramic magnet sold in this city over the last forty-six years.

To be clear, I’m not trying to pay Toronto any tributes for its architectural beauty. All I’m saying is . . . there’s a lot going on here. The odd stands alongside the stately; depressingly bland boxes neighbour eccentric feats of construction. The University of Toronto has a neo-Gothic bell tower commemorating the Great War; four-hundred meters from it you’ll find a library internationally recognized for its role as a dystopian prison in one of the Resident Evil sequels. The city is – for better and for worse – a mixed bag.

In this bizarre mingling of the modern and the historic, can there be such a thing as a “signature building” – one that defines Toronto? In fact, yes, there can be – and no, it is not the CN Tower. It is not any single specific structure – there are many of them. The residential streets just peripheral to the downtown core are filled with them. You can also find them on our homepage and on the cover of this issue. They are as Toronto as it gets, though that was never the intention. Arguably, they’re historical accidents. The most unique of this city’s buildings are its houses – the ones which began cropping up in the late Victorian era.

Only since 1985 have we had a name for these: In her book Toronto Architecture: A City Guide, Patricia McHugh called them “Bay-n-Gables.” Described by McHugh as “virtually Toronto’s trademark,” the Bay-n-Gables are usually semis or rowhouses; in either case they’re characterized by (surprise, surprise) prominent bay windows and high gables.5 You can find these houses in Toronto’s older neighbourhoods – they line the streets in Parkdale, Yorkville and Cabbagetown.6 The oldest known example of the style is 30-32 Lowther Avenue, built in 1875, in what was then West Yorkville (now the Annex).7 Though built to fairly standard specifications, variations in minor features (in the decorative trim along the roofline, for instance) give each house its own look.

So far so . . . what? Houses are houses. But these houses are curious, in that that they’re pretty much unique to Toronto. In their book Old Toronto Houses, Tom Cruickshank and John de Visser write that:

“. . . unlike other nineteenth-century trends [the Bay-n-Gable] is Toronto’s own and Toronto’s only, an anomaly indigenous to our city. Not even in Hamilton . . . do they appear with any frequency. New York has its brownstones; Toronto has its Bay-n-Gables.”8

How, and why? As is so often the case, the answers to these questions turn out to be coincidence and chance. It was in Toronto and Toronto alone that a number of historical circumstances converged to produce the Bay-n-Gable.

So, what happened?

First, immigration. Between 1851 and 1891, Toronto’s population swelled from thirty thousand to one hundred and eighty thousand people.9 This resulted in a housing shortage which was not only corrected, but corrected with interest. By the 1880s, speculative construction had begun in earnest, with builders anticipating continued growth.10 It was over this period – particularly from 1875 to 1890 – that so many of the city’s Bay-n-Gables appeared.

As this sixfold population increase was occurring, and as housing construction was ramping up, the city was implementing major changes to property tax exemption rules. In 1872, more than ten million dollars’ worth of Toronto property was untaxed.11 This may seem unimpressive in an era when a decrepit-looking garage sells for $700K+12 – but put this number into historical context, and we’re talking about one-seventh of the total value of Toronto property.13 On being reviewed by the city, many of these non-taxed estates were declared no longer exempt, and this in turn prompted many of the landowners to sell these properties, thereby freeing up space for new housing developments.14

At the time, property taxes were calculated based on a building’s frontage (i.e. width), and this prompted builders to opt for narrow, deep lots, the dimensions of which helped to determine the style of the houses that would be built on them.15,16 At their widest, these lots might be twenty-five feet across, but they could be as lean as twelve. The lack of frontage was made up for in lot length, which was typically between eighty-nine and one-hundred-forty-nine feet.17 Add to this the fact that the Bay-n-Gables were often three-storied and high-ceilinged, and you’ll start to get a sense of what it is that made these houses unique: they were very long, very tall, and very thin. The specs presented an interesting problem: How could one ensure that houses with these dimensions received adequate light and air? Enter the bay window, which often extended from the ground floor to the upper stories.18 This gave these houses as wide and open a front as could be managed in the circumstances. As for the gables: to be honest, I’m not quite sure of their evolutionary purpose . . . but they certainly look good, and they seem natural extensions of the high, narrow houses atop which they sit.

So, there you have it: a kernel of Toronto history to get us on our way. What’s fascinating about the Bay-n-Gable is the degree to which it was, like so many things, a happy accident. It was designed to overcome practical difficulties and adapt to local circumstances. A thing built for pragmatic reasons has become a distinct architectural feature of Toronto; what was once done for efficiency’s sake is now a trademark. It’s unclear whether any of the builders were aware that they were creating a new style of house – certainly, it seems that it never occurred to anyone at the time to give these residences a name, to define them as a type. That was to come a century later, when another generation turned these pragmatic, mass-produced houses into an architectural style worthy of its own Wikipedia page.19

Cruickshank and de Visser write that:

“Toronto’s current love affair with downtown living began in the 1970s with the Bay-n-Gable. By then, most of these late Victorian rows were in need of urgent repairs, but for a generation raised in humdrum suburban split-levels, there was no resisting their charms. With gingerbread trim and red-brick facades, they evoked the artisan age. This was a misconception, for they were, in fact, made from mass-produced components and erected almost as quickly as any postwar bungalow. But once smitten, there was no turning back.”20

The Bay-n-Gables were (like so many of those buildings that Bourdain objected to) a short-lived fad. They were designed to be practical, adaptable, and easy to replicate in short order. I would imagine that those people who, with an eye to efficiency and profitability, built one after another after another of these houses, back in the late 19th century, would be surprised to hear them described as “virtually Toronto’s trademark.”

But that’s just the way things go sometimes, isn’t it?

  1. Mike Filey. Toronto Sketches: “The Way We Were”. (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1992), 108-109.
  2. Patricia McHugh and Alex Bozikovic. Toronto Architecture: A City Guide. (McClelland and Stewart, 2017), 64.
  3. Ibid., 46.
  4. Tom Cruickshank and John de Visser. Old Toronto Houses. (Toronto: Firefly Books Ltd., 2003), 92.
  5. McHugh and Bozikovic. Toronto Architecture, 11.
  6. Cruickshank de Visser. Old Toronto Houses, 92.
  7. Ibid., 93.
  8. Ibid., 92.
  9. Weir, Scott. “The Picturesque Gothic Villa Comes to Town: The Emergence Of Toronto’s Bay-and-gable House Type”. Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, Volume 41, Issue 1. (The Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, 2016), 66.
  10. Ibid., 66.
  11. Ibid., 66-67.
  12. Mok, Tanya. “This ramshackle garage in Toronto is selling for $729K.” blogTO.com, 3 November 2022, https://www.blogto.com/real-estate-toronto/2021/03/ramshackle-garage-toronto-selling-729k/.
  13. Weir. “The Picturesque Gothic Villa Comes to Town.”, 67.
  14. Ibid., 67.
  15. Architecture of Toronto: The Bay-and-Gable Style House.” Mirvish + Gehry. 6 November 2022. http://mirvishandgehrytoronto.com/index.php/2015/10/27/architecture-of-toronto-the-bay-and-gable-house/.
  16. Taylor, John Douglas. “Toronto’s disappearing Bay and Gable houses.” Historic Toronto. 6 November 2022. https://tayloronhistory.com/2016/06/21/toronto-disappearing-bay-and-gable-houses/.
  17. Weir. “The Picturesque Gothic Villa Comes to Town.”, 71.
  18. Taylor, “Toronto’s disappearing Bay and Gable houses.”
  19. “Bay-and-gable.” Wikipedia.org, 3 November 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay-and-gable.
  20. Cruickshank and de Visser. Old Toronto Houses, 92.