Gates built to keep cattle out — maybe
Osgoode Hall
Home to Ontario's highest courts since 1832, Osgoode Hall is best known for a set of ornamental gates whose whole "built to stop cows" origin story a group of 1950s law students actually tried, and failed, to disprove.
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Our city government guide covers Toronto's municipal institutions. Osgoode Hall is the provincial legal system's equivalent — Ontario's highest courts have run out of the same Palladian-style building since 1832.
Built for the Law Society of Upper Canada
The Law Society of Upper Canada bought the six-acre site in 1828, and the first wing of Osgoode Hall — named for William Osgoode, Upper Canada's first Chief Justice — was completed in 1832, providing office space, a library and student accommodation. In 1846, the Society agreed to also house the province's Superior Courts of Justice there, and in 1874 transferred the central and west wings to the provincial government outright.
The famous "cow gates"
When Osgoode Hall was built, the surrounding land was still pasture, and the ornamental iron gates around the property — which allow only one person through at a time — have long been called the "cow gates," on the theory they were designed to keep cattle from wandering onto the grounds. The actual evidence for that story is thin; by the mid-19th century Toronto already had gas lighting and streetcars, and the gates more plausibly served as simple crowd control. In the 1950s, a group of law students actually tried to push a cow through one of the gates to settle the debate — the attempt failed, but the legend only got stronger.
Still Ontario's legal heart
Osgoode Hall remains the working home of the Law Society of Ontario and several of the province's highest courts, making it one of the longest continuously functioning legal institutions in the country — a distinction it shares with Queen's Park as one of the few 19th-century government buildings covered in this guide never to have changed function.
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Sources
- Law Society of Ontario — Osgoode Hall
- NOW Magazine — Hidden Toronto: Osgoode Hall
- Wikipedia — Osgoode Hall