A Georgian manor house that became the seed of the Art Gallery of Ontario
The Grange
Built in 1817 by one of York's wealthiest families, The Grange was donated to found what became the Art Gallery of Ontario, and still stands attached to the modern museum.
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The Grange was built in 1817 by D'Arcy Boulton Jr., a member of one of York's most prominent early families, as a Georgian-style manor house on land well outside the small town's boundaries at the time. It remained a Boulton family home for generations, hosting some of the era's most significant social and political gatherings, before the last owner, Harriette Boulton Smith, willed the house and its surrounding grounds to the Art Museum of Toronto in 1911 on the condition that it be preserved and used as the founding home for a permanent public art gallery.
From manor house to museum campus
That gift became the seed of what grew into the Art Gallery of Ontario, which expanded around The Grange over the following century through multiple additions, including major 20th and 21st-century redesigns. The original 1817 house still stands, restored and integrated into the modern gallery complex, giving visitors a rare chance to walk from contemporary gallery space directly into an intact early-19th-century Toronto home.
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