A painter's private forest colony next to the TTC's old repair barns

Wychwood

A landscape painter founded a private artists' enclave in 1874, and a set of derelict TTC streetcar barns down the hill became one of the city's most-copied adaptive reuse projects.

The wider Wychwood neighbourhood grew out of the Turner family's "Bracondale" estate — Hillcrest Park sits on the former estate grounds — with a small settlement called Bracondale Village forming by 1884 near Christie Street and Davenport Road. The area was annexed by the City of Toronto in 1909 and built up through the 1910s and 1920s with large homes along the Davenport escarpment.

A private forest colony

Distinct from the wider neighbourhood is Wychwood Park proper, a planned enclave landscape painter Marmaduke Matthews founded in 1874, naming it for Wychwood Forest in Oxfordshire near his birthplace. Businessman Alexander Jardine built an adjoining house in 1877, and in 1888 the two formalized a plan to attract Toronto's artistic and professional class to a semi-rural retreat at the city's edge. Architect Eden Smith built his own home there in 1907, and other houses followed in the Arts and Crafts style. In 1985, Wychwood Park became the first residential district in Ontario designated a Heritage Conservation District.

From streetcar barns to artist studios

On Christie Street south of St. Clair Avenue West, the Toronto Civic Railway began building a streetcar repair facility in 1913; five barns went up by 1921, with three more added after the Toronto Transportation Commission absorbed the routes. The barns were disconnected from the track network in 1978 and boarded up by 1985. Toronto non-profit Artscape led a roughly $19-million redevelopment, opening the Artscape Wychwood Barns to the public on November 20, 2008, with artist live/work units, studios, a farmers' market, a greenhouse, and a public park — a project frequently cited nationally as a model for adaptive reuse.

Sources

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