“The current developer met with the ARA Planning and Development committee where he heard that we were not against an infill project on the large property, but we were not supportive of the demolition of the buildings,” wrote Rita Bilerman, chair of the Annex Residents’ Association (ARA), in the letter to the Toronto Preservation Board. “We offered to show him other infill projects in the neighbourhood that maintained historic buildings that were part of historic streetscapes, but he expressed no interest in working with us to take that approach on Huron Street.”
---------
According to the City of Toronto Directories for 1892 and 1893, the building at 661 Huron St. was one of the earliest to be constructed in the Annex, and the third completed on Huron Street between Dupont Street and Bernard Avenue.
661 Huron St. stands out not just because of its age and particular architectural style, it also happened to be a landing place for children known as “British-Canadian Home Children.”
Between 1863 and 1949, charities in the UK shipped 120,000 “orphaned” children to Canada from the United Kingdom to work at Canadian farms and households. Some of these children were as young as two years-old, and a majority of them were not actually orphans, but rather, the children of struggling and impoverished parents.
