Broadview Lofts

History of Broadview Lofts

Before the warehouse, this was a ballpark. Sunlight Park opened here in 1886, south of Queen and west of Broadview: an all-wood stadium built for $7,000 with seats for 2,200. It hosted Toronto's first professional baseball championship in 1887 and was home to the team that later took the name Toronto Maple Leafs, until new owners moved the team to Hanlan's Point in 1896. It took its name from the Sunlight Soap works Lever Brothers built just to the south, and local leagues played here until about 1913, when industry took over. Sunlight Park Road, beside the lofts, still carries the name.

In 1914 the United Drug Company put up the warehouse. United Drug was Louis K. Liggett's co-operative of independent druggists, founded in 1903, which sold its own medicines and toiletries under the Rexall name; that is why the building is still remembered as the Rexall warehouse. From 1920 to 1943 the ground floor held a Rexall pharmacy with a soda fountain. The ceilings are lower than in many Toronto lofts, about 10 feet, because the floors were built to hold shelves of small bottles, not heavy machinery.

Later decades were scrappier. From the late 1950s until 1991 an auto-body shop, Gateway Auto Collision, ran on the main floor, and parts of the building were let to a bookbinder, a food company and garment makers. By 2002 the City counted 58 separate commercial units, only 33 of them occupied, plus 15 artists' studios it suspected people were living in.

The Sorbara Group began selling lofts in 2003 and finished in 2006, with Turner Fleischer Architects. Two glass penthouse levels were set back on the roof and an addition extended the building to the south, while the original stairwell and the water tower were kept. In 2008 it placed second in the Pug Awards, Toronto's people's-choice prize for architecture. Lofts run from about 800 to 1,600 square feet, and only the penthouses have two levels.