Brockton Lofts

History of Brockton Lofts

Brockton was a village from 1876 and a town from 1881 until Toronto annexed it in 1884; Brockton Avenue, really a lane just south of Dundas and east of Brock, is one of the last traces of it. The Toronto Pharmacal Company, burned out of Bay Street in the Great Fire of 1904, built this factory in 1917.

By 1934 it shared the building with the Balm Medicine Co. and the patent-medicine makers Griffiths & MacPherson, and in the 1950s with the Stowell Screw Co., Toronto Bedding and Davies Furniture. There were fires in 1952 and 1961, a one-storey addition in 1955, and from the 1960s Coronet Furniture made upholstered Art Deco-style furniture here.

In 1986 an application was made to turn the factory into 20 homes, approved for 18. The artist and developer Betty Kaser and the planner David Jackson set out to make it a haven for artists; buyers signed on from sketches and toured the building while women were still sewing upholstery inside, and each designed their own unit. The owners have run the condominium themselves, without a property manager, ever since.

Most of the 18 lofts are two or three storeys, from about 1,100 to nearly 2,000 square feet, some with a separate lower-level studio, with 12-foot ceilings, sandblasted wood ceilings, original maple plank floors, and roof or ground-level terraces. Parking is in the central courtyard.

Stories you'll hear

Owners say sewing-machine needles still turn up in the cracks of the floors and tiny pharmacy vials in the garden.