Coleman Lofts

History of Coleman Lofts

The area was a rough-and-tumble crossroads village known as Coleman's Corners, after Charles Coleman, who kept a hotel at Danforth and Dawes and was its first postmaster in the 1870s. The lot was empty in 1903, the street then marked Lansdowne Avenue, and by 1910 there was a building here much like today's.

In 1909 it was home to John W. Brandon's bakery, which was still there in the early 1930s; a 1930 Star ad for the Brandon Bread Company is the source of the building's bakery stories. It sat vacant in 1943, rented storage space in 1955, and in the 1950s and 1960s held Macey's Appliances' storage, then Diamond Hard Co., a maker of welding rods and auto-care products with 23 workers by 1977, and a silk-screen printer.

In 1973 the area councillor, Dorothy Thomas, collected neighbours' complaints about the Para-Dice Riders motorcycle club using the second floor of the print shop as a clubhouse, and the City's buildings commissioner told them to leave. In 1974 Imperial Sign Co. applied to replace the building with four townhouses; instead the sign company stayed, and neighbours remember the smell of paint every afternoon at four. The lofts were registered as a condominium on December 19, 1991: 18 units, most of them multi-level, with open stairs, some old brick and some lovely outdoor space.

Stories you'll hear

“It was a farmhouse.” There's no sign of one: the building has looked much the same since the 1910 fire insurance map.