Evening Telegram Lofts

History of Evening Telegram Lofts

The building doesn't appear on any fire insurance map up to 1924, so it went up later, most likely in the 1930s. Who built it is unknown.

Its name comes from the Evening Telegram, the paper John Ross Robertson founded in 1876. When “the Tely” folded in 1971, its staff started the Toronto Sun. But the paper's known homes were at Bay and Melinda, from 1899 to 1963, and then on Front Street West, and no record puts it on Seaton Street. One source remembers paperwork showing the Telegram used the building for storage, which would fit a 1972 City record of a meeting about converting “a warehouse” here to residential use.

By the early 1990s it was an office building owned by Soots Investments, offered for sale 17 times between 1990 and 1995. It sold in 1995 and seems to have become loosely legal rental studios before the lofts went on sale in 2001. There are 10 of them, with high ceilings, exposed brick and skylights, big half-round windows at the front, and private roof terraces or ground-level patios on some; parking is on the street.

Stories you'll hear

“It was the Evening Telegram building.” The Telegram may have used it for storage, but there is no record of the newspaper being based here.