The Glebe Lofts

History of The Glebe Lofts

The congregation began with a Presbyterian Sunday school held in a tent in an orchard at Pape and Harcourt on September 26, 1906. A small church seating 300 and costing $3,500 was dedicated on December 15, 1907. The neighbourhood filled up fast: a Sunday school wing for 700 followed in 1913, and on October 31, 1921 the cornerstone was laid for a huge new sanctuary, dedicated on September 3, 1922, which cost $125,000 and seated 2,600.

The architect, John Wilson Gray, had already designed St. Paul's Presbyterian on Bathurst and Knox Presbyterian on Spadina; this was his last project. It is a Gothic Revival building of brick with big arched windows and steel roof trusses.

As the neighbourhood changed, the congregation shrank, and on June 2, 1991 it closed the big sanctuary and moved worship into the Sunday school wing. The sanctuary was eventually sold, paying for the renovation of the old wing, which was rededicated in 2003 and is still the church. Bob Mitchell, the developer behind many of Toronto's early lofts, finished The Glebe in 2004: 32 lofts, most of them on two or more levels with 14-foot ceilings, from about 1,000 to over 2,200 square feet, all built inside the original walls with no additions. The steel trusses still show in the top-floor units.