Knitting Mill Lofts

History of Knitting Mill Lofts

The building is missing from the 1913 fire insurance map and is there on the 1924 one, and a 1914 land survey shows it much as it looks today, so it went up around 1914. Who built it is still unknown.

The first tenant on record is the Quaker Candy Company, incorporated in 1921, which had earlier made sweets on Jarvis and Lombard Streets. In July 1928 the Globe reported a fire at the Quaker Candy plant here; a leather-goods maker, E.A. Stemp, had the second floor. Later that year a strange classified ad appeared from a M.H. Moyer at this address, buying horseradish roots in any quantity.

By 1940 the city directory lists Purtex Knitting Mills here, alongside other tenants such as the Alexander Dye Works. As Puretex Knitting, the company made hosiery and knitted goods, and later became nationally known for a 1978 strike, mostly by immigrant women, at its North York plant over cameras the president had installed on the factory floor, one of them aimed at the women's washroom. Puretex went out of business in 1984.

The building was converted in the late 1990s into 28 lofts, one of the smallest loft buildings in the city, with timber posts and beams, exposed brick, wood-slat ceilings and no two layouts alike.

Stories you'll hear

“It was the Century Knitting Mill.” The knitting company here was Puretex, which didn't arrive until about 1940; the first tenant was a candy maker.