Lennox Mews

History of Lennox Mews

Robert Watson, born in County Down, Ireland, in 1850, came to Toronto in 1867 and in 1874 started the candy company R. & T. Watson with his brother Thomas. He became a loyal client of E.J. Lennox, one of the busiest Toronto architects of his day: Lennox designed the Watson factory on Front Street East in 1888 and a house for Watson on Shuter Street in 1893.

As the business grew, Watson moved north to the Annex, the fashionable new suburb above Bloor Street, and commissioned Lennox again. The two-and-a-half-storey house at 234 St. George Street was finished in 1903. The City calls it a well-designed example of the Queen Anne Revival style, with asymmetrical massing, a variety of forms and a mix of brick and stone. It is one of very few houses by Lennox still standing, from the architect whose best-known works are Old City Hall and Casa Loma.

The City listed the house on its first heritage inventory in 1974. Around 1992 it became the centrepiece of Lennox Mews, condominium corporation MTCC 1139: the house was divided into five large suites, and three-storey townhouses were built behind it, at 230 and 232 St. George, around a private lane. A heritage easement was registered in 1995, and the City designated the house under the Ontario Heritage Act in 2017. Suites in the house run to about 2,300 square feet.

Watson's later candy works, on Sorauren Avenue in Roncesvalles, is now the Robert Watson Lofts, which makes Robert Watson very likely the only person in Toronto whose home and factory have both been turned into lofts.