Malthouse Lofts

History of Malthouse Lofts

The Don Brewery started up on the west bank of the Don River in the 1840s, one of the industries that grew around the Irish neighbourhood of Corktown. In 1876 it added this lager malthouse, designed by Smith & Gemmell, the architects who later did the Ontario Medical College for Women on Sumach Street. It has buff brick pilasters, decorative corner corbelling, round arches and oval cast-iron tie-rod plates, and it is the only building of the brewery left.

The site was once part of the same parcel as the Queen City Vinegar Company at 19 River. The Bayriv Corporation bought the malthouse in 1987 and rented it out for about a decade. Inaugural Source bought it in the late 1990s and built townhouses around it, and in 2005 converted the battered old building into 10 loft townhouses as the last phase of turning the lane into homes.

Three levels sit inside the original brick shell, with parking below reached directly from each home. Each loft is about 1,515 to 1,700 square feet, with 10-foot ceilings, exposed red and buff brick, sliding barn doors and its own roof deck, and most have their own street door on Old Brewery Lane.