Sorauren Lofts

History of Sorauren Lofts

Early in the 1900s a factory strip grew up along Sorauren Avenue beside the railway just south of the Dundas junction, giving easy rail links across southern Ontario. Neighbours included Winnett & Wellinger, now One Columbus, and the Dominion Bridge Company, whose site later became a TTC bus garage and then Sorauren Park.

The Chapman Double Ball Bearing Company's mill-style factory isn't on the 1903 Goad's map but is named on the 1910 one, so it went up around 1903 to 1905, older than One Columbus across the lane. A one-storey storage building to the south was added after 1910 and later raised to three storeys. A 1919 trade ad urged factories to “CONSERVE POWER!” with Chapman bearings.

By the 1990s the old Sorauren factories were home to hundreds of artists in cheap, rough studios; a 1995 Toronto Star story describes fights with the city over zoning and fire-trap conditions here. Converted after that, the 48 lofts have ceilings from 15 to over 20 feet, some with mezzanines, timber columns and beams or steel joists, brick, concrete or hardwood floors and 6-foot windows. One unit is the old factory office, with its bathroom in the vault behind the original safe door.