Steam Plant Lofts

History of Steam Plant Lofts

The land was part of Park Lot 5, which William Allan gave to his son George William Allan as a wedding present in 1846. George, later mayor of Toronto and Speaker of the Senate, and the man who gave the city Allan Gardens, built a Gothic Revival house here called Home Wood, which gave Homewood Avenue its name.

In 1909 Dr. Herbert Bruce, later Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, bought the house and four acres and opened the Wellesley Hospital in 1912 as a 72-bed private hospital; the Duke of Connaught came to the opening. Home Wood was torn down in 1964 when the hospital grew to 600 beds, and this steam-fired plant, built in 1953, heated and powered it.

When the Wellesley Hospital and the original Princess Margaret Hospital were demolished in the early 2000s for condos, the plant was left without a job. Aykler converted it in 2008 into a six-storey building of 31 lofts, adding three floors on the old three-storey plant. There wasn't room on the site for the equipment to bring the 200-foot smokestack down, so it was cleaned out and shored up instead, and three units got round brick-walled bedrooms or dens inside it, which sold on opening day. Lofts run from about 455 to 1,090 square feet, with sliding barn doors and a shared roof terrace.