Advertisement
Address: 80R Crescent Road
Neighbourhood: Rosedale-Moore Park
Agent: James Strathy Warren and Ben Higgs, Royal LePage/J&D Division, Brokerage
Price: $3,495,000
The Place: With two bedrooms, four bathrooms and a finished basement, this Rosedale coach house is a lot grander than the average outbuilding.
Read the rest of this entry »
Read the rest of this entry »
Interior designer Theresa Casey lives for large-scale projects. So when she and her husband, graphic designer Robert Gray, began a house hunt, her goal was “to buy a box and make it our own.” A 1930s brick Rosedale home with a forgettable interior was the ideal big, messy job. Among its dysfunctions: a cumbersome wall divided the main floor down the middle, and Moroccan arches made rooms heavy and funereal. The sole, tiny bathroom was at the top of the stairs. After the space was gutted, Casey sourced all-new decor and had much of it custom made. She explored a period design, mixing traditional elements with 1930s modernism. The master bath now has smoky, Old World glamour, with black glass and Negro Marquina marble, cherrywood accents and vintage brass faucets. The petite kitchen is modelled after the galley in a cabin on a luxury ocean liner, with Statuario marble and unlacquered brass. Casey brought in vintage hardware and custom cherry doors for all the entranceways. The dining room’s grillwork is salvaged from the Eaton’s College Park building (now the Carlu), another dramatic art deco touch.
(Image: Emma McIntyre)
Rosedale’s new oyster bar is all sideways glances, double kisses and how-do-you-know-so-and-so’s. The seafood-centred pub standards are almost as good as the people watching.
Read the rest of this entry »
ADDRESS: 12 MacPherson Avenue, Townhouse 5
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Yorkville
AGENTS: Christian Vermast, Paul Maranger and Fran Bennett, Sotheby’s International Realty Canada, Brokerage
PRICE: $3,495,000
THE PLACE: One of just five units in the ultra-exclusive Macpherson Church loft conversion, this three-bedroom townhouse has luxurious touches like heated marble floors, cathedral ceilings and an elegant staircase that spirals through all three floors.
ADDRESS: 51 Roxborough Drive
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Rosedale-Moore Park
AGENT: Donna and Nick Thompson, Harvey Kalles Real Estate Ltd., Brokerage
PRICE: $6,500,000
THE PLACE: A glass-and-steel house by acclaimed architect Barton Myers. The Wolf House (named for Lawrence and Mary Wolf, the couple who commissioned the home in 1974) sits on a roomy ravine lot in Rosedale.
A look at the reclusive art collector renowned for his connections, his discretion, and his secret stash of multi-million-dollar masterpieces
One evening last November, at the Sotheby’s auction in the ROM’s Currelly Gallery, Ash Prakash entered into a heated bidding war with David Loch, a Winnipeg-based art dealer. The coveted object was a dreamy, impressionistic early-20th-century canvas by the Quebec artist James Wilson Morrice entitled Evening Stroll, Venice, which depicts a moody twilight scene of women bustling past the gondolas on the lagoon. Prakash wanted the painting for his personal collection, and put in several bids. He paused as the price soared over a million—he hadn’t expected the piece to be so dear. He knew through the grapevine that Loch was bidding on behalf of a client, which only hardened his resolve: he was spending his own money, and he was determined to win.
Read the rest of this entry »
Read the rest of this entry »
Alan Hanlon and Andy Body rarely entertain at home. They prefer socializing at the Ritz-Carlton or La Société, and reserve invitations to their 1,800-square-foot Rosedale condo for the closest of friends—who are given an unforgettable lesson in gracious living. Now retired, Body spent his career as a choreographer and as a television director with the CBC. Hanlon worked for Rothmans, building its corporate art collection and organizing travelling exhibits for galleries like the AGO. The two of them have mixed and mingled with some of the most influential talents and talked-about people of the 20th century—Andy Warhol, Pierre Trudeau, Liza Minnelli—while travelling the world. Their home is an intensely personal reflection of their 51 years together. They can effortlessly recall the backstory of every painting, rug or chair. They’re both around 80, but the tales they tell make them seem like mischievous teenagers. Standing in front of a small etching, Body lowers his voice to a whisper. “I almost never show this to people. They think it’s just a sketch. They say, ‘Nice drawing.’ ” Turns out it’s a Rembrandt.
We’re fairly sure that having a piano quartet playing in the living room is a normal after-supper digestive for many Rosedale households. Having Gemini award-winner Nicholas Campbell read a monologue from the War of the Worlds, is likely more of a rarity. That experience, however, was part of the fifth annual Art of Time Ensemble Salon this past Wednesday night. Held at a private mansion (the kind with a lion-shaped door knocker and a tennis court-sized kitchen), the fundraiser for the venerable music ensemble drew creative types (painter Rundi Phelan, actor and Paul Gross sweetheart Martha Burns, director Daniel Brooks), philanthropists (Jim Fleck, CAMH chair Ana Lopes, Donald and Gretchen Ross) and the generally fabulous (James Stewart, the mathematician/text book writer who built possibly the most opulent residence in Toronto).
(Image: screenshot from the iTunes store)
Toronto has yet another new smart phone app to help stranded urbanites find a ride. Tap’n Ride, the brainchild of Rosedale Livery’s current president, Craig McCutcheon, allows users to order either a limo or a regular-fare city taxi from their phone or web browser. (Since apps like Winston and Uber already allow those with significant expendable funds to order up luxury vehicles, we’re betting that Tap’n Ride’s taxi function will get the most play.) The app is free, and unlike Beck Taxi’s iPhone app, it’s peer-to-peer, meaning it eliminates the need for a call centre and dispatch. Users confirm their pick-up address directly with the driver by text and keep tabs on where the car is while they’re waiting (approximately 10 minutes). At the end of the ride, it’s charged to the on-file credit card registered during the initial sign-up. [Tap’n Ride]
ADDRESS: 211 Glen Road
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Rosedale–Moore Park
AGENTS: Christian Vermast, Fran Bennett and Paul Maranger, Sotheby’s International Realty Canada
PRICE: $2,350,000
THE PLACE: A modern four-bedroom house at the northern tip of Rosedale, near the walking trails of Chorley Park and down the street from Summerhill Market.
Read the rest of this entry »
(Image: ashleymadison.com)
Ashleymadison.com, the “infidelity dating site” (and, it would seem, Centreville zoo fan) has revealed that, in Toronto, the Beaches, Forest Hill and High Park have the most people looking for a little extramarital action. (All three are blue chip real estate neighbourhoods: coincidence?) According to data compiled from the adultery-enabling website’s 400,000 GTA users, Rosedale, Etobicoke, Downtown, North York, Midtown, Leaside and Scarborough round out the neighbourhoods with the most cheaters. Other tidbits: Leaside members had the most affair partners, while Etobicoke had the fewest, and Scarborough members had the most overall encounters. We’ll bet that, right now, someone in the Beaches is snooping through their spouse’s computer history.
Welcome to The Goods’ brand spankin’ new street style segment, where we ditch hackneyed questions like “How would you describe your style?” and infuriatingly meaningless answers like “rockabilly-meets-schoolmarm-meets-zoologist-chic.” Instead, every second Friday, we’ll be deconstructing the stereotypes that have come to characterize a Toronto neighbourhood, shooting subjects in the urban wild to determine whether the prevailing style myths are actually bona fide truths. This week, we look at the women of Rosedale, who have traditionally been viewed as the Dowager Countesses of Toronto—complete with entitled, upturned chins, Whole Foods status totes, “it” handbags, tennis skirts and a variety of Ugg-like footwear (when they just can’t bear to wear their Louboutins). But is the Rosedale woman the status-hungry, label-wearing matron she’s presumed to be? The truth is so much more interesting than that.
ADDRESS: 16 Inglewood Drive
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Rosedale–Moore Park
AGENT: Kara Reed, Chestnut Park Real Estate
PRICE: $1,679,000
THE PLACE: Alan Tregebov of AJT Architects overhauled this large house, which was originally built in an Arts and Crafts style. Tregebov usually works on corporate projects, but the persistent homeowners persuaded him to take on this residential challenge.
Read the rest of this entry »
In her first year on city council, Kristyn Wong-Tam hogged the spotlight with proposals to ban shark fin soup, save bike lanes and found a municipal bank. She’s a charismatic lesbian immigrant art lover who once lived on the street—the exact opposite of our mayor in every way
(Image: Naomi Harris)
The first time Kristyn Wong-Tam clashed with Rob Ford, she lay down on the carpet outside his office in protest. It was March 2008, and Ford was a councillor from Etobicoke, an outspoken character on the fringes of city politics with a talent for alienating his colleagues. Earlier that month, Ford had famously delivered a rambling speech in support of the economic advantages of holiday shopping hours that could have been cribbed from a 19th-century pamphlet about the Yellow Peril. “Those Oriental people work like dogs. They work their hearts out. They are workers non-stop. They sleep beside their machines,” Ford said on the floor of council, punching the air with his fist for emphasis. “I’m telling you, the Oriental people, they’re slowly taking over.”
That last phrase rankled Wong-Tam. At the time, the 36-year-old Chinese-Canadian was a successful realtor with no ambitions to become a city councillor, a job she saw as demanding far too much time for too little compensation. She did, however, have a long history of rabble-rousing—for gay rights, for women’s equality, for immigrants’ rights—and she believed that Ford’s comment was a xenophobic stereotype that needed to be corrected. She decided to ask for an apology.
After her emails and phone calls went unanswered, Wong-Tam brought a group of around 20 Asian protesters down to city hall. Showing a talent for media-friendly political theatre, they walked down to the press gallery wearing white dress shirts and ties, what Wong-Tam called the “Asian office uniform,” and announced they were looking for Councillor Ford. “Essentially, we’re a group of people who are working very hard,” Wong-Tam quipped, walking to Ford’s office as members of the press trailed behind her. When they found that Ford wasn’t in the building, the group brought out various contraptions—blenders, sewing machines, toasters—and lay down to sleep beside them. Cameras flashed. The video ran on loop on CP24 all afternoon.
Read the rest of this entry »
In the 1990s, Joe Gonda and Christine Turner lived in a 6,000-square-foot Rosedale home with five children—four from Turner’s first marriage, one from Gonda’s. When the kids headed off to university, the couple downsized to a 3,500-square-foot house nearby. But that soon felt too big as well. “There were empty bedrooms, and we never went to the third floor other than to look for the cat,” Turner says. Read the rest of this entry »
Advertisement
© 2013. All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part strictly prohibited. Toronto Life is a registered trademark of Toronto Life Publishing Company Limited
½ 
