Accommodation, refreshment, and stagecoach stop.

Details of Site Location: East side of Yonge Street north of Bloor Street and south of Davenport Road.

Boundary History: The inn occupied approximately two acres, including out¬buildings and yard.

Current Use of Property: The Toronto Reference Library.

Historical Description: Loyalist George Playter had been granted Farm Lot 20 in the Second Concession from the Bay, and its 200 acres ran along the north side of Bloor to the Don River. Daniel Tiers had arrived in York in 1799 with the Berczy Settlers; after their trial for survival in building Yonge Street north from Eglinton Avenue, these settlers went off to find their way in other occupations. Tiers found work in a hotel in the town and soon prospered to the point where he was ready to go into business for himself. He purchased a block of land from Playter that fronted on the line that would become Yonge Street. At this time, it was little more than a surveyor’s line marking a route that came to be called “the Road to Yonge Street” or “the Road to Penetanguishene.” But everyone knew that it would become an important route. Tiers recognized the importance of the heavily travelled route just to the north, Davenport, by which travellers came and went between the docks at the shoreline and their lots throughout York and adjoining counties. Tiers built an inn to serve this traffic, including those travelling on the Playter stage-coach. Constructed in 1808, the inn was huge for its time, and is the first building known to have been built in the community that would grow up around it as Yorkville. On Yonge, it had 100 feet of frontage, the usual large ballroom on the second floor, a bar and dining room on the main floor. More than the unusual building itself is the important history contained. The village grew up and became administratively organized within the hotel; the first plan for the layout of the village was made here by Reeve James Dobson and the Council; the first plans were laid out for developing Potter’s Field Cemetery; rebel meetings were held here for the 1837 Rebellion; and many more historic moments belong to the Red Lion. Tiers went on to entrepreneurial ventures elsewhere, and a series of successors followed him as innkeeper. The inn closed in 1892, nine years after Yorkville was annexed. Almost every writer about Yorkville, about Yonge Street, about Bloor Street, all record the Red Lion and its important functions.

Relative Importance: The Red Lion is an early inn and tavern of first-rank importance to the history of the city.

Planning Implications: A plaque with a picture of the inn should be mounted on the exterior wall of the Toronto Reference Library.

Reference Sources:  Maps: Walton’s 1837, Browne’s 1846, Rowsell’s 1850/51; John Ross Robertson, Landmarks of Toronto.

Acknowledgements: Community History Project.