Public building.

Details of Site Location: 75 Church Street, at the northeast corner of Adelaide Street East and Church Street, with the main entrance facing Church Street.

Current Use of Property: Condominium.

Historical Description: The Mechanics’ Institute was dedicated to the concept of the education and basic dignity of the working man. F.W. Cumberland of Cumberland and Storm was the architect for this Renaissance-style building with neo-classical squareness and solidity. The central three bays on the Church Steet facade step forward to frame and emphasize the main entrance. Other details: the cornice and the parapet, raised in the centre with a broken silhouette; the variety of windows; the paired pilasters that frame one of the large music-hall windows and ornament the Adelaide Street facade; and the broken pattern of the cornice along this front. Inside there was a semi-circular lecture hall, a library, a separate reading room, and on the second floor a music hall 76’6″ feet by 56′ that had a coved ceiling 35′ high. The cornerstone was laid 17 April 1854. However, by mid 1855, when the work was almost completed, the money raised for the building ran out. The unfinished building was then rented to the Government of Canada for four years to house the post office and the Crown Lands Department. Between the rent and a government grant of $16,000, the building was completed for a cost of $49,888.19.

The Institute finally moved into it new home in 1861. Except for the music hall, the main rooms served a definite purpose in fulfilling the Institute’s educational mandate. This was the beginning of organized semi-technical education in the city when the general level of education was very low. The library very quickly became its largest asset, including thousands of volumes. On 1 July 1883 the city took over the library as the basis of the Toronto Public Library system, where it remained until 1906 when the new Carnegie Public Library opened on College Street. Until 1927 a library branch remained in the building. The following year the building was taken over by the city’s Department of Welfare. In 1948 the building was demolished for a parking lot, then a garage, and now a condominium.

Relative Importance: This building was the first large library and the site of the first organized semi-technical education in Toronto.

Planning Implications: There should be more than a simple plaque on this site.

Reference Sources: William Dendy, Lost Toronto; Eric Arthur, Toronto – No Mean City; City of Toronto Archives.