Commercial & Retail

The site, once owned by the City of Toronto, operated as a public market from 1837 to around 1900. The Water Works Buildings were designed in the Art Deco style by City Architect, J. J. Woolnough and completed in 1933. The construction project was part of a plan supported by federal, provincial, and municipal governments...

Following the Great Fire of 1904, the intersection of King and Yonge streets became the site of Toronto’s first modern skyscraper ensemble – a collection of buildings which inalterably changed the skyline and image of the city.  With the CPR building (south-east corner) completed 1913, and the Dominion Building (south-west corner) completed 1914, the Royal...

The Paradise Theatre is a surviving example of Toronto’s hallmark 20th-century theatres, complete with distinct Art Deco styling specific to the World War II era, with abstracted classical and geometrical elements. Opened in 1937, the Paradise Theatre was designed by Benjamin Brown, one of the earliest Jewish architects in Toronto. Situated prominently between Dovercourt and...

Historic farmstead properties are a common sight throughout small, rural Ontario. The large acreage lots often contain a combination of built structures and landscape features, including the brick farmhouse, the wood-framed barn, outbuildings, silos and mature trees. In 2017, ERA was approached by Cambium Farms to think through how their 1873 barn, currently operating as...

Ottawa’s Booth Street Complex — bordered by Booth, Norman, Rochester, and Orangeville streets in Little Italy — was acquired in 2012 by Canada Lands Company from the federal government. The conditions of the transfer required that best efforts be made to conserve the heritage character of the former federal heritage buildings, and that the spirit...

Built in 1858, Captain G.E. Morden House is an example of an original residential estate built during the time of settlement in the Town of Oakville. The building’s historical value is rooted in its past as the home to Oakville’s Morden family from 1900-1947. Captain George Handy Morden owned and operated several Lake Schooners and...

The Gooderham Mansion is a landmark building on the corner of Sherbourne and Selby Streets in Toronto’s St. Jamestown neighbourhood. Now a mixed-use space, the top two floors of the building are used as amenity space for The Selby, a purpose-built rental tower developed by Tricon Capital. The ground and basement floors house a restaurant...

The Fashion House Condo is located at 570 King Street West in a neighbourhood formerly characterized by factories including small retail shops, a brewer, tailor, railway switcher and carter. The project incorporates aspects of adaptive reuse conjoined with new construction: a designated heritage building that formerly housed the Toronto Silver Plate Building and new infill with...

The Consumer’s Gas building was designed by architect Charles Dolphin and was completed in 1931 as a retail showroom and demonstration kitchen for gas appliances. Its façade incorporates the use of uncommon materials, such as Tyndall stone from Manitoba and cast aluminum. The latter is used in sculptural features including relief panels on both street-facing...

The Broadview Hotel is a landmark building at the northwest corner of Queen and Broadview in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourghood. It functioned as a community hub for businesses, clubs, and athletics, as well as a site for public meetings. The building was completed in 1891-92 for oilman and soap maker Archibald Dingman in the Romanesque Revival...

Honest Ed’s and Mirvish Village have been fixtures of Toronto’s Bloor and Bathurst neighbourhood for more than 60 years. The famed discount retailer, and public realm created by Markham Street’s adaptive reuse as a cultural and commercial enclave in the 1960s, evolved through the influence of the Mirvish Family and neighbourhood communities, including the Afro-Caribbean...

The St. Lawrence Market North Building is the sixth establishment in what has been a series of market buildings; their construction spans nearly two hundred years, making this site is one of Toronto’s more historically significant. It is both the first official market and seat of civic government. ERA Architects is engaged as heritage architect...