Hospitality & Leisure

What started as a hops farm in 2009, evolved eight years later into the GoodLot Farmstead Brewing Co., and with that came the need to adapt some of the existing barn buildings. With sustainability at the forefront, ERA led the renovation of one of the barns on the 28-acre farmstead property, converting the vacant building...

Underneath layers of siding, on what appeared as a forgotten agricultural outbuilding, hid a 150-year-old log cabin. ERA was hired to assess the viability of restoring the existing structure and reimagine it into a private artist studio hideaway nestled into a rustic landscape estate. To better understand the heritage of the site and the structure...

The Rand Estate in Niagara-on-the-Lake, known as “Randwood”, is a treasure among Canada’s historic estates. Some 50 acres large at its height, it was the summer home of the Rand family over multiple generations between 1910 and 2016. The estate holds a vital place in the community’s history and identity, and its magnificent landscape is...

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...

Completed in 1903, the original King Edward Hotel was Toronto’s first ‘palace hotel’. It was built at the start of the Edwardian age, which brought opulence and exuberance to the design language at the turn of the century. The hotel’s Crystal Ballroom opened on the 17th floor atop the 1922 tower addition, to great public...

Built between 1906-1912, Silver Birches is a well-loved landmark on the remote north shore of Mackinac Island in Michigan. The Lodge is a rare example of an Adirondack-style Arts & Crafts log hotel and is included on the State Register of Historic Sites. After withstanding a century of extreme Lake Huron weather, Silver Birches and its...

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...

Toronto’s King Edward Hotel (“The King Eddy”) opened in May 1903 as the city’s first “palace hotel” to rival hotels in New York and London and boasted “absolutely fireproof” construction. Two notable architects, American Henry Ives Cobb and Toronto’s E.J. Lennox, were responsible for the design of the original 8-storey hotel building, which features a...

The Drake Devonshire Inn is located in the pastoral Prince Edward County town of Wellington, Ontario. ERA was engaged as architect of record, collaborating with the Drake Hotel and interior designer John Tong of +tongtong inc. to refurbish the century-old Devonshire Inn, integrate it into the landscape, and take advantage of the striking views to Lake...

In April 2013, the Gladstone Hotel held the first annual Grow Op: Exploring landscape and place, an event curated by landscape architect Victoria Taylor, OALA. Representing the Friends of Allan Gardens, a team from ERA Architects contributed an installation called “Hoarding Suggestions.” The exhibit used materials from the City of Toronto Archives to raise visitors’...

The ‘Culture of Outports‘ project proposes that an understanding of the unique history and character of outport communities is essential in order to successfully plan and manage their future evolution, post fisheries. There are plenty of examples throughout the province to suggest that communities are in search of inventive ways to invent new industries and...

The Stanley Barracks is the sole remaining structure of the New Fort at York erected in 1841 by the British Army. The ‘New Fort’ was built to replace ‘Fort York’ as the primary Garrison in the Town of York. The Fort buildings were arranged around a central parade square within the grounds of today’s Canadian National...