Morrow Avenue has been transformed over the last 15 years from the gritty industrial street it was, to a series of redefined buildings. These buildings now house an art gallery of much merit, a loft development and a series of other thought-based businesses types. This avenue is really worth a stroll, particularly on Sundays when it’s quiet and the weekday business bustle is absent.

The Chambers Courtyard Lofts at 30 Morrow Avenue is a hidden gem – a converted industrial building on one of the coolest Junction-area streets. A two-storey, nine-unit boutique loft conversion with an exterior of brick and stone. Situated on a large private landscaped courtyard at the end of Morrow Avenue, overlooking the West Toronto Railpath. Large, expensive, private, gated. This is not your typical loft conversion! Completed around 2008, they are never for sale. When they are, expect prices close to $1 million and sizes over 2,000 square feet.

The front of the long building running along the south side of the Chambers Courtyard Lofts

Besides being home to some of the city’s most esteemed art galleries, think Olga Korper and Christopher Cutts, Morrow Avenue is nothing but hidden cool. This proper loft is indeed a secret gem located off of Dundas Street West and just steps from Roncesvalles. With it’s handsome brick exterior one can only wish a loft were for sale any time soon so as to grab it in a hurry! The whole aesthetic is bar none and reminds me why I fell in love with the loft concept way back when no one in the city was very keen on this type of living space. Retrofitted century buildings are the gold standard of hard lofts.

Only 2-storeys tall, the building’s units range in size from 1,750 to 2,154 square feet. Amenities include a private and gated landscaped courtyard. Parking is available underground.

The actual courtyard of the Chambers Courtyard Lofts, showing the various building phases

The building that looks like a bank at 2 Silver Avenue was the offices for Canadian Hanson & Van Winkle Co. Limited. They dealt in electro-plating and polishing equipment and supplies, electro-chemicals, lacquers and enamels. Their facility was across the street, with the ghost sign still remaining across the top of the buff brick building. The smaller building just to the south and almost directly across from Silver Ave. looks to be part of the same complex. I would assume that the buildings that are actually attached to 2 Silver Avenue would be part of the same company, but it is hard to know for sure.

Large open spaces with concrete floors and original brick walls in the Chambers Courtyard Lofts

I have heard that the Hanson & Van Winkle buildings across from 30 Morrow were also used as a foundry, then as a garbage repository for a mattress factory. I assume that the foundry claim comes from the fact that Hanson & Van Winkle made brass, bronze, iron and steel products. Electrical parts, castings, sheet steel, steel wire, wire rope, pig iron and structural steel products. Canada Stove and Foundry Company, for instance, used Hanson & Van Winkle dynamos and polishers to nickel plate some of their parts and products. Though I must say, I do wonder where this infamous mattress factory was, the one producing all the garbage… Many say it was the building Olga Kolper is in now, which is part of the Hanson & Van Winkle building. Probably the building was repurposed after Hanson & Van Winkle left, as a mattress factory, which was the last use before it was turned into the art gallery complex it is now, back in the mid-1980s.

About the only interior view, of only one unit of the Chambers Courtyard Lofts

The red brick building at the rear of the courtyard, in the northmost corner, used to be a coal and lumber storage facility for P. Burns & Co. Ltd. (though Patrick Burns’ main coal yard was at Front and Bathurst Streets). Directly behind it, on Golden Avenue, is the old Canadian Linen building. The Burns site caught fire in the 60s causing everyone to be evacuated from Silver Avenue – and some on Golden. The fear was that the fire might spread to Canadian Linen and reach a huge buried oil tank and explode.

The Canadian Linen building on Golden was originally the Toronto Furnace and Crematory Co. Not sure if they made equipment there, or if it was ever actually a functioning crematorium. In 1907 and 1912, their address was given as 14 Morrow Avenue, not Golden, which is interesting… But their old ads state that they make and sell hot water and hot air furnaces, and repair the same. It does not appear that they ever provided funerary services at the site.

Exposed original buff brick gives the lofts at 30 Morrow their charm

If you take note, there are at least 4 different phases to the building – from the long main building, then the corner addition, the beveled apartment-style front that everyone remember through to the red brick northern phase. Guessing that the phases closest to Silver Ave. had something to do with Hanson & Van Winkle Co., the northern red brick building belonged to Patrick Burns.

In 1924, you can see all of the buildings on maps, but for the long building running along the south side of the courtyard. It also seems like most of the 30 Morrow buildings, as well as the Hanson & Van Winkle complex across the street, were built in the previous 10 years, as not many of the structures are visible on the 1913 Goad’s map. I wish there was more, but that is about all I can dig up for the Chambers Courtyard Lofts. Still have no idea where “Chambers” came from…

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Contact Laurin Jeffrey for more information – 416-388-1960

Laurin Jeffrey is a Toronto real estate agent with Century 21 Regal Realty.
He did not write these articles, he just reproduces them here for people who
are interested in Toronto real estate. He does not work for any builders.
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