Bishop John Strachan's Palace
While
the brick Georgian Palladian villa, home of the Reverend Doctor John
Strachan,
Toronto's first Anglican bishop, has been described as a palace, it
was his private
property, not the church’s. and no other Anglican bishops lived
there. Located on the
north side of Front Street West, west of York Street, the property was
bounded on its
other sides by Simcoe and Wellington Streets.
When Strachan’s
rented home burned to the ground in February of 1817,
Lieutenant-Governor Gore ordered that its furniture be saved. Strachan
then decided he
would build an elegant brick house. It was a Georgian Palladian villa
with three sets of
windows on each side of the double front door. The door had a semicircular
fanlight and
the windows were shuttered. Above the front door, in the gable, was another
semicircular
window. A porch streached across the front of the house with a coverd
part at the door.
The large entrance hall was flanked by a drawing room and a dining room.
The house
was rumoured to have cost £4,500. He used the furniture from the
old house until he was
able to purchase Gore's furniture when the latter left York. Strachan
was appointed
Bishop of Toronto in 1839. He was instrumental in the founding of both
The University of Toronto
and Trinity University.
In 1832. Strachan
gave the east half of his property to his son-in-law and in the 1840s,
the
northern part of the property was divided into lots. Strachan died on
November 1, 1867. Later, the house was purchased by Sir John Carling.
It was demolished in 1890. Information from "A Glimpse of Toronto's
History," MPLS#218.
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