How Toronto's Dinosaur Homes Avoid Extinction

In 1902, Joseph West built a big house for his family on Homewood Avenue in Toronto. It was a model block back then, judging by city records — the kind of low-density development early Torontonians thought proper. It was a working-class block—West manufactured safes, and his neighbors included a coachman and a journalist—and each family had their own house and a little plot of land. No one in the area kept any hogs, sheep, cattle, or horses, but the census still bothered to ask if they did.

Today, Homewood Avenue is smack in the downtown of an enormous city, walking distance to transit and the other amenities of dense, urban living. Oddly, the house West built is still there, too, with a front yard, a back yard, a driveway, and a little fence. It’s one of roughly 50,000 detached, single-family-style dwellings in urban Toronto, according to an analysis by the City Planning Division. Amidst a city in a housing crisis, they’re throwbacks to another era, built when there was room to spare.