Third Government House
Four years after the fire at Elmsley House, the firm of Gundry and Langley of Toronto was commissioned to design a new Government House on the same site.
In 1868, constructed began on a new Government House, designed in the Second Empire style by architect Henry Langley. A three-storey red brick home, trimmed with Ohio cut stone, the building featured a tower, steeply sloped mansard roofs and dormer windows, with the main entrance and carriage porch facing Simcoe Street. Both the drawing room on the first floor and the state bedroom on the second floor faced Lake Ontario over a large landscaped garden. Completed in 1870, the house cost CAD 105,000, and its first resident was John Beverley Robinson.
By the 20th century, the development of railways and industrial uses nearby prompted the provincial government to seek a more appropriate location for its vice-regal residence, as it had done more than a century before. The third Government House was torn down in 1912 and the land was sold to the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Read more about this topic: Government House (Ontario)
Famous quotes containing the words government and/or house:
“Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“The glance is natural magic. The mysterious communication established across a house between two entire strangers, moves all the springs of wonder. The communication by the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. It is the bodily symbol of identity with nature. We look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)