History
The first house constructed on the site was built in 1818 by Dr. William Warren Baldwin. He named his 200-acre (0.81 km2) property and estate Spadina, which derived from the native word espadinong, which translates as "hill" or "sudden rise of land". Baldwin himself designed the two storey wood frame house. The house burnt down in 1835, and owing to the three mile (5 km) trek from the estate into York, he moved to a house on Front Street. He built a smaller country estate on the property in 1836.
The property was acquired by James Austin in 1866, founder of The Dominion Bank and Consumers Gas. By this time, parts of the property had been sold off, and what Austin purchased covered 80 acres (320,000 m2). In the nineteenth and early twentieth century the area was the wealthiest in Toronto, with a number of Toronto's leading families having large estates. Austin subdivided and sold off the land west of Spadina Road in 1889, which amounted to 40 acres (160,000 m2). In 1892, James Austin turned over the house, and 20 acres (81,000 m2) of the property to his son, Albert William Austin. Albert Austin expanded the house in several renovations, including the addition of a third floor in 1912. He sold much of the property to the City of Toronto in 1913 for the construction of the St. Clair Reservoir. Albert Austin died in 1933.
The last member of the family to live in the house was Anna Kathleen Thompson, a daughter of Albert Austin, who lived there from 1942 until 1982. The aged house had outdated wiring and needed a thorough overhaul, that would have been far more expensive than rebuilding it. While the house could have been sold to private interests such as the Keg Restaurant, the family decided instead to donate the house and all of its furnishings to the city. In 1984 it opened as a museum, jointly owned by the city and the Ontario Heritage Foundation and operated by the City of Toronto. The museum is especially known for its gardens.
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Spadina museum '07, Spadina Road in Toronto, Canada
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Billiard room in Spadina museum, Spadina Road in Toronto, Canada
Read more about this topic: Spadina House
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