Spadina Museum Historic House and Gardens

Spadina Museum Historic House and Gardens at 285 Spadina Rd in Toronto, Ontario, stands on the Davenport ridge above the downtown, in a house first built in 1866 for the merchant James Austin. Austin, who founded the Toronto Dominion Bank and ran the Consumers' Gas Company, named the estate Spadina after the Ojibwe-derived word that became the name of Spadina Avenue. The house remained in the Austin family for three generations, until 1982, when the family gave it to the city to be preserved as a museum. The estate is interpreted mainly through the 1920s and 1930s, when Anna Austin and her family lived there, so interiors show the layering of Victorian architecture with early twentieth-century taste and modern conveniences such as electric lighting and a telephone. Rooms open to visitors include the drawing room, library, dining room, bedrooms, kitchen and service areas. The house and objects come largely from the family, which gives the interiors a lived-in character that few museum houses share. A Victorian-style design with a mixture of brick, a veranda and a conservatory-like sunroom characterizes the architecture. Outdoor spaces include the Edwardian-era gardens, which were restored from photographs, and a kitchen garden that is used to illustrate how households once grew their own food. Visits are usually conducted as guided tours, which allows the guides to explain how servants, the family and visitors used the different spaces, and how Toronto society changed between the Victorian and Jazz Age periods. Exhibition panels and a small collection of family artifacts supplement the tour. The City of Toronto operates the museum as one of its heritage sites, and care of the house includes conservation of textiles, furniture and the surrounding landscape. It sits a short walk from Casa Loma and the two sites together show the lifestyles of Toronto's wealthy families.