Home of the Week, 75 McGee St, Toronto. Former ballerina Caroline Richardson has retrofitted her fourplex with tile flooring, vintage sinks and custom kitchen cabinetry.Photos by Jo Dickins
The listing
75 McGee St., Toronto
Asking price: $1.2-million
Taxes: $4,918.10 (2011)
Private Sale: Contact 75mcgee@live.ca, by appointment only
The back story
In 2002, while winding down her highly successful career as a ballerina with Canada's largest classical dance troupe, Caroline Richardson suffered the loss of her beloved maternal grandfather. He had always worried about her. As a dancer, one of the worst paid professions in the arts in Canada according to government statistics, Ms. Richardson says she was earning a salary of around $380 a week, barely enough to subsist on. Her grandfather found that economic fact hard to bear. When he died, he left her a small inheritance with which to buy her first home: "That had been his lifelong wish for me," she says. At the time, the willowy, raven-haired dancer was renting a flat in this property, located near Queen and Broadview in Toronto's vibrant Leslieville neighbourhood. Built in 1891, presumably as a single-family farmhouse, the building had been converted into a legal fourplex in the 1980s. She loved her apartment as it was located close to Bonjour Brioche, her favourite café. When she found out the owners of her building were contemplating selling, she immediately made them offer, purchasing the property in 2002 for $370,000. "That is how I became a landlord and ended up learning a lot," says the 44-year-old Aspen native who trained at New York's acclaimed Juilliard School and Toronto's National Ballet School before joining the affiliated National Ballet in 1985 under the inspired direction of the late Erik Bruhn. Today, she is an award-winning choreographer who also creates film, music and photography, samples of which are on her website, www.outofrangeimages.com. "I've had it for 10 years now, and it's time to move on," Ms. Richardson says. "I'm going back to what I left behind in order to dance – a life in the mountains and an off-the-grid cabin. I'm moving back to Colorado."
What's new
Used to moving gracefully on pointe shoes, Ms. Richardson is now adept at expressing herself as powerfully with a hammer. Since becoming the owner of 75 McGee in 2002, she has learned to do many of the repairs herself, sometimes working in tandem with her boyfriend, construction specialist David Allee, also from Colorado. Spending more than $150,000 in upgrades, she waterproofed the structure and re-poured the foundations. She retrofitted all four units and laid down tile on the floor. "I worked with this Italian, an experienced tile man, and he kept saying to me, 'You good! You work hard!,' " recalls Ms. Richardson, knowing her ballerina training is what has made her so tough as well as resilient. Since owning 75 McGee she also became a gardener, painstakingly grooming the soil and rolling up the original flagstones by hand. On the interior, she honed her skills as a decorator, outfitting the units with vintage sinks and reclaimed barn board to create custom kitchen cabinetry. "I wanted the house to come back to itself," she explains.
Best feature
At the back of the fourplex is an old coach house that Ms. Richardson has outfitted with a legal wood-burning stove. She calls it the shack, but that's down playing its charm as an artist's retreat in the city. This is where the multi-talented dancer/artist conceives her choreography and plans her photography shows, that latest of which took place at the Schilling Studio Gallery in Telluride. The kicker? It's got a Juliet balcony which is just perfect for a dancer whose favourite ballet is Romeo and Juliet. "This is my artist's sanctuary," she says. "It's a place to disappear into, and create."