Asking price: $849,900
Taxes: $3,248.00 (2015)
Lot size: 3/4 acre
Agent: Ian Bowen (Royal LePage ProAlliance Realty)
The back story
In 1843, Alfred Harris arrived in Upper Canada from Cornwall, England with the notion of opening a hotel in a land of burgeoning opportunities. His search for a location led him to the western end of Rice Lake, where he built a two-storey lodge and named it the Harris Inn. The fledgling village of Gores Landing was named after Irishman Thomas Gore, who settled in the area around the same time.
When Mr. Harris’s wife and sons joined him two years later, they added a couple of wings to the building and hung a new sign establishing the expanding family business as the Coach and Horses Hotel.
In Mr. Harris’s day, Muskoka was not yet established as a popular tourist destination and Rice Lake was only 15 kilometres from the east-west highway that ran to Montreal.
According to the authors of Gore’s Landing and the Rice Lake Plains, the business flourished and, in 1854, Mr. Harris built an imposing family home set high on a hill, next to the hotel. The White House, as the local landmark is still known, was built in classical revival style, with tiers of wraparound verandas providing views over the lake.
Current owners Ken and Judy Ross say the house also served as a long-term residence for retired British men living on family allowances or pensions. The men mainly occupied the upper level rooms, which each had a set of French doors opening to the balcony.
The lowest level housed the kitchen, dining room and tavern, Mr. Ross explains.
Over the years, Mr. Harris amassed large holdings of land in and around Rice Lake – mostly as a result of debts racked up in the tavern. Records show that he owned Black Island, Sheep Island, Sugar Island and half of Cow Island, as well as about 500 acres on the opposite shore of the lake.
“A lot of the land he acquired was literally in drinking debts run up in the hotel,” Mr. Ross says.
Mr Harris’s original hotel was destroyed by fire, rebuilt, and consumed by fire again. The White House is the only one of the family’s empire still standing.
In the dining room, Mr. Ross shows off a collection of vintage post cards showing what the resort looked like in the tourist era.
He also has a display of souvenir pink teacups and decorative plates that commemorate the White House. The pieces were made in Germany and likely sold to visitors, Mr. Ross says. Descendants of the Harris family have passed them along when they’ve returned to see the old house over the years.
The house stayed in the original family for 90 years, then changed hands a few times before the Ross family took over for 26 years.
The house today
Mr. Ross was a Toronto-based dealer in antique furniture in 1989 when some of his cronies urged him to look at the White House, which was listed for sale in the hamlet of Gores Landing.
Mr. Ross recalls stepping over the threshold into the living room and seeing the view through the French doors to a woodland full of black locust trees. He looked in the other direction through a matching set of dining room doors and saw the deep blue of Rice Lake.
“I fell in love with it and absolutely had to buy it.”
The couple decided to slowly work on restoring the dilapidated old house. At first it wasn’t even safe to walk on the verandas, Ms. Ross recalls.
For a long time, Mr. Ross says, he wondered why the Harris family had decided to build an airy, open house that seemed more typical of the tropics than small-town, 19th century Ontario.
His research revealed the builder was an English relative of the Harris family named Richard Harry. Before arriving in Canada, Mr. Harry had built houses on Gibraltar, which sits in a sub-tropical climate at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. Mr. Ross figures that the Gibraltar influence shows up in the villa-style house set on a hill above the water.
“It’s a tropical pattern,” Mr. Ross says. “It seems like a house that the British might have built in a warm climate.”
Mr. and Ms. Ross and their three young boys used the house as an all-season country home for 15 years while Mr. Ross slowly worked on the restoration. In 2004 they left Toronto and moved to Gores Landing full-time while Mr. Ross continued the refurbishment.
“There’s a vast difference between renovated and restored,” says real estate agent Ian Bowen of Royal LePage Pro Alliance Realty of Cobourg, Ont., pointing out Mr. Ross’s effort to preserve the original elements whenever possible.
Today the White House is designated as a heritage house by the Province of Ontario, Mr. Ross says.
Guests who arrive at the front door enter a front hall with a grand staircase curving to the second floor. A palladian window lights the stairwell at the rear.
The house has a centre-hall plan with large principal rooms and high ceilings. Ten sets of French doors open to the balconies on the two upper levels. There are five bedrooms and three bathrooms.
“I think the layout of this house is spectacular,” Mr. Ross says.
The house has 2,640 square feet of living space on the upper levels and additional above-ground space on the lower level because of the sloping lot. Today the family uses the lower level for studio space and a playroom for the grandchildren.
“The dance floor is down there too – that’s where the tavern was,” Ms. Ross says.
The house’s two chimneys serve six open-hearth fireplaces.
The wide-plank floors are original, as is 90 per cent of the glass in the windows.
Mr. Ross gradually repaired broken plaster, added insulation and reinforced the foundation, chimneys and fireplaces.
“Those are things that are now hidden from view but are done to preserve the building,” he says. “If somebody looks after it, it’s going to be around for another 150 years.”
The only concession to modernity, Mr. Ross says, is the kitchen. In that room, cherry wood cabinets and an island are topped by granite.
On the exterior, acrylic storm windows held in place by magnets seal the original windows without changing their appearance.
Upstairs there are five bedrooms – all with doors opening to the wraparound veranda.
Throughout the house, Mr. Ross displays his own paintings and those he has collected over the years. His father was an artist, and A.Y. Jackson, a founding member of the Group of Seven, was a close family friend – as well as Mr. Ross’s godfather.
“It’s been the great pleasure of my life – art in all its forms,” Mr. Ross says. “I’d love to see an artist in this house.”
Mr. Ross set up his own studio in the house and he thinks the house offers ideal space for a studio or art gallery. The setting overlooking Rice Lake and surrounded by the rolling Northumberland Hills also provides lots of inspiration, he adds.
As it was in Mr. Harris’s day, Rice Lake is known for an abundance of fish and wildlife.
“The lake is teeming with fish,” Mr. Ross says.
The couple at one time kept a boat at one of the marinas in Gores Landing and often took the boys out for excursions along the Trent-Severn Waterway. Summer activities on the water include tubing and water skiing.
In the winter, the lake is the setting for snowmobiling, ice fishing and skating.
“We could watch our kids skating and playing hockey on the lake,” Ms. Ross says from the vantage point of the balcony. “They had wonderful toboggan runs right out the door.”
Mr. Ross says the home’s perch on the Oak Ridges Moraine creates interesting land forms.
Wildlife around the lake includes turtles, fish, beavers, otters, osprey, blue herons and loons.
Outside, the sloping landscape is a mix of lawns and garden and long-lived trees – including black walnut and black locust. Throughout Ontario, Mr. Ross says, stands of black locusts are a sign of early settlement. The Europeans brought them over and planted them around their dwellings, Mr. Ross explains, and a little bit of exploring will often reveal the foundations of an old homestead.
Mr. and Ms. Ross often walk a few metres up the hill to a charming country church.
The White House is zoned for commercial use. In addition to a grand single-family home, Mr. Bowen envisions the house as a bed and breakfast inn, a tea room or an art gallery. Towns and cities within an easy drive include Cobourg, Port Hope, Peterborough and Oshawa.
The best feature
All three levels have walkouts to the outdoors. From the top balcony, the view extends 10 or 12 kilometres up the lake.
Because of the building’s setting, mosquitoes rarely appear, Mr. Ross says, so the family and their guests have spent many sultry summer evenings sitting on the verandas.
Mr. and Ms. Ross hope that new owners will cherish the home’s storied past. Ms. Ross would love to see another family raise their kids there.
“It deserves to be appreciated – it’s an important part of history,” Mr. Ross says.