The search for yellow-brick modernism in North Rosedale

When the fictional (m)ad man Don Draper moved from his shabby, postdivorce bachelor pad in New York's Greenwich Village to set up home with his new Quebec-born bride, he chose one of the ubiquitous "white brick" high-rise apartment towers on the Upper East Side.

As sleek and stylish as a mohair suit, most of the white-glazed brick buildings were designed by the father-and-son team of Sylvan and Robert Bien. In a New York Times piece published in 2000, the younger Mr. Bien, then 77, defended his use of the simple material while dismissing the neo-classical work of 21st-century architects, such as Robert A.M. Stern, as "too old-fashioned."

"It's all tacked up with meaningless details."

Had Mr. Bien been working in the Toronto of the 1950s and early 60s, his material of choice would most likely have been yellow brick, and his tony neighbourhood South Rosedale.

Such buildings were dubbed "yellow brick intrusions" in an angry letter to The's Globe editor in March, 1955. In 2015, I drove every street within the Heritage Conservation District's boundaries to count them between the ornate mansions – 19 total with over 50 per cent clad in yellow brick. I explained that their proliferation was a result of a combination of factors, including relaxed city bylaws owing to the postwar housing shortage, and a new generation of Rosedale residents unwilling or unable to maintain huge properties.

And ever since then, I've been itching to set my clicker to zero and drive the twisty streets of North Rosedale.

While North Rosedale became an HCD just one year after its southern neighbour did in 2003, the majority of its housing stock is newer; while a number of South Rosedale dwellings date as far back as the 1860s, North Rosedale "would not see any significant building … until the 20th century" and the "building of Glen Road bridge in 1881 and the completion of ravine roads," according to the Heritage Conservation District Plan prepared by ERA Architects in June, 2004. It was, the report continues, a "secluded plateau" bordered on three sides by "ravines still in their natural state."

In South Rosedale, ravines had played a major role in allowing postwar developers to circumvent the 35-foot height maximum by sinking several storeys below grade, so I began my journey with high hopes I'd find a similar situation here.

I had cheekily described the boundaries of South Rosedale as that of a "limp sock" (and had started at the big toe) in 2015. So as I examined the boundaries of North Rosedale – the CPR tracks to the north, Mt. Pleasant Road to the west, the Don Valley and Moore Park ravines to the east and the Park Drive Reservation Lands to the south – I couldn't help but picture a pair of, well, tighty whities.

With that in mind and with trustee navigator/wife Shauntelle in the passenger seat, we entered at the upper left thigh, Roxborough Drive, and began our search. Within minutes, we were threading our way through Roxborough's confusing loops and intersections with Edgar Avenue, Binscarth Road and Whitney Avenue. These streets were modelled, partly at least, on those found in Frederick Law Olmsted's Riverside, Ill., which eschewed right angles for "gracefully curved lines" that suggest "leisure, contemplativeness and happy tranquility."

We were not happy or tranquil, however: a quarter of the neighbourhood combed and not one modern apartment building. As we neared Chorley Park and talk turned to the "Bayview Ghost" (that 1959 shell of an apartment building just a few kilometres away that sat unfinished until it was demolished in 1981), we assumed our luck would change. Surely, an opportunistic developer had backed a small, yellow brick apartment building onto the park 60 years ago?

No dice.

Driving along the bending Astley Avenue, which takes its shape from nearby Mud Creek, our hopes were raised when we spotted a long, flat-roofed building, but it turned out to be a private, art-deco home.

The linear streets of St. Andrews Gardens, Douglas Drive and Whitehall Road proved just as fruitless. "'So many rooms to clean' is what my mother would say," Shauntelle muttered as she peered out of the salt-stained window at the big, square homes.

Just as we were ready to throw in the towel at the Fruit-of-the-Loom's waistband, a glimmer of hope: the yellowish-grey brick of the "Rosedale Garden Apartments" at 468 and 470 Summerhill Ave., and their nameless, red brick neighbour at No. 464. Finding parking near bustling Summerhill Market was a challenge, but soon I was bounding over to inspect the trio. Based on a number of wore-away patches, my guess is that Nos. 468 and 470 were also red brick when built, but at some point had endured a paint job. A search through The Globe's archives showed a mortgage for all three properties was taken out in 1952, one building was sold through auction in 1954, and the first time a unit was advertised for rent (a two-bedroom in a "modern" building for $115 a month) was June, 1955.

So, why only three buildings when South Rosedale's count is 19? My guess is isolation. North Rosedale was further from Bloor Street shopping and the Yonge subway line, and, in addition, only a few roads penetrated its vegetal moat. Even the main one, Mount Pleasant Road, had been built for "fast traffic" according to the ERA report, and "one could easily drive past two of the four entry points to North Rosedale without realizing it."

This, the authors finish, "served to further segregate North Rosedale from the expanding city." Little action, then, for the Don Drapers of Toronto.