Architect turns a single-family dwelling on a wide Toronto lot into a semi-detached house

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In the classic February battle between frigid air and warming sun, the sun has won. In Toronto’s Upper Beach neighbourhood, clustered around Main and Gerrard streets, folks are out for a stroll, takeout coffees in one hand and dog leashes in the other.

As one well-dressed couple walks along Swanwick Avenue admiring the collection of fine, gabled, red brick houses, they slow down at No. 12. Clearly, something has been added to this early-20th-century home, but it’s what looks to be a second front door that has caused the mini-debate. Is this home a semi-detached? Or are the homeowners eccentric types who have a propensity for doorways?

Craig Race is happy to enlighten. A resident of the left half for less than two weeks, Mr. Race is also the architect who transformed the single-family home into a semi-detached. His new neighbours will be moving in beside him in just over two weeks.

“You have to have a good site, for sure,” says the affable Mr. Race, who did his master's degree at the University of Oregon. “A really wide lot, unusually wide for the street, so that the two lots you end up with are still in character with the neighbourhood … and then just know how to navigate the process.”

Since No. 12 was already about 40 feet wide, it was possible to create two houses. And had the well-dressed walkers been paying close attention, they would have noticed that semis already exist on the street, and, indeed, on Swanwick east of Main Street, there is a row of narrow worker’s row houses.

“The side yard setbacks didn’t change, the front and rear yard setback didn’t change,” Mr. Race continues, “we just added a third floor, essentially and simplified the shape.”

Mr. Race says “we” because, in addition to practising as Craig Race Architecture Inc., this project is the first he’s completed with his younger brother, Steve Race, an electrician, and his father, Phil Race, a real estate investor. And despite some neighbourhood opposition and long pandemic delays, the trio says they enjoyed the experience so much, they’ve decided to look for similar projects to tackle. The key, says the youngest Race, is to “make sure we [don’t] destroy a neighbourhood.”

“There was a lot of misinformation about this project,” his older brother elaborates. “People thought it was going to be an apartment building, and have eight units, so a lot of the letters of objection were [based on] crazy rumours.”

Luckily, the Race clan had the support of immediate neighbours who understood the project and built bridges to the rest of the community. And it is a community, Mr. Race says, where unscrupulous developers have erected small apartment houses next to “old stately houses,” so he certainly understands why feathers were ruffled.

“Not everyone respects the neighbourhood in the same way,” he says.

“We were very careful about the construction site,” his father adds. “Craig was very, very careful to contain the site, both visually and physically.”

So what have the Race men created? Well, other than the two front doors – now addresses 12A and 12B – a passerby might notice the thoughtful landscaping, which picks up on the neighbour’s wavy hedge pattern and continues it, or, perhaps, that a series of raised rocks stitch the two yards together. They might notice that the two new front porches are simple, elegant and understated. The most obvious things, of course, are the wings that jut from the new third storey and add a distinct fin down the building’s east edge; not only do these black beauties provide shelter to the two decks, they are, in essence, the only modernist intervention to the heritage façade. The new third storey might even be shorter, the architect says, than the peaked attic space that it replaced.

If one is lucky enough to be invited inside one side or the other, one will discover a very thoughtful floor plan. In each half (essentially mirror images of each other), the visitor steps from a small front porch into a generous dining room. From there, a galley kitchen doubles as a corridor to the rear family room. On either side of the kitchen are staircases – one to the basement, one to the second floor.

“The kitchen is where the design had to work,” Mr. Race says. “This is a kitchen and a hallway and a stair corridor, all in this 12-[foot]-by-10-[foot] space.”

The second floor is shaped like a “barbell,” Mr. Race says. Bedrooms on either end are connected by a long hallway that contains a three-piece bath, a laundry room, and the mechanical room. The third floor is a little different: Three-quarters of the space is dedicated to the principal bedroom, an ensuite with a double sink, and a generous walk-in closet; at the rear is a small bedroom that might work better as a home office.

The principal bedroom, Mr. Race says with a laugh, even sports a small coffee nook so that one’s morning cuppa won’t get cold should they choose to take it onto the deck. “My clients always ask for those things and I always tell them, you’re never going to use them, don’t waste the money. … I’d be surprised if we use this more than a couple of times a year.”

While the coffee nook might be a frill, a keen eye will soon determine that these two units are not ostentatious. They are handsome and well built, yes, but flourishes are few. That, the Races say, is by design: “This is an exercise in infill housing, not ultra luxury design,” confirms Mr. Race, who will be paying market rent for his unit. “We knew the size of the units we were creating were not going to be competing with … houses in Rosedale.”

Population projections show Toronto at more than seven million residents by 2050. To house everyone, it will take small moves such as this, a great many more laneway and garden suites, and much larger moves such as mid-rises and high-rises where they make sense.

By then, however, it’s a safe bet that no one will stop in their tracks when they spot two front doors on what was once a single-family home.

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