Birdhouse Media
610 Indian Rd., Toronto
Asking price: $3,399,000 (April 2022)
Previous asking price: $2,999,000 (April 2022)
Taxes: $10,472.77 (2022)
Lot Size: 50- by 77-feet
Agents: Lesli Gaynor and Parimal Gosai, Forest Hill Real Estate Inc.
The backstory
The owner of 610 Indian Rd., near Toronto’s High Park was strongly urged by her own father not to buy it in 2001. “You should walk away from this,” said Olena Kassian’s father, who offered to cover the deposit she’d already given. “I’ll give you the $50,000. It’s going to be too much work and cost you too much money.”
Ms. Kassian didn’t agree. The Victorian-era home was 3,600 square feet of living space on three levels chopped up into a triplex apartment that was showing its age when she bought it with her husband, Peter Higginson (an actor who has appeared in a number of short films and Canadian productions). It reminded her of a farmhouse she used to own with her first husband.
“And it’s a corner house, so there’s light in every direction and a view in every direction,” she said.
The light was particularly valuable to Ms. Kassians as she has spent a lifetime as an illustrator and artist. Starting with Canadian animation house Nelvana, she also worked for Owl Magazine, as an illustrator on 16 children’s books and as a hyper-realist illustrator in advertising (until Photoshop and digital camera’s cut down on the need for hand-drawn fantasies). In recent years she’s turned her hand to over-sized sketch portraits and sculpture.
Examples of her work dot the house, including wood-fibre sculptures created with Ann Bartok, her creative partner in the Barkas Gallery. One in the living room is similar to a series they did in 2015 for the Canadian hotel chain Le Germain, and which can be spotted hanging in the 120 rooms of the Toronto location. The duo’s next showing is planned to be at the Oeno Gallery on the Huff Estates Winery in Prince Edward County, Ont.
The house today
The front entrance is through double red doors the couple installed.Birdhouse Media
Ms. Kassian and Mr. Higginson’s house is at Indian Road and Glenlake Avenue, and while there is a more private side yard, the couple built their own private parkette on the front corner yard. The landscaped garden flows around the whole frontage, and a low fence (with a clever trellis that supports wisteria and other lush plantings) obscures the flagstone patio in the summer months.
There’s a garage on the Indian Road side, and two gates (made out of copper pipe by Mr. Higginson) leading up to the covered front porch. Around the side is a parking pad that could squeeze at least two more cars, and an entrance to the separate basement apartment (currently vacant).
The front entrance is through double red doors the couple installed. “In the summer they open like a book and all the air comes into the house – you have parties that go from the interior to the exterior seamlessly,” Ms. Kassian said. Inside is a tiled foyer that was split in two when the house was home to multiple apartments. Directly ahead is closets and storage that directs foot traffic either left (up the stairs) or right into the front sitting room.
The sitting room has Victorian bones: it has an arched window in a shallow bay with a connected bench seat facing the street and a wood-burning fireplace (with a bench built into the hearth to warm your toes on frozen days) on the outside wall (framed by built-in cabinets for the TV and storage). The ceilings here are 10 feet high, and the path to the back of the house runs through a large archway to a dining room. The theme of the house in decor and in style is modernist Victorian, contemporary chairs and industrial chandelier surround a simple harvest table with chunky turned-wood legs. These rooms are decorated with several types of Ms. Kassian’s art.
The kitchen is in a square room off the dining room, but is open to it through two arches one that’s a walkway and the other that works as a pass-through over the counter that wraps in an L-shape around the opening. There’s a butcher-block island in the middle of this space, and the outside wall is framed by another bench window seat beneath some colourful stained glass. The natural wood finish on the cabinetry wall (which has a gas range and a wall oven) pairs with blue backsplash tile for a simple if somewhat dated look.
Just behind the kitchen is an in-law suite where Ms. Kassian’s mother moved into after the couple had been in the house for about a decade. “That’s where my mum lived when she moved in with us before her death [in 2018]. In my family it was always understood old people don’t go to homes, and since I was the daughter in the city, I would be the one caring for my mum or my dad.” It has its own sitting room with another bay window facing the side yard (behind the garage) and a separate bedroom and bathroom with shower.
The sitting room has Victorian bones: it has an arched window in a shallow bay with a connected bench seat facing the street and a wood-burning fireplace.Birdhouse Media
Up the stairs to the second level and turning to the right through a pocket door to a den that Mr. Higginson uses as his office, a room that was initially set aside for the kids (with another bench seat under another arched window).
There’s a door here leading to a balcony above the porch, which is half the size it was 10 years ago when the original veranda and second-floor balcony covered the whole front of the house. There’s a short set of stairs that step down onto a second, larger balcony above the garage, where Mr. Higginson could be found most sunny days tanning himself a deep mahogany. “Peter likes to lie out there in the all-together, he’s a sun worshiper,” Ms. Kassian said.
There’s a spacious bedroom on this level and a large bathroom with a laundry space as well as a soaker tub and separate shower. At the back of the house is Ms. Kassian’s studio, which has windows on three sides and a vaguely trapezoidal custom run of desk and storage that surrounds a drafting table, rendering all her art supplies within reach.
In the attic are three more bedrooms and a full bathroom. The largest has a doorway to a small balcony facing Glenlake Avenue, the smallest is set up as a baby’s room and the third room has a skylight.
Best feature
The main floor of the house has always been open to a community of artistic people.Birdhouse Media
The main floor of the house has always been open to a community of artistic people, and prior to the pandemic the couple would host Groupmuse chamber music concerts with up to 50 people in attendance. “We’ll be doing it again I hope, at least once before we sell the house,” she said.
They’ve hosted theatre rehearsals, poetry readings, book launches and even had a wedding in the front garden for a neighbour who fell for the lush plantings.
“It was a very social house,” she said. “I do think houses have souls; it’s the soul of the human beings who live in them. But there’s a feeling about certain houses, and there’s a feeling in this one: it embraces people.”
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