Yonge Street building is ready for its second hundred years

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In 1922, a beautiful bouncing baby building was born at 340 Yonge St. And while it wasn’t announced in the daily papers, it did appear in the Toronto (Mights) Directory of 1922 as “Thornton-Smith Co., hose fiurngs” [sic], right between “Lanning Geo T, hat renovator” and “Laura Secord Candies” (in 1923, the more accurate “interior decr” appeared after the name), which, for a building, is much the same thing.

On hand to witness the birth, of course, were the building’s parents, Mabel Cawthra Adamson (1871-1943) and her husband, Agar Adamson (1865-1929), and, likely, the Thornton-Smith brothers, along with the designer, Irish-born and Hamilton-raised John M. Lyle (1872-1945).

Although a burbling newborn, Mr. Lyle’s skill meant the Thornton-Smith building’s three-storey face was mature and handsome, with an orderly row of five, two-storey tall windows with arched tops. As Glenn McArthur describes in A Progressive Traditionalist (Coach House Books, 2009), these and other features, such as the low-relief pilasters, “were designed to show the thinness of the walls … with few reveals and no trim.” Mr. McArthur also notes that Mr. Lyle, a long-time critic of Yonge’s “meanness” and “proliferation of false shopfronts” with “unregulated signage” felt he was finally able to “lead by example” with this very refined building.

Obviously, Ms. Cawthra Adamson was leading by example also. Ms. Adamson, a member of the prominent Cawthra family (which began with Joseph Cawthra’s immigration from Yorkshire in 1802 or 1803), studied arts and crafts design in England in 1902-03, and then co-founded the Society of Arts and Crafts in Canada in 1903. In 1906, with English brothers Ernest and Walter Thornton-Smith, she opened the first Thornton-Smith Co., at 11 King St. W., an antiques/interior design firm that specialized in arts and crafts pieces. The brothers would return to England a few years later to set up shop there, leaving Ms. Adamson at the helm in Canada.

The success of the firm meant that, by 1922, Mr. Lyle, the beaux-arts specialist, could be called upon to improve the Yonge streetscape; however, checking the city directories again, the year of Ms. Adamson’s death, 1943, also meant the death of the company, since it was no longer listed (replaced by “Allen Stores Ltd. ladies and misses ready to wear”; the Thornton-Smith Co. did continue at a different location under new owner, Robert Irvine).

Which might be just as well, since, during the postwar years, Yonge Street took on a very different flavour: in 1936, Steele Basil opened Steele’s Restaurant across the street. By 1948 and the big change in liquor laws, it would become Steele’s Tavern, where a young Gordon Lightfoot would find his footing. Steele’s and its neighbours – the Edison Hotel, the Coq d’Or and the Brown Derby – would create an even more garish face than the one despised by Mr. Lyle – one filled with tawdry, flashing neon, laughter, music and booze.

In 1966, George Rutherford and sons Jack and Ken moved their successful Toronto Camera Centre – first run out of a house at 293 Church St. – to their newly acquired building at 340 Yonge St. And, for decades, professional and amateur photographers alike would flock there, perhaps not knowing how handsome it was, since it was covered with quite a bit of signage.

In the mid-1980s, George’s grandson, J. Ken Rutherford, would take ownership and, in the 1990s, Foot Locker and a bar named Reilly’s would move in.

However, it was after Reilly’s moved out around 2008 – about the same time a half-dozen condo towers were either going up or planning to go up – that things really began to change for the building. For the next decade, Mr. Rutherford would almost single-handedly transform the Indiana limestone-clad beauty as he readied the second floor for a new tenant (the beloved Thai restaurant Salad King, which lost its home when the old Empress Hotel was condemned in 2010 after a wall fell) and change the third floor into an event space with three gorgeous skylights and the very appropriate name of Aperture Room. The name Thornton-Smith would once again grace the exterior wall.

And, taking his cue from Mr. Lyle to lead by example, last year Mr. Rutherford installed exterior lights and speakers. “I can control it all from my phone, the colours, the programs, etc., and I did that because having a world class building and venue wasn’t enough to start changing what was going on outside,” says the passionate 66-year-old. When Tina Turner and Gordon Lightfoot died, he pumped their music onto the sidewalk.

So, one might ask, what was going on outside that needed changing? Well, despite the Thornton-Smith building’s stately and sober countenance, the stretch of Yonge between Dundas and Gerrard streets can still be a little garish and rough. And, in Mr. Rutherford’s opinion, too many of the surrounding building owners don’t think of Yonge as a community.

“This is my home, this is where I grew up,” he says. “And I treat it like my home, and I get very discouraged when I go out on the street and I see neighbouring properties left abandoned for years – it hurts me personally. And no matter how hard I try or how hard I engage with those people, they don’t care, [their buildings are] purely an asset.

“I own this property because I want to make a difference in the city.”

It’s a good building with which to make a difference; wide and elegant so it stands out amongst its skinny street-mates, it’s just steps away from Toronto Metropolitan University and a stone’s throw from City Hall. Also, the events held at the Aperture Room thus far reflect the passions of Mr. Rutherford, who has spent a good part of his life building homes with Habitat for Humanity. “I only do fundraising events or corporate events, I don’t do any personal events,” he says, mentioning that PETA will host an evening soon.

Looking as good now as it did in 1922 and surrounded by the swirling, ever-changing face of Yonge Street, the Thornton-Smith building is poised to make a difference for the next hundred years.