The Barrymore Building - 1912
The Barrymore Building at 109 Atlantic Avenue was completed in 1912 for the firm of Gowans, Kent & Company, manufacturers of china and glassware. Throughout its existence the building has accommodated multiple tenants, including such original occupants as hardware merchant Rice, Lewis & Son, and the Page Wire Fence Company. It later housed lingerie maker J. Henry Peters Company and acted as a wool storage depot. For over fifty years, the Barrymore Furniture Company owned and occupied the building as its factory and showroom. It is now listed on the City of Toronto Inventory of Heritage Properties and owned by First Capital Realty Inc.
Originally, the Barrymore Building sat within a triangle made up of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum to the northeast on Queen Street, the Central Prison to the southeast on Strachan Avenue, and the Mercer Reformatory to the west on King Street West. It was part of a neighbourhood that grew up in the latter half of the 1800s as an area of warehousing and light industry related to the nearby Canadian Pacific Railway and Grand Trunk Railway lines. Until 1909, Hanna Avenue was called Pacific Avenue in reference to the railways.
Architecturally, the Barrymore Building is an example of early 20th-century industrial design, consisting of a load-bearing exterior brick envelope and an interior timber structure. Its repetitive window pattern and simple, shallow-arched window construction are typical of this style and era, and of much of the Liberty Street neighbourhood in which it is located. Contextually, the Barrymore Building helps to maintain, define and support the remaining late-19th/early-20th century industrial character of the neighbourhood, as it continues to evolve and adapt to present-day patterns of use.
Plaque via Alan L. Brown's site Toronto Plaques. Full page here.