A tiny, private streetscape: Alvary Beecroft’s 1890s rowhouses

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“Thirty feet wide,” muttered Alvary Beecroft as he stormed down the wide, pink steps of city hall.

A few hours earlier, he’d donned his stiffest starched collar, tied his best bowtie, brushed his best suit, and topped it all off with a fancy bowler; he’d walked into the big, new city hall by E.J. Lennox – the one his tax dollars had helped pay for – to get a simple municipal errand done.

And he’d been laughed at. Imagine that, an upstanding citizen in his 70s, a builder, and to be treated like that! He’d filed the petition to Mayor Urquhart’s office as requested and had waited the requisite amount of time. He’d shown up early to the Board of Control meeting. Everything was in order for his little street.

“I’m sorry Mr. Beecroft, but you’ve been rejected,” said Controller William Hubbard. “Melbourne Place is only 30 feet wide, while the statute requires a width of 66 feet for new public streets.”

The gavel strike cut off any chance for Mr. Beecroft to counter, so, on his way out, he yelled: “I’ll remember you next January!” And that’s when they’d all laughed at him.

Less than three months later and just before the January, 1906 election where he could seek his revenge, poor Alvary Beecroft would pass away “after a brief illness” at his home at 46 Gwynne Ave. He’d leave his wife, Margaret Lloyd, a widow for the next 24 years. And little Melbourne Place, Parkdale’s English mews-style enclave that Mr. Beecroft built in 1889 and 1891, would never become a public street.

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While the above has been embellished, the events are based on a small blurb in the Oct. 31, 1905 edition of the Toronto Daily Star titled His Threats Derided: Controllers Laugh at Man Who Will Seek Satisfaction at the Polls. In the piece, the man being laughed at is “Mr. Albery Beacroft,” but since I couldn’t find that name anywhere else, I’m assuming the reporter got it wrong.

Besides, it’s well documented that Alvary Beecroft built Nos. 1, 3, 5 and 7 Melbourne Place in 1889, and Nos. 2, 4 and 6 in 1891, so why wouldn’t he stand before the board to have his street changed from a private road – and all the responsibility that entailed – into a public one the city would manage?

But there isn’t much else on Mr. Beecroft. A June 18, 1904 notice with photos, also in the Star, that he and Margaret had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. And, on the website WikiTree, that he’d been born in Bassingham, Lincolnshire, England in 1830 and that Margaret’s maiden name was Lloyd and she’d been born in Port Perry, Ont., in 1835. According to a different ancestry site, the couple had five children – three sons and two daughters.

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One son, Frank Lloyd Beecroft, would warrant a long obituary in the Globe on April 16, 1963. Retired Builder Descendant of Pioneers told of the 95-year-old’s birth near Port Perry, that the family moved to Toronto in 1884, and that he’d attended Jarvis Collegiate. After working for the T. Eaton Company, Mr. Beecroft “entered the business of house building, which had been his father’s occupation,” and in the “early years of the century built more than a hundred houses in the central area of Toronto.” A look into the 1905 Might’s City Directory shows Frank Lloyd living in the house to the immediate left of the gates to Melbourne Place, 12 Melbourne Ave. It also lists his brother, Howard Lloyd, as living with mom and dad and working as a carpenter. In 1918, Frank Lloyd moved to a farm in Whitby, Ont., which is where he died.

Since the Beecroft family scrapbook isn’t available to teach us about the wealth of houses built by the Beecrofts, let’s focus on Alvary’s seven tiny rowhouses.

Most sources suggest that Toronto contains 250 private streets. While most architectural strollers know of Wychwood Park and Percy Street in Corktown, Melbourne Place is so small, so hidden, only true aficionados know of it. But, should one find oneself in the area of Dufferin Street and Queen Street West, tuck south and look for Milky Way, a laneway that will take you past the massive, former home of the Dominion Radiator factory complex. Walk west to Gwynne Avenue, and south to see Alvary and Margaret’s home on the south-west corner (No. 46), then walk east along Melbourne Avenue to Melbourne Place. But, since this is private property, there is the possibility that if you set up tripods and lighting to take photographs, you might be asked to leave.

If you can linger, have a look at those charming façades, colourful front doors and at the gas lamps. While they look very Dickensian and it’s been reported that they are “original,” I did find a 1981 Toronto Star article by Carola Vyhnak stating that they had been installed 10 years before by residents “who pooled their time and resources to erect old-fashioned gas lamps, gates and flags.”

But, no matter if they’re from 1891 or 1971, they’re magnificent.

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Interestingly, Ms. Vyhnak goes on to say that the “grubby rooming houses and illegal bachelorettes … are being converted into magnificent family homes” and that an average semi with “eight or nine rooms” and “one or two fireplaces” was selling for $110,000.

How times change, especially in real estate! In 2022, 19 Melbourne Ave. – just across the street from the entrance to Melbourne Place – was listed for $1.9-million. And, according to Zolo, 1 Melbourne Place – all 1,500 square feet of it – sold for $1.2-million in April, 2024, with annual taxes of $4,198.

And, because poor Mr. Beecroft shuffled off his mortal coil before he could continue the fight to make his tiny street public, add the yearly cost of snow and garbage removal, and other types of maintenance.

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