50 Heath St. W., Toronto's only example of a Prairie Style house.Supplied
According to David Galenson in a 2008 working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Mass.) a “survey of textbooks” reveals that “Le Corbusier was the greatest architect of the 20th century, followed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.” In my opinion, if a survey of non-scholarly books aimed at the general public were to be conducted, FLW would take first place by a landslide.
Sixty-seven years after his death, he remains a media darling: walking tours, house museums, overnight stays (Polymath Park, the Louis Penfield house, and others), coffee table books, semi-fictionalized accounts of his life (Loving Frank by Nancy Horan), new builds from old plans (Fontana Boathouse, Buffalo), and various groups like the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust keep his work alive and thriving.
So imagine my surprise upon receiving an e-mail with the subject line “Little known Frank Lloyd Wright motel” and a first line with co-ordinates that placed it in Collingwood, Ont. For a brief second, I imagined myself in front of the Mariner Motor Hotel at 305 Hume St., holding up blueprints to confirm the fantastic discovery as the world press frantically snapped photographs, the discoverer’s name about to be etched in history like Edmund Halley, who calculated the return of his now-famous comet. I mean, FLW’s work in Canada is paltry: a cottage for an American, E. H. Pitkin, in Desbarats, Ont., a long-ago demolished park pavilion in Banff (with his student, Canadian Francis Conroy Sullivan), and rumours of an interior in Montreal. That’s it.
After a brief e-mail exchange, my reader came back, clarifying that the architect was actually William (Bill) Carswell, who lived in Collingwood and was “influenced by” the master … just like thousands of other architects.
Banff National Park Pavilion exterior, circa 1920.Supplied
So, mystery solved, and quickly. But there are others just as intriguing and, perhaps, unsolvable.
When I worked at Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue, I’d often admire Toronto’s only example of a Prairie Style house at 50 Heath St. W. And, with blinds usually drawn and little evidence of human occupation (except for a maid service car in the driveway and, yes, I once put a note under the wiper), I’d lament that I’d never meet the owner. So, when putting a private tour together a few years back, I asked Chris Bateman at Heritage Toronto to do some digging, which grew the mystery to even bigger proportions.
On July 14, 1922, Edward Joseph McNamara purchased an empty lot just north of St. Clair and west of Yonge. Exactly two weeks later, he filed a building permit with the city. The cost of the building was listed at $3,700, and the permit fee was $5. But the architect’s name was left blank.
Sadly, after living in the home for a little over three years, the Toronto Daily Star reported that Mr. McNamara “died at Colorado Springs … December 31, 1925, leaving $17,402, made up of [movable property] valued at $902, [and] an equity in 50 Heath Street of $6,500.”
In April, 1934, near the height of the Great Depression, 50 Heath was put up for sale by the new owner, interior designer Oscar Hendry. The advertisement read: “A Spanish house … one of the most artistic residences in Toronto; very finest construction throughout.” The home was described as having “running water off each bedroom, ¼ walnut panelling,” and seven rooms on the main floor with a maid’s quarters and a billiard room. The cost to build was listed at $37,000 (10 times the amount on the original building permit), but Mr. Hendry declared he would accept “less than half for immediate sale.” (As an aside, Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Fallingwater, designed in the mid-1930s, cost $148,000 to build.)
Not only is there precious little information on Mr. McNamara in Toronto newspapers or journals (his year of birth is listed as 1864 on Find-a-Grave), but his house is also an enigma. In contrast to its red-brick neighbours with gable roofs, it’s dressed in strikingly bright white stucco and sports a flat roof. Its cornice is sculptural and square, there are diamond and square designs on the pilasters, and the front door does not face the street.
Rick Mauran's Brutalist-style house.Supplied
While it’s doubtful FLW designed it, could it have been one of his apprentices based in Colorado Springs? Or was it designed by Mr. McNamara?
Want another juicy tale of a house unlike any other?
At 95 Ardwold Gate, just north of Casa Loma, sits Toronto’s first, and probably only, all-concrete Brutalist house. Built by Rick Mauran, who founded the Swiss Chalet and Harvey’s restaurant chains, the architect was a young Estonian named Taivo Kapsi. According to Mr. Mauran’s biographer, Danny Gallagher, Mr. Kapsi “had fled Estonia to Canada in 1944 with his family at age eight in advance of the Russian army.” By 1960, Mr. Kapsi was working for Finnish architect Viljo Revell on Toronto’s New City Hall while teaching at the University of Toronto. Early in their friendship, Mr. Mauran hired Mr. Kapsi to renovate a coach house at 243 Lonsdale Rd. before asking him to design the 9,000- square-foot concrete house at Ardwold Gate.
However, poor Mr. Kapsi would never see the house completed, as the 31-year-old would die at his Lake Wilcox cottage in 1967 (and a 17-year-old would be charged with manslaughter), a year before Mr. Mauran would move in.
These two excerpted tales come from my new book Hidden Toronto: Secret Places and Forgotten Gems of Toronto and the GTA by Firefly Books. Should you want to purchase a copy and have me sign it, please attend the launch party at Swipe Design, 401 Richmond St. W., April 25, 2026, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.