The Cotton Factory, in Hamilton.Dave LeBlanc/The Globe and Mail
I wait for Shannon Kyles – retired architecture professor and Architectural Conservancy Ontario board member – on the sidewalk in front of 270 Sherman Ave. N. in Hamilton. As I scan the building in front of me, its neighbours, and smokestacks of all sizes in the distance, I wonder if this is what the Toronto Carpet Factory and Liberty Village looked like 40 years ago. Newly budding. Reinventing itself. Finding a new rhythm.
My reverie is broken as I spot Ms. Kyles’s wonderful head of red hair as she turns the corner. She’s holding a stack of the Conservancy’s promotional flyers for Doors Open Hamilton, to be held May 3 and 4 of this year. The Cotton Factory, in front of us, is participating as usual.
There is activity as soon as we open the doors. A group of well-dressed ladies from the Womens Art Association of Hamilton are busy arranging new artwork and sculpture that will dress the 125-year-old corridors and walls. As Ms. Kyles asks if anyone has seen landscape architect and visual artist Lesia Mokrycke, author Lance Darren Cole rounds a corner.
“Hey, wanna see my studio before I go?” he says to Ms. Kyles, smiling brightly. “It’s pretty magical.” Ms. Kyles checks her watch, shrugs, and agrees. At the Cotton Factory, one goes with the flow.
Mr. Cole’s space, although small, is indeed magical: old bricks, old windows, a shelf with books Mr. Cole has handbound, a cluttered desk with a Tiffany-style lamp and squares of sunlight that paint the floor. “I’m the first person here since the janitor 60 or 70 years ago,” he says with a laugh, then motions to a large piece of paper. “That’s the most recent one I wrote: can I share it with you?”
“Yeah,” Ms. Kyles says enthusiastically.
“Baffled by the news from the outside world / Concern for our well-being, as flags are unfurled,” his poem begins. “Turning the other cheek does not an ostrich make / When told your inaction show what side you chose to take …”
After Mr. Cole finishes, he helps us find Ms. Mokrycke. In her equally magical space filled with semi-abstract paintings – which one can visit during Doors Open – Ms. Mokrycke, who founded landscape studio Tropos, says she has been documenting heritage trees in Hamilton for four years, and that the project is titled Oasis Forest.
“They have way higher potential for climate [work], they absorb more carbon, they do all the work absorbing water; architecturally they’re really important frameworks in the city for new restoration, but also for keying us into where we can build … people are very connected to these old trees.”
But how, I ask, does she find them?
“I partially walk around looking,” she says with a laugh. “When I get some publicity, I always say ‘If you have an old tree, contact me.’”
After our chat, Ms. Kyles and I go looking for Lower City Joinery, another of the 140 creative tenants based here, and when we smell sawdust, we know we are close. In the big, buzzing, 4,000-square-foot wood shop, Mike Kennedy shows us a gaggle of heritage windows that have been recently restored and stand ready to be painted.
“We’re actually going to be painting all the gingerbread on the house; if it’s wood on a house, we’ll fix it for you, we’ll make it new for you,” he says.
After he shows us the “clean room” where the finishing work is done, we go on the hunt for building’s affable owner, Rob Zeidler, and find him seated and enjoying a coffee in the same spot that, a hundred years ago, would have contained one of the big looms that produced cotton sails for ships, striped awnings for businesses, or bolts of woven cloth.
Even before he purchased the complex of buildings in 2014, it was already producing art and poetry and giving a home to small creative businesses: “When I arrived, it was, like, who is this Rob Zeidler guy,” he says with a laugh. “And you could tell they were all sizing me up – ‘Are we all about to be evicted?’ – and it literally took six to eight months [for them] to realize we are not the tenants to be gotten rid of, we are the focus.”
It was his well-known sister, Margie Zeidler, who purchased 401 Richmond (St. W.) in 1994 (and kept rentals affordable for artists), who “bullied” him into buying the building, he says: “Margie sent me an e-mail saying ‘Hey, this looks perfect for you’ and I called her up and said ‘Have you seen the size of this place? It’s huge, it’s way too big a project.’”
When mom and dad stepped in to help with a loan, however, the deal was sealed. “Without Eb and Jane there would be no Cotton Factory.”
However, it has been Mr. Zeidler’s own reasonable rates, and his support and outreach for the Hamilton arts community at large – he has allowed the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra to host events for free – that has not only kept the building full, but his financial status in the black. His “no jerk policy” helps too, since even a tiny percentage of bad tenants can disproportionately affect the mood, he says. “So then you just wind up with a building full of lovely people, like Lance,” he says. “He’ll come in with this big piece of paper [and say] ‘I wrote this for you, Rob.’”
A look at the building’s directory bears this out: dozens of visual artists, yes, but also photographers, theatre groups, circus arts people, yoga studios, media companies, author services, industrial designers and makers of all manner of home goods. And that’s just a small sampling of what the visitor will experience if – no, make it when – they visit during Doors Open.
“I’m so lucky,” finishes Mr. Zeidler. “I come into work every day and it’s like I’ve won the jackpot.”
For more information on Hamilton’s Doors Open, visit https://www.doorsopenontario.on.ca/pages/events/hamilton