The renovated condo at 225 Davenport Rd. Design by Stephanie Carron of Stephanie Carron Design Inc.Riley Snelling/Riley Snelling
Toronto, for all its greatness, is an odd city when it comes to housing. Although most large North American cities would see “apartment houses” built in the early Victorian period (1850-1870), the Queen City didn’t issue its first permit until 1899 for the St. George Mansions at 1 Harbord St. (since demolished).
And despite Ontario enacting the Condominium Act in 1967, condominium units were a tough sell through the 1970s and early 1980s. By mid-decade, however, condos picked up steam, especially with older members of the middle- and upper-middle-class. Not surprisingly, large units – many between 1,500 and 2,500 square feet – with generous bedrooms and amenities such as luscious common gardens, wooed the well-heeled since they didn’t want to give up on family gatherings or garden parties.
What is surprising is that despite the architectural freedom condominium buildings provided, designs were often quite pedestrian: low ceiling heights, pokey layouts, long corridors, dark kitchens with passthroughs and isolated solariums that were a poor substitute for a front porch.
When Chloe Carron purchased a unit at 225 Davenport Rd. – a six-storey, 100-unit, almost invisible building at the famed “Ave and Dav” intersection – she had to contend with all of these. Designed in 1986 by the workaday firm of Stone & Kohn (Harry Kohn and Allan Stone), Ms. Carron’s almost-1,900 sq. ft. felt more like 1,000 sq. ft. Luckily, Ms. Carron’s mother, Stephanie Carron of Stephanie Carron Design Inc., knew a thing or two about how to breathe new life into old spaces.
A very big breath: a huff and a puff to almost blow it down … to the concrete shell.
“This one was on the market for quite a while; nobody was interested because it was a scary proposition [and] a challenge, which I embraced,” Stephanie Carron says with a laugh. “It was an opportunity, with my daughter wanting to purchase something, to use it as a blueprint for me … to see if I could make something that feels like home and doesn’t feel like every other high-rise condo in Toronto.”
That would be done, chiefly, by significantly changing that pokey floor plan entirely – the unit stretches from the back of the building to the Davenport face and contained a solarium on either end. And, yes, by pulling down all the drywall to reroute the HVAC to achieve more ceiling height.
“When we first looked at it, everyone [said]: ‘You cannot fix it, you can’t do that, you can’t raise the ceilings.’ And I thought, give me a shot. So I did two rounds of demo; looked at all the HVAC; looked at all the electrical [and] the plumbing.”
The results prove the detractors wrong. Walk into this fifth-floor unit, and the once-tiny foyer has been expanded, with concealed doors that lead to the second bedroom. The walk to the solarium-less living/dining area is now filled with light, and one passes what was once a den but is now an expanded “viable third bedroom.” On the way, one no longer passes a closed-in kitchen but is drawn, like a moth to a flame, to the bank of almost-floor-to-ceiling windows that look out at an explosion of leaves.
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“It’s like a Muskoka sunset; it just glows,” she says of the view.
There is handsome, well-crafted storage everywhere, and, ever-conscious of the precious ceiling-height that was gained, Ms. Carron has placed very slim and sexy tract lights as the main source of illumination. Two moments of incredible tactility reveal Ms. Carron’s past life as a letterpress printing shop owner and her experience with bookbinding: the kitchen’s purplish Calacatta Viola marble counters and backsplash – which Canadian House & Home magazine claimed was “having a moment” in 2025 – and the plumb-coloured Zellige tiles surrounding the original, wood-burning fireplace.
“We were down in Marrakech, so I actually saw how they made each one by hand,” she says. “They’re fragile, and when the box came, probably 30 per cent of it was broken, and some of the colours were just horrible; they were so brown.”
And should one tire of all those “Muskoka” sunsets as the fireplace crackles away, a walk to the other end of the unit reveals the pointy, big city rooftops of the art galleries along Davenport Road (and Studio Gang’s One Delisle rising in the distance). Here, the second and primary bedrooms – each with a king-sized bed – required mental gymnastics to maximize light after removing the shared solarium. Because of Ms. Carron’s careful use of soundproofing and blinds, the traffic along the busy throughfare is whisper-quiet.
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But there is an elephant in these well-designed rooms: dreaded maintenance fees, which can be quite high. For this unit, they’re a whopping $2,737 per month. And with a listed price of $2,095,000 (Ms. Carron’s daughter has put the unit up for sale), it adds up to a substantial monthly outlay for a buyer.
However, Ms. Carron has crunched the numbers, which, she says, “tell a different story.” Older buildings, such as 225 Davenport, include heat, hydro and water in their fees, and usually charge less per square foot because of their age and in recognition of those higher fees. Ms. Carron points to two nearby listings: 1315 Bay St., suite 1703 (completed 2020), is currently listed at $2,698,888 for 1,306 sq. ft., with maintenance fees of $1,463 per month (heat and hydro billed separately). Penthouse 1 at 81 Bedford Rd., (1,800-1,999 sq. ft., completed 2021) sold in November, 2025, for $2.6-million and has maintenance fees of $1,617 a month (again, heat and hydro billed separately).
With both of these examples being significantly smaller and with price tags $500,000 to $600,000 higher, Ms. Carron says her daughter’s property compares favourably. And she says it speaks to the current state of the city’s property realm. “Toronto’s market has become so dependent on a handful of searchable metrics that it is structurally unable to recognize the very type of housing it says it needs - until someone does the math that the listing portal doesn’t do for them.”
Standing on the building’s rooftop deck, I let all of those numbers float up to the fluffy clouds as I imagine a couple of rib-eyes sizzling on the barbecue.