Peacock Hotel

This place is pretty open, though it is in the middle of a residential area.

I thought this was an innocuous little empty lot, but I was actually quite wrong! This is the former site of the Peacock Hotel, which has a history going back to the 1830s. This forum thread has a pretty good summary of the site’s features, as well as some cool photos: https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/toronto-2760-dundas-west-24-41m-6s-sierra-gabriel-fain-architects.31495/

To summarise, according to the West Toronto Junction Historical Society, James Ellis was the architect responsible for designing the Peacock Hotel in 1890, which started life as the Peacock Tavern in the 1820s-1830s. In the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion, William Lyon Mackenzie robbed the Royal Mail just outside of the Peacock Tavern.

The Hotel itself was owned by James Farr until approximately 1875 when it was sold to John Colley. According to the Toronto Historical Association, the building burned down in 1878, but was rebuilt in 1890. It was then purchased by Francis Watt in 1904 and became a boarding house three years later. The original building was demolished in 1925.

As of 1996, the building received heritage status from the City of Toronto. There was a small fire which partially collapsed the building in August 2018, but the fire in May 2019 finally did it in. It was fully demolished in 2020.

It seems that there are currently plans for the city to erect a six-story multi-use building on the site of the lot, so I expect construction to show up eventually. For now, it’s a nice place to remember some pretty cool history.