Casa Loma
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Casa Loma, meaning "House on the Hill" is a Toronto tourist attraction. It was once the home of financier Sir Henry Mill Pellatt. It is on Austin Terrace, at the south end of Spadina Road on an escarpment above Davenport Road. Davenport runs along the bottom of the escarpment which was the shoreline of Lake Iroquois, the predecessor of Lake Ontario. Casa Loma has a superb view down the escarpment and Spadina Avenue into the heart of Toronto.
Sir Henry commissioned Canadian architect E.J. Lennox to build Casa Loma. Begun in 1911, the house cost $3.5 million, and took a team of 300 workers three years to build from start to finish. Upon completion in 1914, at 98 rooms and 180,000 square feet (17,000 m²), it was the largest private residence in North America. Notable amenities included an elevator, an oven large enough to cook a steer, two vertical passages for pipe organs, two secret passages in Sir Henry's ground-floor office, three bowling alleys, and an underground tunnel connecting the castle to the stables. In the end, however, the project and its enormous tax bill bankrupted Sir Henry, and he was only able to enjoy life in the "castle" for ten years, vacating it in 1925.
During the Depression, Toronto increased Casa Loma's annual property taxes from $400 to $1,200, and Pellatt—already experiencing financial difficulties—was forced to auction off $1.5-million in art and furnishings for only $250,000. Pellatt also operated the building for a short time as a luxury hotel. During the late 1920's, Casa Loma was also a popular nightspot. The Orange Blossoms, later known as Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra, played there for eight months in 1927–1928. Shortly thereafter, they went on tour of North America and became a major Swing Era dance band.
The city seized Casa Loma in 1933 for $27,303 in back taxes.
In 1937 it was opened to the public for the first time as a tourist attraction operated by the Kiwanis Club of Toronto. Today it is regarded as one of Toronto's premier tourist attractions, still profitably operated by the Kiwanis.
Parts of the movie X-Men were shot at Casa Loma, which stood in for Professor Xavier's school for gifted mutants. The castle was also the setting for Canadian children's author Eric Wilson's murder mystery, "The Lost Treasure of Casa Loma".
External links
- Casa Loma Official Home Page (http://www.casaloma.org/)
- Casa Loma Tour (http://etours.to/toronto_tour_CasaLoma.html)