[Previous entry: "A Saturday Night on Victoria Park"] [Next entry: "How to Make a Psychogeographer"]
01/28/2006: "The Bain of Riverdale"
This week's Stroll column crosses the valley.
--
In the heart of deepest, darkest Riverdale, amid an orange sea of Jack Layton signs, is Canada's first social housing project: the Bain Co-op. Built between 1913 and the mid-1920s by a group of Toronto philanthropists who called themselves the Toronto Housing Authority, the Bain was influenced by the egalitarian Garden City urban planning movement that started in England in the late 19th century. The idea was to have a balance between residences and green space.
The Bain has 260 apartments that range from one- to four-bedroom units, and a population of approximately 400 -- but you would never know it. The first time I stumbled upon the Bain, I was completely surrounded by it before I realized I was in something different, a place a little more planned out and dense than the rest of Riverdale.
Underneath a canopy of massive London plane trees with bark that looks like desert camouflage, the Bain's grassy courtyards seem too big for such a tightly built community, but they fit in with ease. They give way to footpaths that lead through a jungle of secret tiny patios, children's toys left out all night, porches stuffed with bric-a-brac and wash hanging between buildings on those old-fashioned pulley lines. On warm summer nights, you can walk through and overhear conversations, ballgames on TV and other unrecognizable sounds of domesticity. Few places are so public and intimate at once.
The community itself seems to mirror the close-knit architecture. The Bain has a 17-year-old softball team, holds craft shows and street festivals and even has its own closed-circuit TV station. Those egalitarian Garden City ideas are expressed in the affordable rents: under $800 for a one-bedroom to a stunning $1,286 for a four-bedroom. There are also subsidies available for co-op members who are in short-term financial difficulty.
It's social housing, but apparently with none of the woes post-war developments like Regent Park, Moss Park or Don Mount suffered. Eric Arthur -- the late Toronto architect and professor who authored a seminal 1964 work about our town, Toronto: No Mean City -- would take his students on walks through the Bain. Over 35 years ago, he was already saying it had much to teach about how to make low-income housing livable and built to a high standard. Today's condominium developers could learn something, too: maybe if more three- or four-bedroom units were built, families who can't afford houses of their own could still live downtown, like they do at the Bain. WITH FILES FROM JENNIFER YANG
