History
The parcel of land now known as Spadina Crescent first appeared on maps of Toronto as early as 1835, originally named “Mansfield's Old Gardens” and then Crescent Garden. There was the intention for the city to turn it into a park after Dr. Baldwin's death, however the conditions for this were never met and his grandchildren sold the land in 1873 to the hon. J. McMurrich of the Presbyterian Church for $10,000.
The building was originally the home of Knox College, a theological college of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Knox College became affiliated with the University of Toronto in 1887, and in 1914 moved to its current location on the west side of King's College Circle. During the First World War, the building became barracks, and shortly afterward the Spadina Military Hospital. For a period in 1918, Amelia Earhart worked as a nurses aide at the hospital. It remained a veterans hospital until 1943 when it was acquired by the University of Toronto's Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, which became one of Canada's main centers for the development and manufacture of pharmaceuticals. The building was in disrepair at this point and needed substantial renovations. It was also around this time that the basement was excavated. It became an academic building again in 1972 with the sale and relocation of the laboratories.
It was the site of a professor's murder in 2001 that remains unsolved. Until 2007, the building's location inside a roundabout made it inaccessible by foot without jaywalking; the issue was resolved with the installation of stop-lights on the east side of the circle.
On 10 September 2009, a woman fell to her death from the third floor roof while allegedly on a "ghost hunt" in the building.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)