Toast Restaurant - The House that Shortbread Built

By DAVE LEBLANC
reprinted with permission
Originally appeared in the Globe and Mail
Friday, November 25, 2005

Carl Strygg jokes that he may be a little obsessive-compulsive.

Perfect, then, for tackling the restoration of a century-old, commercial/residential building while researching its history, furnishing it with period items, opening a restaurant on the ground floor and then getting it historically listed.

In 1994, a building with no name, no friends, and little dignity left came on the market at precisely the same time as Mr. Strygg was looking to finally put down roots (his family moved a lot), and for a place to run his seasonal shortbread cookie business.

Today, the handsome three-storey building at 993 Queen St. East not only has its dignity, it has a name -- the McCarten Building -- thanks to the dedication of Mr. Strygg, a former countertenor and ballet dancer, who can now add "architectural preservationist" to his list of credentials.

"It looked like something out of The Silence of the Lambs," he says about seeing it for the first time.

The owner and his dog were living without electricity or heat in the ground-floor retail space.

He was using the upper two floors for storage. Water and insect damage was rampant, the ceilings were flaking away and the stench was overwhelming.

"You couldn't get into any of the rooms because they were filled with furniture, newspapers, TV Guides [and] National Enquirers dating back to the sixties," he says. "It was completely unlivable; but what I did notice was that the stairs coming in had a really gentle incline and I thought 'this is a really gracious way to come into the house.' "

Wedging himself between piles of junk in the living room, he saw something else. Framed in the doorway was a simple vignette of the stairway to the third floor: "I saw this beautiful newel post, beautiful banister, these lovely turned spindles, and I thought, 'I gotta have this place, it's clearly got such wonderful bones.' "

So he asked his sister -- heritage architect Catherine Nasmith -- for advice. She said the building was structurally sound, but that it would take a decade to restore it. So he bought it, power-of-sale, for the paltry sum of $259,000, and spent the next 10 years doing just that.

To help offset costs, he immediately found an adventurous third-floor tenant, photographer Patricia Watteyne, who smiled through the first few weeks without running water. They became "fast friends" during her eight-year stay, and she, along with William Gilpin (a heritage building owner himself), helped with the restoration immeasurably.

The next priority was getting the retail space ready for his bakery. But his new neighbourhood, Leslieville, didn't have much in the way of restaurants other than "fish and chips and fried eggs," so he decided to add restaurateur to his already full plate. In May, 1995, "Hello Toast" was born, and his bakery was set up instead in the former coach house at the back (renamed "Coach House Bakery"). Although the restaurant was an instant success, he was stressed and losing weight, so he sold it two and a half years later.

"I'll never do that much at the same time again," he muses. "I had to be a little bit naive to think it was doable."

But, just as necessity is the mother of invention, naiveté is often the starting point for achieving great things. Almost single-handedly, Mr. Strygg restored all 11 double-hung windows to working order (purchasing vintage panes where there were none), replaced damaged red pine floorboards and filled all gaps with hemp twine before staining (a restorer's trick), found the original mantel "under a hundred layers of paint," and hired professionals only for things such as the chimney rebuild and roof repairs.

In all, he estimates that he spent $80,000, which came mostly from shortbread sales at the annual One of a Kind Show.

"I like to think of it as the building that shortbread built -- or saved," he laughs.

Surprisingly, Mr. Strygg is only the fourth owner of the building, something he learned during a quest for period photographs that turned into a full-blown research project.

Henry McCarten built the handsome structure in 1895 as a home for his family and a place to run his flour and feed business (which operated up until the late 1930s and supplied Woodbine Race Track). It was sold to Lillian Borins in 1944, then, finally, to the third owner, who allowed the building to fall into disrepair.

After a few phone calls, Mr. Strygg met with Mr. McCarten's granddaughter, Shirley McGill, and then with Lillian Borins and her two sons, who had extensive film footage of the building in the 1940s and 50s.

A proud moment came earlier this autumn when he hosted an open house exactly 110 years from the date stamped on the city building permit, and invited McCarten and Borins family members to visit. Great-great-great grandchildren of Henry and Annie McCarten sat on Mr. Strygg's meticulously restored hardwood floor.

"I have not just restored [the building] in three dimensions, I've restored it in four because I've restored it in terms of its history," he says without braggadocio.

Making many new friends along the way, he has also restored faith that one person can make a difference.

Once again, Mr. Strygg is selling his shortbread cookies at the One of a Kind Show, on now at the National Trade Centre (until Dec. 4). Proceeds sometimes go towards saving Toronto's architectural heritage.

Dave LeBlanc hosts The Architourist on CFRB Sunday mornings. Inquiries can be sent to dave.leblanc@globeandmail.ca.