When you immigrated to Toronto 40 years ago, but you still miss Greece

April 27, 2020 3:37 PM

For over 30 years, 1016 Shaw Street, the "Parashos family's house" residential masterpiece has delighted and bewildered passers-by with its unapologetic design and annual sign wishing all Torontonians a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. (Via)
posted by growabrain (24 comments total)

Hey cool! I used to live around the corner from them on Yarmouth, a few houses down from the elephant house, and not far from that wild house on Clinton Street. I'd see bewildered walking tours sometimes.
posted by Beardman at 3:47 PM on April 27, 2020 [9 favorites]

Whenever I'm in that area, I enjoy walking by that house, or showing it to people who've never encountered it.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:02 PM on April 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

On the same street you can also gawk at some tilted houses with crazy foundation nightmares. Shaw Street is interesting.
posted by ovvl at 4:47 PM on April 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

Is that really tilty house still there? I moved in 2018, but last I saw, it had sold for 850k and I assumed its new owner wasn't going to move in!
posted by Beardman at 4:50 PM on April 27, 2020

Pretty restrained compared to the Prophet Isaiah’s Second Coming House.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:03 PM on April 27, 2020 [8 favorites]

All of these houses (except the one in Niagara Falls) are familiar to me; I have friends who live on Shaw (and others quite close by). Since I doubt I'm going to see Toronto's west side for the rest of 2020, this post warms my heart. Thanks!
posted by ilana at 8:15 PM on April 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

Can't forget Toronto's dollhouse. No seriously, you can't forget it, it haunts my dreams.
posted by stray at 9:38 PM on April 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

Love all the weird houses. There was one in my neighborhood where each wall, piece of trim, or other bit was painted some different, unusual color that seemed to have come from the $1 shelf of paint at Sears where the tinting process hadn't gone quite right. We called it "Mistint Manor."

So, sure, many of the interior walls of our place had been painted from the Mistint shelf, but that's different. In a way I haven't thought of yet. And we'd usually mix them with white, to tone down the je ne sais quoi. An orange that looks like Winnie the Pooh was run over by a school bus while carrying a box of tangelos makes a lovely shade of peach when diluted enough.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:20 AM on April 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

This was my* neighbourhood as well (well, I was closer to Christie and Dupont). I miss it a lot. A helluva lot more colourful than the suburbia I now live in, where a really notable house might have a garden gnome.

*My neighbourhood, and Bruce Cockburn’s, to judge from my occasionally spotting him in the Loblaws at the corner. And, subsequently, Meghan Markle’s hood as well.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:28 AM on April 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

I did not know what to expect when I clicked on that first link, but WOW. Thanks for the double take.

The wild house on Clinton Street looks like a magpie lives there.
posted by corvikate at 6:42 AM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

There was a house in my town where the outside was printed a bright pink, and every room inside was a starkly different color. The artist who lived there had a deep and incredible understanding of color theory, and it just... worked. The bright pink outside was balanced by the colors used in the landscaping. A very dark, cool room was balanced by warm, light-colored wood furniture. And so on for each room. You'd think ugh, what a nightmare! But the whole thing just worked.
posted by xedrik at 7:55 AM on April 28, 2020 [5 favorites]

A very dark, cool room was balanced by warm, light-colored wood furniture. And so on for each room. You'd think ugh, what a nightmare! But the whole thing just worked.

When I was a teen, I had a friend whose mother was an artist and (for money) interior house painter. Their place was just - perfect. Bold choices that worked so well, like deep red walls lightened by thin black furniture and a white ceiling.

I was living in beige rental (and have for most of my life) and I was so jealous.
posted by jb at 9:14 AM on April 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

And, subsequently, Meghan Markle’s hood as well.

Meghan Markle lived a few blocks from me? Weird! I remember that house; every block in that neighbourhood has mostly identical architecture with one modern house.

The main Toronto celebs I'd see were Sarah Polley, Don McKellar, and Naomi Klein. Never glimpsed an Atwood in the wild.
posted by Beardman at 9:20 AM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

Mark McKinney came to our Starbucks a couple of times. Matt Galloway liked the independent (the Hub) coffee shop on Shaw. That place had such good food. (Probably still does - but I stopped going when they moved to a larger space and started serving brunch - they were nice about it, but they didn't appreciate me and my friend sitting and chatting for 2 hours on just two cups of coffee each).
posted by jb at 10:38 AM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

I walked past the Clinton St house this past weekend and he was still out front working on the art.
posted by thecjm at 11:35 AM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

I miss Toronto's other weird house - The Junction's Terracotta House which was recently demolished.
posted by thecjm at 11:37 AM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am delighted out of all proportion to imagine running into Bruce Cockburn at the local Loblaw's.

My oldest friend once rented a furnished apartment where each room was done in a different color, but it wasn't all cute and charming like the artists' houses mentioned above. The bathroom was a floor-to ceiling block of avocado green, the living room was unrelieved state-park-building brown, and so on. And it was mostly laid out like a long room-to-room tunnel. I swear, it was like visiting Prince Prospero's house in The Masque of the Red Death.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:51 AM on April 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

I am delighted out of all proportion to imagine running into Bruce Cockburn at the local Loblaw's.

For what it’s worth, the last time I saw him (a few weeks before I moved away) was when I stood behind him in line at the cashier. Among his purchases was a National Post, which I trust was for opposition research. He doesn’t strike me as a fan of Lord Tubby Black.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:52 PM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

I wonder how this all starts. When I moved to Kyoto my landlord for the 1st year, who lived on the main floor, was an interesting fellow with an artistic bent. Initially the house looked like a normal old house, but after a while he fashioned some "aliens" out of foil and had them crawling on the outside of the house. Then from somewhere he obtained a jinrikisha which he kept in front of the house. He then fashioned a large red boot out of papier mache which was the size of a person and got it hoisted onto the roof of the house. I don't know how far he would have gone with the house because by the next time I was able to go back to Japan the house was back to normal and I found out from a neighbour that he had passed away.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:21 PM on April 28, 2020 [4 favorites]

What an interesting, unexpected conversation - I had no idea this was part of a pattern in a neighborhood
posted by growabrain at 6:48 PM on April 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

I’m not totally sure it is a pattern per se; there are at the outside maybe a half-dozen distinctively festooned houses in this area which probably has a total number of houses in the low four digits. I have worked in tourism on and off in Toronto since the nineties and I think it’s safe to say that no city tours lead people to the West Annex to marvel at the distinctive houses. At best, they serve as landmarks —“Yeah, if you can come pick me up, that’d be great. I’ll be at my sister’s. It’s on _______, right across from the house with all the weird crap on the front.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:06 PM on April 28, 2020

Yeah Matt Galloway lives just up the block from the Hub (now Contra). I'd see him almost every day, and then see his face on billboards on the QEW, in a very "I guess everyone in Canada does know each other" sort of way.
posted by Beardman at 9:09 AM on April 29, 2020

What an interesting, unexpected conversation - I had no idea this was part of a pattern in a neighborhood

ricochet biscuit makes a good point that this isn't exactly common in the area, but I remember reading an article in Now or on BlogTO about the "5 weirdest houses in Toronto" and 4 (including "The Greek House", the white elephant house and the amazing house on Clinton - I love the mosaics of pool cue ends) were within a few blocks of Christie & Bloor.

I don't know why. I know that houses near there were still somewhat affordable even in c2000, when the second-Annex (east of Bathurst) was already gentrifying. There are still lots of working-class immigrants and handy people, some people in the arts or connected (the white elephant was an OCAD project given to a friend).

Of course, now that area is utterly unafforable - and as the generation of immigrants and handy-people age out of their homes, a lot of the houses will be torn down and rebuilt as cookie-cutter houses for yuppies, because no one else can afford them. One of the infamous crooked houses on Shaw street was listed as a tear-down for $700k a couple of years ago. Both appear to have been since replaced by larger (and uglier, albeit straighter) houses with big garages.. Not exactly the sort of place a recent working-class immigrant would live - and not somewhere one could imagine a handy person decorating in a unique, idiosyncratic way.

I'm not suggesting that those two houses didn't need rebuilding - they weren't structurally sound. But other modest homes in the area are even more expensive - and I doubt we'll see the kind of folk art and character that the area has had in the past.
posted by jb at 10:30 AM on April 30, 2020

this is so weird, i live super close (like five minute walk close) and walked by almost every day omw to work
but i only noticed today that the A at the top is unfinished and the angels are rusted (or something?) while everything else is white
posted by LeviQayin at 11:01 PM on April 30, 2020