The interesting thing about touring this "house" is that you can go pretty much anywhere. We didn't have to pay extra to go to the very attic of this place. Not only that, but when we got to the attic, it wasn't really roped off. Even though people could have climbed around the timbers, no one did. Although, around the corner and behind me, the brick walls had the names of many visitors. The unfortunate part, is that i don't know much about architecture / construction to truly appreciate what i've seen in these pictures. I can pretty much guarantee houses aren't made like this anymore. Also, with the size of this place, perhaps what i'm looking at is sheer genius. Know what i mean? If i remember correctly, the floor is cement. Which is kind of weird for an attic floor, don't you think? there must be a lot of wall support below. Either that, i'm completely mistaken with the type of floor it is. It was kind of dusty even though there were a lot of people traipsing through.

Back in the day, when this functioned as a house; i think the attic would have been the perfect getaway. As you can see in the pictures, it is very bright and almost... magical? No, not magical. Peaceful is more accurate.

In the first picture you can see stairs in the upper left side of the picture. I can't recall if we went up there or not. Actually, i know we didn't. But it's rather interesting to have a hidden room. From what i could tell, i don't think there was furniture in that space. Who knows...

That concludes the pictures of Casa Loma. I'm excited about the next round of pictures i'm uploading. They are from the Kennsington neighborhood (yup, England is not the only place to have a "Kennsington"). It is a rather arty neighborhood. More so than Grand Ave. or Uptown. Stay tuned.

Bits of the Casa

As we wandered through the Casa, i snapped some random pictures. Well, i suppose they really all were random so far. As i looked down this hall, all i could think about was, "i wonder what it was like to wander down a hall this huge? Or to even have a hall this big in a house!!"



We wandered into one of the bathrooms in the house. I love the sink!! The wall is a bit extravagent, but that's what they had in the day i guess. I just wonder how they were able to put that heavy marble on the wall and keep it up. Maybe it's thin or something...



Check out this crazy shower! From what i understand the metal cage might have had multiple shower heads attached to it at different locations. A rubber curtain was pulled around the cage...? I think it's kind of creepy.

Ceilings of Casa Loma

One of the things i forget to do when looking at old houses / mansions, is to look at the ceilings. There is just as much detail in the ceilings as there is with the walls and moulding. The picture above is the ceiling in the sun room. Imagine eating breakfast in this room with the morning light shining in. I bet at night it looks equally interesting.



I thought this was a rather nice detail in the hallway's ceiling.



With a light, it makes it even more interesting. When i looked up at this light, i was taken back to the days of when i went to church at Victory Memorial Lutheran church. That church had lights very similar to this.

Yes, I know, this is not a ceiling. This is a window above the door leading into the sun room. You can just barely see the pattern of the domed ceiling through the window. Also pictured is a side view of the light that was shown in the previous picture. Can you imagine?? I understand that there are details like this in old business buildings, but to have this in your house? I don't think modern mansions come close to details like this in their house. No, not in the same design, but just a modern twist to how these details could be incorporated into a modern mansion. Just sayin' that a fancy swimming pool is really kind of... not so fancy when it comes to having a "fancy" home.

Casa Loma

The back of Casa Loma consists of a lot of paved ground and a few statues. The above being one of those statues. I'm surprised that it's just hanging out with no type of rope around it or something to protect it from people. Hmmm... i guess i'm not giving tourists enough credit for not touching things.



While i stood in front of the statue i looked up and this is the view. Very Hogwart-ish i must say. I know, in the HP movies the castle was a bit more fantastic, but if HP was a reality, then i think this is what Hogwarts would look like in reality. Laugh all you want. That just means you haven't read the books and therefore you do not understand. I forgive you. :0).


I looked to the left.



I looked straight ahead. Rather impressive. Remember, this house (yes house, not castle) was built for $3.5 million. I think it's interesting how this is viewed as a luxury home compared to what today's luxury homes look like. I wonder what people 100 years from now will think of our luxury homes...

Back to Casa Loma

On the first floor of Casa Loma, there is a ballroom. Two walls are lined with bookshelves.

What's neat about these bookshelves is that there is a pocket ledge that pulls out so you can set your book on it. When you are done using the little ledge, you simply slide it back in and no one is none the wiser.

The gentleman in this picture is the one who informed me of the pocket ledge. He actually pulled the ledge out to show me how it worked. He also opened the glass door on one of the book cabinets. He said that sometime back film was shot there and there weren't enough books to line the shelves, so props were put in to fill them up and were left there ever since. He thought it was weird that the book cabinets weren't locked in the first place because people could open them and just take a book from the shelf.

This guy, i believe, was in his 80's. Him and his wife had worked at Casa Loma for over 40 years i believe. His wife has passed away but he continues to show up for work.

He showed me a trick with the floor and the lighting. If you look at the picture above, you'll notice a herringbone pattern. Note that the floor alters from light to dark. So if you walk in one direction, as he is above, you see this pattern. If you turn around and walk back the way you came, the light/dark pattern reverses. If you stare at the floor while you turn, you can actually see the light colored path turn to a dark colored path. Quite interesting.

Cragun's Part Deux

As we walked i thought it was interesting to see how the summer side of the resort slept under the blanket of snow. This is an outdoor pool area (i believe).



There are also cabins that can be rented for the weekend. We joked that in the winter time it would be hard to run back and forth between cabins.



Random pick of a snowmobile track.

Still plenty of snow out there...

Cragun's

A brief break from the Toronto pics. This last weekend Jason and i headed up to Brainerd to Cragun's for a work seminar. He was in a meeting for four hours on saturday and then the rest of the weekend there was activities and free time. We headed outside with one of his co-worker's to take pictures.

Cragun's is a resort on Gull Lake and is open for all seasons. In the winter time they offer several activities such as snowmobiling and dog sledding. The weather can be chilly, but it's only chilly if you are standing still. The weekend we were up there i don't think it ever got above zero. I elected not to pay attention to the temperature too much. Anywho... the lighting was beautiful out and i wanted to see how my toy camera app liked the lighting.

Randoms

I had to take a picture of the front of the entrance to the Spandia Museum. All i could think of was, "this would be a gorgeous place to have a wedding. or to at least get some great wedding photos taken there."



Love this house. I believe this is a part of Casa Loma. I want to say it was the Gardener's house or something? I can't recall just exactly what but it's interesting to see so many roof lines in just one corner of the house.

Casa Loma

I admit, that when i got closer to the Casa, i couldn't help but think of Hogwarts. There, i also admitted it, i'm a nerd.

The Casa is located on top of a pretty high hill. We had walked up a fairly steep street. At the end of the street we were at the foot of a huge flight of stairs. Think of the stairs from Minnehaha Falls, but these were cement and not quite as steep of a grade. I could tell that the runners we ran into, were familiar with the stairs. The would run down, then up, then back down and on their way the went.

This is the side of the street Jason and i were walking on. I was impressed with this huge house. At first i thought it was a residence house, but then as we got further up the street, i saw the below sign.

We didn't go in there, but perhaps if we go back, we'll visit this place.

Casa Loma is a castle that was built by.... you guessed it, a financier, industrialist, military man. This man's name was Sir Henry Pellat and he founded the Toronto electric company. By 1911 he amassed $17 million. He partnered with E.J. Lennox, an architect, to build this house on a hill, hence the name Casa Loma (which was actually named by the previous land owners).

It took $3.5 million and 3 years to build this "house". He managed to live in the house, with his family, until 1924 before the effects of WWI turned the economy sour and he no longer had the income to sustain living there. The house ultimately sat vacant until 1933. Sir Henry passed away in 1939.

The source of this information came from here. Check it out. It literally will take you a few minutes to read and is interesting.

The house is a very interesting place to tour. I found we were given a bit more liberty in touring this house, than most others i have toured, i.e. Glensheen Mansion.

On the Way to Casa...

On saturday, jason took me out to see Casa Loma. We took the subway to get there. Yes, Toronto has a subway. When we got out of the subway and onto the street, i saw the bubble you see in the pic. above. It was exactly like the one we just came out of. Rather interesting subway entrance!

I snapped a few pics. of the local establishments on the way. Remember the picture in the last post where i said it was a picture of new vs. old world? The looming buildings in the background? Well, this kind of reminds me of that same picture, but without the looming building in the background. So this is the view that is missed when tall buildings are built.

Can you see the roof of Casa Loma? We had to walk a few blocks to get there. We just crossed the street from the subway entrance, when i looked up and saw this view.

As we got closer, i saw these fancy light posts. I think you can see them better if you click on the picture to make it bigger. Not sure why i felt the need to take a picture of a light post... Well, i was fascinated by the housing too. I'm fascinated with old buildings.

Old vs. New vs. World

When i was on the "gallery walk" with Jason's co-worker's girlfriend, she stopped at this spot and said, "this would be a good picture. it shows the old vs. new in one spot." I took a picture. She did this cropping thing with her hands (the signs of someone who knows :)). In looking at this picture again, it is kind of interesting. The tall buildings in the back loom like mountains behind the buildings of-old in front. This must have been an amazing view before those buildings came along and blocked out part of the sky.



That night i went with jason to part of China town. We were planning on going to Korea town but i think that was a bit more of a walk than what we wanted to do in the evening. We were looking for a place to eat. This is the part where i feel like there is a touch of New York. The open sidewalk markets where grocery stores put what they can't fit in their store out on the sidewalk. Well, i don't think that is the main reason why it's out there on the sidewalk. It's better business. This is would be a version of POS (point of sale or checkout lane endcap) impulse buying.



We walked into one market. It was very crowded. Not just people-crowded but shelving crowded and product-crowded. In the back there was a fish market. This is what fresh fish looks like. Well, it's much fresher than our frozen fish fillets in MN.

Conch! There were lots of other shellfish as well that were in tanks. My pictures were a little too blurry of that though.

These fuzzy things are fruit. I can't remember the name off hand. Jason's co-workers swore by these things. We can only get them dried in MN because they spoil too fast by the time we would get them. This is what they look like fresh! (i'll have to ask jason what these are again....)

We bought a handful and brought them back to eat. You have to wash them first before eating. Well, obviously! But the thing is, you don't eat the fuzzy stuff, you have to cut it open and peel the fruit flesh out. It was a rather interesting taste. I would get them again but they are a bit of work to peel and eat.

Pics and Such

We are still in the church/ gallery/ restaurant/ studio. After we got to the top of the stairs, there was this drinking fountain. The all-too-familiar sign above the drinking fountain (at least in art schools) of not dumping paint down the drain. Ha!



After wandering through the church a bit, we discovered that it was primarily a working studio and that there wasn't anything to look at (well, without interrupting people working). When we got outside the smell of food got the better of us and we decided to stop at a tiny little place. It was very dark but cozy. They had homemade mac n' cheese that was to die for. Perfect for a cold day.



Tom Waits was introduced to me by a co-worker. Lo and behold, Toronto knows Tom Waits. I was surprised to see this poster and had to take a picture of it immediately and post it on FB for my co-worker to see. It's amazing how big, yet how small, this world can be...

As we continued our journey down the street, we saw this very patient dog waiting for someone at this little cafe/ restaurant's door. Of course, when i took the pic. the dog looked away. I felt sort of bad because it was cold out, and this dog looked like he had been waiting for some time.

I know, it's just three bikes. But... they were lined up so neatly and the colors together were so pretty. When i took this pic. i was focused on the books. As i'm writing this, i'm noticing that there is an arrow on the pavement. Almost suggesting that the bikes were meant to "go", so you should give them a try. I wonder if the shopkeeper painted that arrow. Or, i wonder if the shopkeeper even knew it was there and intentionally parked the bikes there and parked the bikes in such a way so as to give an indication that the bikes were ready to go. Who knows.

The Next Day

The previous pictures were all taken on Thursday, the first full day in Toronto. On Friday, i was fortunate enough to walk down the art district part of Queen Street. I say "fortunate" because one of Jason's co-worker's girlfriend went with me.

She is from Quebec and had been living in Toronto for a few months with her boyfriend. I was very excited to meet with her because she has a background in art and shares the same passion i do. She also recently graduated from college with a media arts degree and was feeling the same way as i did; the sense of, "how do i make a living with art?"

Anyways, the first picture you saw above is of a building with a great mural painted on it. Did you notice the giant white insects crawling around the top of it? One reason why i'm glad bugs are smaller than me.



This is just a random picture as we were walking along. It seems like a city can't be a city without squishing buildings together, leaving no room to breath. It's interesting to see just how random each storefront is. This also demonstrates the evolution of outdoor malls.

Back at my home, it's one giant building with minor edits to the storefronts. County commissioners, or what-have-you, scream about making sure that retail stores blend into the background. It's like no one wants to admit that they truly are talking up a ton of space.... i digress. Anyways, the bottom line is, I spend a lot of my time with my head up in the air looking for the sign of the store i want...



This was rather interesting. We weren't sure if this was a "sign" for someones gallery or not. We tried the door and it was locked. The building inside looked to be abandoned but we couldn't really see too much into it.

The above picture, and all of my pictures unless otherwise noted, is taken with my iPhone. It is taken without any filters etc. Just natural light, and a point-and-shoot perspective.

Below is a second picture i took of the same thing, but i used my Toy Camera app. LOVE the toy camera app. You will see a few more examples as we go along.



As we walked along Queen St. we were looking for specific galleries. Since we had most of the day, we took our time and walked into a few other galleries as we went. We saw an old church across the street that had been converted into what appeared to be a gallery/ restaurant/ art school. It wasn't really clear though what was in the building and so we weren't 100% sure if we should go in or not.

We debated and then decided what the heck. I think we both felt we were on a quest to find that inspiration we had when we were in school. The freedom to just go anywhere art was because we were students and that's what students did. It doesn't make sense i know, but it does.

We walked through the front door of the building and we went up the stairs. As i looked down i snapped a picture of the entrance using my app. There is so much to say yet not so much. This picture is truly a thousand memories. While i'm not religious, i think churches are wonderful places to hang out in. I have fond memories if being in a church basement. Sitting in the girls bathroom with a few girlfriends and yammering away as my brother sat through his boy scouts meetings. What's interesting is, it's the linoleum in this picture that reminds me of this.