Tuesday Treasures

  Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.

Travel Tuesday

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My Corner of the World

Toronto ON

Alpha Alternative (formerly Brant Street Public School) is architecturally significant as a good example of Neo-Gothic design favoured for early 20th-century educational buildings. Contextually, the building is a local landmark as one of the few institutional buildings found in the King-Spadina neighbourhood. The building is now surrounded by high-rise condos.

 The heritage attributes of the building are found on the exterior walls and roof. Rising three stories above a basement, the structure is built of reinforced concrete blocks clad with brown brick and trimmed with stone. On the six-bay principal (east) facade, the main entrance is located at street level in the right (north) bay. A round-arched stone portal with a multi-paned transom is decorated with an oversized hood mould, carved spandrels, a name plaque, and a date stone (1926).

Brant Street School circa 1928.

16 Brant Street in the spring of 1939 with the Public School in the background.

Eight months later after the repair work. The house is long gone, but the school remains.