On the northeast corner of Hoskin Avenue and St George Street there is a handsome and richly clad house that every University of Toronto student should know. It’s a red brick, three-storey modeled in the style of the Romanesque and its basement houses a coffee shop that is a calculated distance from Robarts Library across the street.

The residence was built in 1890 for “The Barley King of Canada,” Wilmot Deloui Matthews. Matthews was the co-founder of the Canada Malting Company and President of Consolidated Mining, the Canada Foundry, and the Pembroke Railway. His residence is one of the many large estates that lined St George Street at the turn of the century.

To celebrate the occasion of his daughter’s wedding, Matthews commissioned Toronto architect George M. Miller and sculptor Gustav Hahn to design an Art Nouveau ballroom for his house. Following his death in 1919, the house and its ballroom became a residence for Catholic students; in more recent years, it has been occupied by the Newman Centre Chapel.

Despite the changes in ownership, the Matthews House still retains its original exterior features and, most remarkably, the splendours of its interior. Whereas the future is uncertain for many historic homes in Toronto (such as the residences on Jarvis Street and Wellesley Place), stewardship of this residence illustrates that re-use of our historic built environment can, in fact, successfully preserve it.

Nancy Byrtus, Judy Matthews