Opened on December 4th, 1954, the $2 million University College Men’s Residence honours the name of Sir Daniel Wilson (1816–92), who served as principal of University College from 1880 and later became President of the University of Toronto from 1887 to 1892. It was one of the last structures erected on St George Street in a genteel Georgian Revival style prescribed by the University after 1920 which was followed for more than thirty years, until the campus building boom on the west side of the street after 1955. Designed by the firm of Mathers and Haldenby (who also planned Whitney Hall to the north), the project has 183 single rooms and a dining hall seating 220 persons (Globe & Mail, 30 Nov. 1954, p. 3, illus. & descrip.). The plan was divided into six houses named after the heads of the College from the time of its establishment in 1853 (McCaul House, Loudon House, Hutton House, Wallace House, Taylor House, and Jeanneret House), and each offered the requisite comfort and convenience (but not extravagance) one might expect in post-war campus buildings.

The U-shaped plan was an attempt to form a quadrangle with the existing University College (1856–59) on the east side, but the degree of enclosure was no match for the comforting sense of containment and scale found in the quadrangle of nearby Trinity College. The project redeemed itself, however, by its distinctive clock tower facing St George Street, which has been set above the stripped-down classical portico entrance reminiscent of the work of Robert Adam and George Dance, two eminent architects of Georgian London.

Robert G. Hill