Bruce Bell, History Columnist –
The first time I saw the Chateau of Versailles, built in 1682 for King Louis XIV on the outskirts of Paris, I said to myself, “That looks like Osgoode Hall!”
A slight overstatement, of course, as Versailles is ten times as big and completely over the top. But it sure comes close.
France’s opulent château once housed tyrannical kings and queens, while our Osgoode Hall has been home to the Ontario Court of Appeal, the Superior Court of Justice and the headquarters of the Law Society of Upper Canada since it was built in 1829.
Osgoode Hall never ceases to amaze me – it’s one of the most beautiful buildings in Toronto, though hidden by an ornate fence and big leafy trees around its six-acre site at Queen Street and University Avenue.
When Osgoode Hall was first constructed, the little Town of York had a population of about 2,000, a small wooden market, a couple of nice churches, a comfortably modest parliament building and a mill or two. The original building was finished in 1832 by John Ewart and W.W. Baldwin and named for William Osgoode, the first chief justice of Upper Canada.
In 1844 Osgoode Hall was expanded by Henry Bowyer Lane, architect of the City Hall on Front Street that is now encased within St. Lawrence Market.
As the town grew up and became the City of Toronto, public buildings began to take a more polished look. Osgoode Hall led the way with the addition of its grand centre block in the cultured Palladian style named for the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). Palladio’s sophisticated approach to architecture swept through Europe in the 17th century and arrived in Toronto in the 1850s.
The centre block with its stunning façade was added in 1856 by the architectural firm Cumberland and Storm, builders of the present St. James’ Cathedral (1853). With rooftop urns high above the gentle yet commanding stone entrance, Osgoode Hall looked like a fashionable European palace, intimidating yet alluring at the same time. Thus the Versailles comparison.
Surrounding the building is an elaborate metal fence with entry gates built in a zig-zag fashion. Legend has it the gates were to keep wandering cows from feeding on the sweeping lawns at a time when Osgoode Hall was on the outer edge of town. (In the 1950s, law students unsuccessfully attempted to pass a cow through a gate.)
However, I have also heard that the gates were designed to slow down an advancing army of heavily clad American soldiers. (In 1814, York had been sacked by U.S. forces.)
After maneuvering through a gate, you cross a luxuriantly manicured lawn. Without trees and fence blocking your view, this impressive building is fully apparent. People may be wary of entering unless they have to for legal reasons, but after you pass through a metal detector you are free to roam the public spaces of this great hall.
In the main rotunda underneath a brilliant stained-glass dome is a striking oil painting of Queen Victoria. Her royal initials VR (Victoria Regina) are etched into the hall’s windows, for it was during her reign (1837–1901) that Toronto, once a lonely colonial outpost of the British Empire, became the Queen City of Canada.
The piece de resistance of Osgoode Hall is on the second floor: a dazzling library with its magnificently detailed plaster.
As you stroll about this historic building with its grand staircases, hushed oak-paneled rooms and oil paintings of judges who had the power of life or death over certain convicts, you could imagine being invited to an English country manor home out of a Jane Austin novel or being a French peasant coming for the head of Marie Antoinette.
However, in recent months the grounds of our Palace to Justice have been ripped up and its elderly trees chopped down to build a subway station for the new Ontario Line. The South African War Memorial and its fountains that stood just west of Osgoode Hall have been temporarily dismantled and a four-storey construction tent built on the grounds.
Not to worry, for we’re told the construction mess will be short-lived. If we’ve learned anything from the building of the Eglinton LRT, it should be finished in our lifetime or the next.
