A WEB EXHIBIT CURATED BY LINDSAY ROSE
Project management: Carl Benn; Artwork: Kevin Hebib; Web Design: City of Toronto Creative Services; Additional Research: Jacquie Johnson; New Photography: Lindsay Rose and Jose San Juan
CONSTRUCTING GENTILITY: INTRODUCTION
Victorian-era Mackenzie House embraces both modest charms and social complexities that allow us to explore the fascinating ideals and realities of the consumer revolution and its social pressures as it affected people’s homes in the 19th-century urban environment.
MACKENZIE HOUSE EXTERIOR AND DINING ROOM
City of Toronto Culture
Located at 82 Bond Street, just east of today’s intersection of Yonge and Dundas streets in downtown Toronto, Mackenzie House originally was one in a terrace of houses constructed in the Greek Revival style between 1855 and 1859 (although now it is the only surviving building of the row). Restored as a historic house museum and operated by the City of Toronto, it commemorates the lives and times of its original occupants: newspaperman and radical politician, William Lyon Mackenzie, his wife, Isabel Baxter Mackenzie, three of their grown children, and their servant, Catherine Byrnes.
PARLOUR AND PARENTS’ BEDROOM
City of Toronto Culture
In this ‘virtual exhibit,’ we invite you to discover the social and aesthetic significance of Mackenzie House within the broader context of domestic environments in 1860s Toronto, the period to which the home is restored. Naturally, we also encourage you to visit Mackenzie House ‘in reality’ during its open hours where you can explore the themes and ideas of this exhibit within a preserved, authentic environment as well as discover the many other stories associated with the building.
Continue on to next section:
A Victorian Consumer Revolution
Constructing Gentility - Contents
1. Introduction
2. A Victorian Consumer Revolution
3. A Greek Revival Row House
4. Gentility vs Reality
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