Casa Loma
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Casa Loma (literally House on the Hill) is a Toronto tourist attraction and the former home of financier Sir Henry Mill Pellatt and is located on Austin Terrace, at the south end of Spadina Road on an escarpment above Davenport Road. Davenport runs along the bottom of the escarpment which was the shoreline of Lake Iroquois, the predecessor of Lake Ontario (coordinates ). Casa Loma affords views down the escarpment and Spadina Avenue into the heart of Toronto.
Sir Henry commissioned Canadian architect E.J. Lennox to design Casa Loma with construction beginning in 1911, starting with the massive stables a few hundred feet north of the main building. The stables were used as a construction site for the castle, some of the machinery still remaining in the rooms under the stables. The house cost approximately $3.5 million and took a team of 300 workers three years to build from start to finish. Upon completion in 1914, at 98 rooms, it was the largest private residence in Canada. Notable amenities included an elevator, an oven large enough to cook a steer, two vertical passages for pipe organs, two secret passages in Sir Henry's ground-floor office and three bowling alleys. Many of the rooms were left unfinished, and today serve as a small museum for the Queen's Own Rifles, of which Pellat was the Honourary Colonel. During the Depression, Toronto increased Casa Loma's annual property taxes from $400 to $1,200, and Pellatt—already experiencing financial difficulties—was forced to auction off $1.5-million in art and furnishings for only $250,000 during bankruptcy hearings. Sir Henry was able to enjoy life in the castle for only ten years, vacating it in 1923. Pellatt also operated the building for a short time as a luxury hotel. During the late 1920s Casa Loma was also a popular nightspot. The Orange Blossoms, later known as Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra, played there for eight months in 1927–1928. Shortly thereafter, they went on tour of North America and became a major Swing Era dance band.
The city seized Casa Loma in 1933 for $27,303 in back taxes.
In 1937 it was opened to the public for the first time as a tourist attraction operated by the Kiwanis Club of Toronto. Today it is regarded as one of Toronto's premier tourist attractions, still profitably operated by the Kiwanis.
Parts of the movie X-Men were shot at Casa Loma, which stood in for Professor Xavier's school for gifted mutants. The castle was also the setting for Canadian children's author Eric Wilson's murder mystery, "The Lost Treasure of Casa Loma".
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