Birthplace
of "Toronto The Good"
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Called at times The French House, The Clarke House (after former owners going back several generations), The Crooked House, or Twisted Towers, it was built in 1876 as the Victorian summer home of William Howland, the son of one of Canada's Fathers of Confederation, and the grandfather of the late Ontario Chief Justice, Bill Howland.
Howland House is available for monthly and weekly rentals throughout the year, and can sleep 5 people comfortably (although 2 more can be accommodated if necessary on a bed sofa in the downstairs TV / music room). Rental charges are $1,400.00 / week.
There are three bedrooms, with linen and all bedding provided. The very large master bedroom has a queen-sized bed which sits in the second floor turret, and has a view of the lake; the second bedroom, overlooking the garden, has a brass double bed, its own separate sunroom and a second, private, flight of stairs; and the third has a single bed and small open balcony at the front of the house. There is also a screened front verandah, perfect for late-night lazing or book reading, a second ground-floor sunroom off the kitchen, and a large living room, with dining room which runs the full front of the house.
There is parking for one car, but we have made arrangements with the neighbours, in the past, to accommodate one more.
Howland House comes with 2 bathrooms (one is sink and toilet only); washer and dryer; barbeque; two bicycles to tour the beautiful Niagara countryside; three televisions and two VCRs; lots and lots of books; a large back garden with a cedar dining table and six chairs; a new electric replica of an old-fashioned wood-burning stove; and a once-weekly cleaning service and gardener. If power ever goes off in a storm, there is a wind-up phonograph with 78 r.p.m. records and oil lamps!
The house, built originally as a cottage, has central air conditioning and a forced-air gas furnace but since no ducting was ever put in upstairs, we rely on lake breezes in the summer to cool off the bedrooms, and space heaters in the winter.
It's a ten minute walk to the town's golf course and the main street of Niagara-on-the-Lake, and of course, the Shaw Theatre. Ryerson Park, a small park that runs along the lake's edge across the road from the house, is a popular spot for residents to congregate and watch / photograph / toast the fabulous sunsets.
There is a small, albeit stony, bay there where swimming, paddling, windsurfing, kayaking, and shell-collecting are enjoyed.
William Howland, wealthy in his prime, was the popular mayor of Toronto for two terms (1886 and '87) running on a reform-and-temperance ticket. He formed Toronto's first morality squad, cleaned out illegal liquor dens, and closed scores of brothels in the festering city of the 1880s.
Howland coined the phrase "Toronto The Good".
He died almost penniless at age 49, having given away most of his fortune to the poor, to Christian charity organizations, and to a system of free metropolitan bible schools which he established.
The large white and dark gray-painted wood-frame Victorian, with its original beautiful stained glass windows, was built on wood and stone supports, later reinforced with concrete pylons, and because it was originally a summer "cottage", has no basement. The house started settling during construction, which accounts for some of the odd architectural features - windows and doors set in walls that lean, in no particular direction, as much as 10 degrees off the perpendicular and horizontal, and which were cut and shaped to accommodate the lean.
The house stopped settling at least one hundred years ago, and has been well reinforced since then. Its strange angles and twists and turns, as well as the completely pine-paneled interiors (ceilings, walls and floors), give some visitors the sense that they are out at sea, in a tall ship.
In the 1890s it and five other homes in the area designed by the same architect (four are still standing) became part of the Chautauqua Settlement in what was then known as the Mississauga Beaches. The Chautauqua was a commercial American religion - and philosophy-based summer residential enterprise that advocated a healthy spiritual, physical, intellectual, and moral existence, and righteous education among its 2,000 or more members, most of them from the U.S.
The group built summer homes for its members, a 2,000-seat amphitheatre, a 100-room boarding house, and a hotel. Chautauqua was so popular that it was linked by streetcar to the St. Catharines' railhead, and had its own ferry docks, before the organization's financial base collapsed about 1910, and the settlement was abandoned.
Ownership of the property eventually reverted to the town.
Reminders of the settlement remain, particularly in the unique layout of the streets, which radiate like the spokes of a giant wheel from the hub where the amphitheatre stood, and the street names, which recall religious figures, philosophers, writers, and social theorists studied and admired by the Chautauquans. Howland House is situated on a street the group named for William Wilberforce, the great 18th-century British liberal abolitionist.
The
area is now often called "Camp Shaw" because of the number of actors, crew
and staff of the Shaw Festival who have found the area, despite its short
walk to the center of "Old Town" (as residents call the main downtown streets
of Niagara-on-the-Lake), to be a quiet respite from the theatres and the
audiences.
For availabilities and rates, please contact:
Howland House
Phone: 905.468.0855, Fax: 416.922.7948
E-mail: howlandhouse2002@yahoo.com
Howland House
Phone: 905.468.0855, Fax: 416.922.7948
E-mail: howlandhouse2002@yahoo.com
All
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