AGENDA

VAUGHAN ESTATE: IMPERIAL GRANDEUR

Toronto in the 1930s was a city in love with the British Empire - its style and accoutrements - and that sensibility is evident today in the elegant ambiance of the Vaughan Estate.

In 1927, John James Vaughan purchased land and built a fine home, "Donningvale" on the edge of the Sunnybrook Farms ravine, now called the Vaughan Estate. Built of grey stone, in the Jacobethan style it strikingly evoked an English country house, to which wealthy Toronto executives aspired in those days of the Empire. Its symmetrical parapeted gables, blue-grey slate roofs and Tudor entrances are but a few of the manor's details that give it such distinction.

Vaughan, was the right hand person for Sir John Eaton in operating the great department stores of the T. Eaton Company and its subsidiary ventures. He was a founding member of the Toronto Art Gallery (now AGO), and a director of Maple Leaf Gardens and the Bank of Toronto. Both Vaughan and his wife were active in charities and service clubs.

The restored property of today has been respectfully decorated in a style befitting the Imperial sense of hospitality that rekindles the haunting feeling of that era. It is a style the Estates are pleased to maintain for meeting holders in the new century.