Toronto in 1868 - The Royal Insurance Company Building

This was originally posted on my Instagram account on July 4th, 2021.  

You can find me on Instagram @fiennesclinton

The Royal Insurance Company Building was built at the southeast corner of Yonge & Wellington streets in 1861 & demolished in 1960. By the time that Octavius Thompson was taking his photographs of Toronto in the 1860s, the area bounded by Wellington Street, Colborne Street, Yonge Street & Church Street was growing into the city’s financial district. Over the next several decades, Toronto’s business area would migrate westward towards King & Bay streets.

One thing that Thompson’s photographs from the 1860s emphasize is how Toronto was embracing some very elegant architecture at the time. A century later, in the 1960s, many of these buildings were destroyed in favour of the rather less elegant Modernist or Brutalist buildings that took their place.

The original text from Octavius Thompson’s “Toronto in the Camera” reads as follows.

“This handsome building, the Head Office of the Upper Canada Agency of the Royal, was erected in 1861, the rapidly increasing business of the Company demanding larger and more convenient premises. The style is Romanesque, and the details are worked out in a manner which does great credit to the architect, W. Kauffmann, Esq. The frontage on Wellington Street is 59 feet, and on Yonge Street 30 feet. The whole of the ground floor is occupied for the purposes of the Royal: the upper flats are used for offices, principally occupied by legal firms. The height of the building is about 40 feet. The progress of the Royal during the past few years, both in the Fire and Life Departments, has been very great. Its accumulated funds exceed $1,200,000, and its annual income is over $700,000. It now claims, with justice, to be ‘one of the largest insurance companies in the world’. The Toronto Branch is under the management of F.H. Heward, Esq.”