Art Gallery of Ontario

The Grange, an historic building in downtown Toronto, was the first home of the Art Museum of Toronto and, later, became one of the buildings of the current Art Gallery of Ontario.  The Grange was built in 1817 by D'Arcy Boulton, a member of the powerful Boulton family.  The Boultons were members of the Family Compact, a group of men that exercised a lot of the political, economic and judicial power in Upper Canada from the 1810s to the 1840s.  An ultra-conservative group, the Family Compact opposed democracy. 

D'Arcy Boulton married his wife, Sarah Anne Robinson, when she was nineteen.  Sarah's family were loyalists who had left America to settle in Canada after the American Revolution.  Although trained as a lawyer, Boulton worked as a merchant with his brother-in-law, Peter Robinson.  Boulton purchased the land for the Grange in 1808 for £350 from the estate of the Solicitor General, Robert Gray. 

By the time the Boultons moved into the completed Grange they had five children, and would have three more while living in their new home.  Sarah was very involved in the community and did much charity work, including working with St George the Martyr Church which had been built on land that had once been part of the Grange estate.  With the death of his parents, the eldest surviving son of D'Arcy and Sarah, William, inherited the Grange.  William was a lawyer and served a tenure as Mayor, even using his wages to pave roads in the city. 

William married Harriet Elizabeth Mann Dixon.  She came from a very wealthy family, and the Grange and seven acres of surrounding land were deeded to her as a wedding gift.  Harriet involved herself in many charities.  Garden parties, balls, and regular tennis matches were all held at the Grange during this period.

Following William Boulton's death, Harriet married Goldwin Smith.  Born in England, Smith had attended Oxford.  During the American Civil War he had travelled to America to see the situation first-hand, and voiced his support, unlike most Englishmen, for the North.  He became a professor at Cornell, but left his tenure when the university allowed women to attend.  He was a prolific journalist and, during his time living at the Grange, he established the Round Table Dining Club.  This group met at the Grange to discuss and debate a wide variety of topics.  Between 1890 and 1892, Algernon Blackwood worked at the Grange, assisting Godwin Smith with his work.  Blackwood was an English short story writer and novelist, as well as being one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. 

William Chin, first a coachman and then butler for the Boultons, remained in the service of Goldwin Smith until his death.  Chin, his wife, and seven children lived in the Grange Gatehouse. 

The Grange was left to become the Art Museum of Toronto in 1910.  In 1966, it was renamed the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

A cleaner at the Grange claimed to have seen a spectral figure of a man standing at the top of a staircase staring at her.  A former guide at the Grange reported being aware of three different spirits haunting the building.  One was a gentleman that wore a yellow coat and, seemingly, materialised through a wall.  A Lady in Black has been seen wandering around the bedrooms, and a more frightening Woman in White has materialised near the main stairwell.  A shadowy male figure seen in the library is believed to be Goldwin Smith or William Chin.  Chin's last entry in the household ledger said, "Left dear old Grange at 1.00 o'clock p.m. to be the wanderer."  Some witnesses have alleged that the ghost is that of Algernon Blackwood, the famed horror fantasy writer. 

The Art Gallery of Toronto is an amazing building incorporating various types of architecture, including the impressive Grange.