Heritage Register
Fernwood
2006-08-10 Fernwood Road
Rennie & Taylor Apartments, then Rennie Block
Built
1913
Heritage-Designated 2008/Commercial/Apartment, now Apartment
For: William Rennie & John Taylor
ARCHITECTURE:
This apartment block is a symmetrical three-storey, flat-roofed building with brown brick on the upper two stories. The second and third floor windows on the façade are single or triple multi-lights-over-one. All the windows on the upper floors are double-hung sashes with flat brick lintels on the front and segmental arched lintels on the side and rear. There are metal cornices above the first and third floor levels, and a brick parapet on the roof. For many years, the ground-floor façade was stuccoed except for two corner pilasters with capitals and the trim around the central entry. The building has recently been rehabilitated, and the one-storey extension on the right, numbered 2012 and 2012½, originally contained rental apartments as well, but was no longer listed by 1951. It was removed c.2005-07 to create a driveway to the panhandle lot behind. [A container house was constructed on that site.] The two shop fronts on either side of the entrance to the upper apartments have been reconstructed. There are clerestory windows above each set of the wooden shop windows and the inset entrances. Glazed tiles have been revealed below the shop windows. However, the original shops have been rehabilitated to remain as apartments.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
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Bakers William James Rennie and John Taylor (1284-98 Gladstone Av, Fernwood) purchased this property from James Goldstraw in 1910, and had Parfitt Brothers (1921-23 Fernwood Rd) construct the apartment block three years later to the north of their bakery. It was known as Rennie & Taylor Apartments and later as Rennie Block Apartments, at 2008 Fernwood. There were originally two shop fronts on the ground level: 2006 housed Alex Hendry’s grocery and the Post Office Sub Station No.4 in 1914, but that address soon disappeared from the city directories. 2010 Fernwood housed John Russell Wescott’s (1334 Johnson St, Fernwood) drygoods business in 1914, Joseph Lott (1301-11 Gladstone Av, Fernwood) the shoemaker in the 1920s, and Rennie & Taylor’s bakeshop in the 1930s. The ground floor spaces became apartments during the early 1940s.
