A CLASSIC REBORN
Historic Guild Inn, which was in danger of demolition, has been restored and now hosts weddings,
East Scarborough’s historic Guild Inn was boarded up for almost a generation, deteriorating and hopeless.
That building, which sat in Guild Park like a rebuke for many years, has been reborn.
It’s now part of the Guild Inn Estates, a sleek event centre that staged its first wedding on April 28 and plans to host 200 more by the end of the year. Considering even the old inn’s most ardent fans had been close to giving up — six years ago, the Heritage Canada Foundation declared the place “in imminent danger of demolition by neglect” — what happened is a small miracle.
Dynamic Hospitality and Entertainment Group, chosen by the city of Toronto in 2014 to run the place, cut away asbestos-filled additions to the original 1914 house, the Bickford Residence, and married it to a new four-section banquet hall and a grand gazebo.
Francesca Bancheri, Dynamic’s director of special events and community relations, said the first time she stepped into the Bickford, visitors could only enter on planks.
“The floors were rotting. You couldn’t even walk through the space,” she said during a tour last week.
The city shut the old inn in 2001. Much of what people remember about it, particularly Guildwood residents who enjoyed its former restaurant, remains in the restored Bickford: the staircases, wainscotting and fireplaces, though those won’t be working.
“They’ll still see what it used to be,” said Bancheri, as workers were finishing flooring the restaurant, which will open in June and seat 60.
“We’re looking at Friday and Saturday dinners, Sunday brunches.”
The second floor now holds offices and a refuge for bridal parties, but the Bickford’s history lingers. It was home to the China Mission College, a military convalescent hospital, as well as Rosa and Spencer Clark, who founded the Guild of All Arts, an art colony on Guild Park’s 36 hectares by the Scarborough Bluffs.
Dynamic broke ground in November 2015. Its 12,000-square-foot hall can be divided into four rooms, each with floor-to-ceiling views of the park, with its many sculptures and architectural fragments collected by the Clarks from vanished Toronto buildings. A stained-glass window representing the original Guild was transplanted to the new west wing. Paintings by Rosa Clark and other Guild artists — stored by the city in various places — should be up in a hallway by next month.
On the Bickford’s east side, a 4,000square-foot gazebo can be used for outdoor ceremonies, seats 450 and has a built-in sound system.
On June 2, the Guildwood Village Community Association, Friends of Guild Park, Guild Festival Theatre and Guild Renaissance Group will host an evening event celebrating the Guild Inn Estate and Canada’s 150th year. Tickets are $35.
A waterfront park is being planned below the bluffs at Guild Park, which also houses the Osterhout log cabin, one of Scarborough’s oldest structures, and another building the city is turning into a public arts centre.