Iconic home for sale
Architect wanted to create a house unlike any other in suburbs
One of Toronto’s quirkiest homes — an angular blue property at 1 Bond Ave. that made waves in cookie-cutter Don Mills when it was built in the late 1990s — is on the market.
The house, along with its fraternal twin property at 3 Bond Ave., drew the ire of neighbours when it was constructed.
“People here are very used to the brick, and if you don’t have an asphalt roof and brown brick, they think you’re crazy,” architect Zak Ghanim recalled. “Their eyes are used to that.”
Real estate agent Nick Bernhard “was looking for something really very funky,” said Ghanim, who was hired by Bernhard to design both properties off Leslie St., between Lawrence Ave. E. and York Mills Rd.
Ghanim, who was born in Egypt, said he was inspired by the colours found in its architecture — unlike the Canadian suburbs, where it’s all “beige, beigey beige, beigey grey and grey beige.”
He wanted to do something “non-traditional” with the wood, concrete and stucco homes, “rather than just follow the same stream, whatever you see around you, copy and paste.”
But there was “big opposition in the community for the design and shape.”
It took a long time to get the plans approved by what was then North York’s building department. City inspectors doubted the homes could even be built and dropped in on construction just to double-check, the Star reported in 1997.
In a 1998 Canadian Press article, one neighbour compared the Bond Ave. house to “Disneyland going up on the corner.”
“People were swearing at me,” Ghanim recalled with a laugh. But once the homes were built, residents slowly came around, he said — even when they were painted bold shades of blue and yellow.
“They thought that this would destroy their community. Meanwhile, once it was finished, I got so many offers,” Ghanim said.
The property at 1 Bond Ave., which has since been painted a softer shade of blue, has been on the market since September and is priced at $2.95 million.
Realtor Marco Chiappetta said there’s “nothing quite like” the 3,800-square-foot fourbedroom, five-bath home, calling it “an aspirational property” that’s “iconic for Toronto.”
“There’s no straight walls in the home, it’s all curved walls, angled and everything, but it’s extremely functional,” he said.
Chiappetta noted the in-law suite, or office in the basement, has a separate entrance, and that hedges and perennial gardens give the lot “maximum privacy.” It includes eight parking spaces and, just in case you don’t own a car, there’s a bus stop right outside.
Another of Toronto’s most ar- chitecturally distinct homes, the green cubes at Don Valley Parkway and 1 Sumach St. sold for condo redevelopment over the summer.
The Star reported in August that tenants were told to relocate and that the structures would be dismantled and possibly auctioned off. They were built in the style of Dutch architect Piet Blom’s Rotterdam cube homes in 1996.
But despite the few months on the market, Chiappetta, a realtor with Sotheby’s International Realty Canada, said he doesn’t think there will be any trouble finding the right buyer for 1 Bond Ave.
The naysayers speak “more toward the consumer in the ’90s, where the market was catered more toward the more cookie-cutter subdivision kind of homes,” he said, adding the house is ideal for “somebody with an imagination, with a creative spark.” Owner Gabriel Talasman, who purchased 1 Bond — the larger of the two properties — from Bernhard in 2005, reassures potential buyers that “inside it is very ‘normal.’ ”
Talasman, a retired architect, has always appreciated the non-conformist design but “respects” the fact that it might not be to everyone’s tastes.
He and his wife are now empty-nesters and looking to downsize, but, he said, “it’s a hard act to follow.”