The cultural value of suburban homes
The perceived lameness of suburbs is well-recorded in the past 70 years’ worth of North American popular culture. Accusations of mundanity, uniformity, and repression all figure strongly in anthems like Malvina Reynolds’s “Little Boxes” and Rush’s “Subdivisions” (which is about Willowdale). A 1957 essay in Esquire magazine went so far as to refer to suburbs as “corrosive of the soul and unfit for human habitation.”
I’ve spent the last six months obsessing over what many Torontonians today still call “boring suburban houses.” As a project manager at the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s Toronto branch, I researched and photographed over 1,000 single-family, detached homes across North York, the city’s most populous district. I then created a detailed profile for each building in TOBuilt, the organization’s digital catalogue of architecture and heritage landscapes.
Few neighbourhoods in North York are dense, walkable or near rapid transit. They almost all necessitate car ownership and stand in spacious webs of two-way streets leading predominantly to other houses and wide thoroughfares brimming with cars.
Yet, during my many criss-crossing drives through the former borough, something else became apparent to me: Toronto’s “subdivision-style” homes are cultural wellsprings. I documented a range of house styles in North York that are unique to Southern Central Ontario and perhaps the GTA itself.
Although familiar across Canada, the victory house takes regionally distinct forms in Toronto, where it’s disappearing. These modest, boxy homes resembling Monopoly board-game pieces were built in swathes for returning Second World War veterans on the then-outskirts of the city.
They’re the prototypical suburban house, which paved the way for Toronto’s future, sprawling subdivisions. I profiled hundreds of examples, each of which stands as living proof of the postwar consciousness that so dramatically shaped 21st-century life.
Another suburban house style I documented, the archvilla, is seldom talked about despite being one of Toronto’s most common building designs. Built between 1950 and 1980, it stands out for its successive round-headed arches, curved iron railings, and covered porches. These hallmarks were often added by homeowners — usually Italian-Canadians — rather than featuring in the original blueprints, and are inspired by Renaissance villa architecture.
Stacked up beside Toronto’s infamous bay-and-gable townhouses, its archvillas might make a taller tower. Don’t they capture our cultural imaginations as richly as Queen Anne revival, second empire, and Edwardian homes?
This question is generally even less accessible when applied to newer suburban houses, the bulk of which have been snubbed with a single, overbroad term: neo-eclectic. Neo means “new” and eclectic means mixing contrasting elements, so neo-eclectic houses are new houses that combine multiple architectural styles. But what those styles are, and which houses combine which styles, is seldom distinguished. Thus, suburban houses built in Toronto in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are often dismissed as indistinct and tasteless.
A neo-eclectic house in Newtonbrook is no less multi-dimensional than celebrated Tudor revival or arts and crafts houses in High Park. The difference is one has been interpreted and legitimized while the other hasn’t.
Imagine if the latter two styles were smooshed together into a blurry category called “historical revival?” I’m not saying Toronto’s contemporary suburban houses are a good answer to its sundry housing and transportation problems. But they are culturally relevant, if solely by virtue of their expansive influence on the reality of millions of people.
As this young century progresses, houses in Humber Summit, Maple Leaf, and Bayview Woods accrue increasing historical significance. In 20 years, many victory houses will be century homes.
But it’s worth remembering that houses, suburban or otherwise, don’t need to be old to qualify as culturally interesting. They’re as sharp a lens for understanding the present as they are for learning about the past.