Case Study: Artscape Wychwood Barns, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

By Beth Broome

Once an active transit hub at the western terminus of Canada’s Toronto Civic Railways (TCR), the five parallel streetcar storage and maintenance barns comprising the St. Clair Carhouse fell into disrepair after being decommissioned and abandoned in 1985. The story of the facility’s revival as Artscape Wychwood Barns, a neighborhood arts and cultural center surrounded by the single-family residences of Toronto’s 21st Ward, offers multiple lessons in the value of adaptive reuse and sustainable design, historic preservation, and community engagement.