Lawyer and Toronto native Stephen Durbin has a strong affection for the city he grew up in. So after living outside the city for several years, when he heard the penthouse suite in the historic waterfront Tip Top Lofts building was available, he jumped at the chance.
When he first saw it two years ago, the loft was strikingly beautiful even empty, with its 15-foot ceilings, raw concrete walls, pipe stairwell railings, and the huge, rectilinear factory windows that the building is famous for. The muscle and bone of the space provided a perfect backdrop for a highly personal collection of art, antiques, and modern furnishings, and an endlessly interesting study in contrasts.
The Tip Top Tailors building, with its exuberant tile decorations and the name spelt out in bright red letters above the roof, is one of the city’s most familiar heritage industrial buildings. Built by Bishop & Miller Architects in 1929, it’s one of the finest local examples of Art Deco architecture still standing, and was once the manufacturing, warehousing, office and retail headquarters of a leading Canadian menswear clothier. Designated a heritage property in 1972, it was converted into lofts in 2002 by Context, a developer known for mostly sensitive adaptive-reuse conversions of historic buildings.
Durbin confesses he’s an autodidact when it comes to design, but developed a keen eye through reading, and extensive travelling over the course of his life. Through the years, he has also had sidelines in a variety of businesses, including import-export of carpets and antiques, many of them from Cuba. “Havana was once considered the New York of the Caribbean,” he explains. “With its perfect location and deep harbour, antiques were brought there from all over the world.”
The loft is set on three levels and enclosed only minimally by walls, especially on the main level. The front door opens almost directly into the living area at the near end – under one of those broad, distinctive factory windows – where a big, comfy sectional sofa sits next to a huge, gnarled tea tree root that serves as a TV stand. In contrast to the heftiness of the architecture and furniture in this area, in the corner stands a delicate statue of Venus on a pedestal. She’s one of a number of Cuban imports in the loft, and carefully lit to cast just the right shadows at night.
The kitchen is open to the main floor and faces the seating area, so its design was kept purposely low-key, with appliances and storage tidily concealed behind a row of tall, narrow black doors facing a stainless steel-topped island. The range hood over the cooktop anchors one end of a hanging stainless steel canopy that brings the ceiling down to human scale, for casual diners at the island barstools. (It also provides a handy spot to store a bright red stepladder for accessing the highest cupboards, as he cheerfully demonstrates.)
At the far end, in a space that Durbin speculates might have once housed a freight elevator, the dining area features a coolly modern glass and steel table and linen-upholstered chairs; on the wall behind, a big and elaborate framed antique mirror reflects the view from another factory window, and the black-painted steel railings of the stairwell.
Of all the elements in the loft (save, perhaps, those iconic windows), the stairwell is perhaps the most striking design feature preserved from the building’s factory days – one can almost imagine workers walking down to lunch, or up with samples in their arms. They lead up to the master suite and office, or down to a lower level that houses a guest room and bath, home gym, storage areas and a door leading directly into the parking garage – a perq that makes it feel almost like a private home, he says.
In the open volume – rising as much as 30 feet to the top – are a trio of exquisite silk Golparvar prayer rugs from the Persian villages of Mashad and Qum, two suspended in the air and a third on a wall. “I call this my flying carpet gallery,” he says with a laugh. Too beautiful for ordinary foot traffic, the handknotted rugs feature one million knots of silk per yard, and are as beautiful on their undersides as the tops.
The landing at the top of the stairs makes a fine, brightly lit eyrie for a glass home-office desk, set under law degrees on one wall (and a small framed cover of Time featuring Steve Jobs – for inspiration, perhaps), and on the other, a series of pen-and-ink drawings of Santeria-inspired scenes by the Cuban artist Mendive. Just outside the second guest bedroom, set atop a huge, ornately carved Cuban linen chest that serves as a bar cabinet, is another feminine, eye-catching figure: a vintage, and purely decorative, Art Deco lamp in the form of a nymph. “It was too cost-prohibitive to have it rewired,” he says, a bit ruefully. “Even to move it you need two people, moving very carefully.”
The ensuite was one of the more extensively renovated rooms, and it’s a study in sybaritic abandon: as large as some condo living rooms, it features a long vanity inset with a pair of square waterfall-style sinks, and a shower, uncluttered by shower curtain or glass, big enough to have a party in. The shower features a wide curving lip at its feet and walls of slate inset with mosaic tile, along with a quadruple showerhead that makes you think of a waterfall in a grotto. “I could probably fit a loveseat instead of a bench in there,” he says.
The master bedroom has the most interesting view in the loft: a quintessentially Torontonian vista of the CN Tower flanked by old warehouses and new condos, reflected in a mirror that takes up almost the entire opposite wall. Among all these big gestures is another witty and wonderful contrast: a delicate 19th-century Damascene games table intricately inlaid with ivory and wood marquetry, that opens into a pretty little writing desk, complete with letter holders and ink wells.
“I love this city, and I’m so happy to be living here again,” Durbin says. “My work can sometimes be quite stressful, and this is a wonderful, tranquil oasis to come home to. At night, with the music on, cooking a great dinner, with the lighting just right, and looking at the city out the windows, it’s just a great place to be.”
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