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George Brown House (Toronto)

house in Toronto

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2025
Entity authorityQ5537330 ↗
Source-derived summary

George Brown House is a historic building in the Grange Park neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was home to Father of Confederation, Reform Party politician and publisher George Brown. Its current address is 186 Beverley Street.

History

Brown built the Second Empire-style home, which he named Lambton Lodge, between 1874 and 1876. In 1880, he died in the house after being shot in the leg in his office by a disgruntled employee at The Globe newspaper which he founded.

Between 1889 and 1916, Duncan Coulson, president of the Bank of Toronto, lived in the house with his wife Eliza and three children. Following Coulson's death, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind obtained the house in 1920 and used it for office space until 1956. A school for the blind was attached in 1920, which was later replaced by a school for developmentally-challenged children, and demolished in 1984.

George Brown House was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1976, but was then in a bad state of disrepair. Threatened by demolition, the Ontario Heritage Trust intervened.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “George Brown House (Toronto)” is house in Toronto. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through George, Brown and House, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1874, 1876, 1880, 1889—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, George, Brown and House is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “house in Toronto” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5537330. Authority coordinates are 43.656, -79.395. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1874, 1876, 1880 and 1889.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “George Brown House (Toronto)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow George Brown House (Toronto) primary sources, George Brown House (Toronto) archive and George research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “George Brown House (Toronto)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.