Inclusion on the City of Toronto's Heritage Register - 55 St Edmunds Drive

55 St. Edmunds Drive represents the early wave of residential development in the Lawrence Park neighbourhood, which was planned and developed on the Garden Suburb model and envisioned by businessman Wilfrid Dinnick. The neighbourhood was developed to plans prepared by the architects Vaux Chadwick and Samuel Beckett and features houses designed by some of Toronto's most prolific and talented 20th century architects. 55 St. Edmunds Drive is one of six houses known to have been designed by William Breden Galbraith within the Lawrence Park neighbourhood, of which four remain. Galbraith is believed to have been a self-taught architect, who established a primarily residential practice in Toronto in 1918. He designed one of the earliest houses in Lawrence Park - in 1913 - for himself, and through the 1910s and 1920s received commissions within the neighbourhood as well as in other residential suburbs in Toronto, including Rosedale, Forest Hill and Moore Park. Much of Galbraith's residential portfolio was featured through a series of articles published in the newspaper Saturday Night between 1925 and 1930, and which were subsequently included in his 1930 pattern book, A Canadian Home Plan Book. 55 St. Edmunds Drive is featured as house plan number 1601 in the aforementioned publication. The property at 55 St. Edmunds Drive was documented by the Toronto Historical Board in 1982, and was included in the Historical Walking Tour of Lawrence Park (2007 edition), published by the Toronto Public Library in partnership with the Lawrence Park Ratepayers' Association and the North Toronto Historical Society. A nomination was submitted to Heritage Planning by the North York Community Preservation Panel with the support of the North Toronto Historical Society in May, 2021 requesting the property be evaluated to determine whether it merits inclusion on the City's Heritage Register. City staff have undertaken further research and evaluation and determined that the property at 55 St. Edmunds Drive meets Ontario Regulation 9/06, the criteria prescribed for municipal designation under Part IV, Section 29 of the Ontario Heritage Act, which the City of Toronto also applies when evaluating properties for inclusion on the Heritage Register. Properties on the Heritage Register will be conserved and maintained in accordance with the Official Plan Heritage Policies.