A Hub Reinvented

When Samuel Richardson, a veteran of the British cavalry, hung his sabre in 1873, he settled in Toronto and built a two-storey Tudor house at 460 King Street West. Two years later, he added a third storey, topped by a trio of gabled windows and a mansard roof, and opened the Richardson House Hotel. Business boomed, and a four-storey brick annex was completed in 1887. After Richardson died in 1904, the hotel underwent several name changes before it became the Spadina Hotel in 1916. The structure was added to the city’s heritage list in 1985, though its significance was also historic; in the 1960s and ’70s, its bar was the epicentre of the city’s burgeoning punk and queer scenes. The hotel closed in 1997, was given a garish paint job and was renamed The Global Village Backpackers Hostel.

In 2014, Allied Properties REIT purchased the building and began a full restoration. The mansard roof was repaired, a century of cladding was scraped away and everything inside was stripped to its brick-and-beam essentials. Block first featured 460 King Street West two years later, in 2016. Then, the building was home to a café and tech education company. Today, the historic spot is on the verge of yet another transformation. In 2025, it will become Block by Allied, an amenity hub for Allied’s tenants across Toronto. After 140 years of tending to the weary and thirsty, the northwest corner of King and Spadina will again be put to service—as a place of connection and community.