The Guild Inn, or simply The Guild was a historic hotel in the Guildwood neighbourhood of Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario and was once an artists colony. The surrounding Guild Park and Gardens is notable for a sculpture garden consisting of the rescued facades and ruins of various demolished downtown Toronto buildings such as bank buildings, the old Toronto Star building and the Granite Club. The park is situated on the Scarborough Bluffs with views of Lake Ontario. Guild Park remained open and the refurbishment of the Guild Inn into a facility for social events was completed in May 2017.
History
In 1914, the property ( at that time) was known as Ranelagh Park, owned by Colonel Harold Bickford. Bickford built Bickford House, a 33-room, Arts and Crafts-style manor house on the property. In 1921, the property was sold to the Roman Catholic Church's Foreign Mission Society and renamed the China Mission College. In 1923, it was purchased by Richard Veech Look, who lived with his family at the mansion until 1927, when he was transferred to Quebec.
The property was vacant until 1932, when it was purchased by Rosa Breithaupt Hewetson. In August of that year, Hewetson married Herbert Spencer Clark in a ceremony on the estate. For a honeymoon, the couple chose to go on a motor trip to the United States to "visit co-operative organizations similar to the type in which they are both keenly interested." Both were directors of the Robert Owen Foundation, which was founded that year, an organization that supported the development of co-operative organizations and was named after utopian socialist Robert Owen.
The couple chose to reside in the mansion, and there fostered the arts, turning the property into an artist colony, modelled after Roycroft in East Aurora, New York, a centre of the Arts and Crafts movement. By the time of the Second World War it had become The Guild of All Arts. Across their property, the Clarks built homes and workshops for artists, such as The Studio, which was assembled out of a garage and a stable from different parts of the grounds; it accommodated those practising batik, woodworking, weaving, and metalworking. The Clarks also began collecting architectural elements from demolished buildings and erecting them in the gardens of the Guild as follies.
In 1934, the Clarks bought Corycliff, a house on five acres of property near the Bluffs, from the artist Rody Kenny Courtice. Over time, the Clarks bought surrounding farms. The property eventually amounted to , bounded by Lake Ontario to Kingston Road, and from Livingston Road to Galloway Road.
As more people were attracted to the artistic community on the bluffs, the Clarks made additions to the Guild in 1941 and 1942, after which the Government of Canada leased the property as a base for the Women's Royal Naval Service, called HMCS Bytown II, and following the conclusion of hostilities in Europe, retained it until 1947 as Scarborough Hall, a hospital for the treatment of nervous disorders in military personnel.
The house was returned to the Clarks, who restored it to its pre-war functions. However, six years later the couple were forced by rising property taxes to sell of their land to developers. Spencer Clark oversaw the planning of the area that would become Guildwood Village. After the demolition of New Fort York, Spencer Clark arranged for the transfer of the barracks' gates to the intersection of Kingston Road and Guildwood Parkway, the entrance to Guildwood Village.
On the remaining around the Guild itself, the Clarks continued collecting and adding to their array of architectural remnants, as Victorian, Beaux-Arts, and Gothic Revival buildings throughout the city were pulled down to make way for Toronto's post-war growth and new attitudes towards planning. Altogether, pieces of more than 60 structures were amassed, from buildings such as the Toronto Bank Building and the home of Sir Frederick Banting, as well as various pieces of artwork, including 14 by Sorel Etrog. The Guild Inn proved so popular as a lakeside resort and artisans' community that in 1965 a six storey, 100 room addition and a swimming pool were added, plus further renovations in 1968.