The Globe and Mail

The green, posh district around Toronto's Old Mill subway station is an open-air museum of top-hat styles from the 20th century, well worth an architectural walkabout some bright evening during these dog days of summer. Tudor revival has reigned supreme in this neighbourhood at least since 1914, when the rambling Tudor-style campus of the Old Mill Inn opened on the west bank of the Humber River. Hugely popular throughout North America before the Great Depression, later damned by the modernist architectural cognoscenti as so much nostalgic hogwash, Tudor is long overdue for a good slap on the back. Not that all, or any, of the instances of Tudor in the Old Mill district are slam-dunk masterpieces. With their little storybook towers and squinty windows, and dull, tubby stone façades, some of these houses and apartment buildings are comical, while others are stuffy, or just plain bad.