The Globe and Mail

As the car winds its way slowly down Plymbridge Road in Toronto's Hogg's Hollow neighbourhood, Helena Grossman fidgets slightly as she glances out the window. "I hope I won't be disappointed," she says. It's an early July evening and Mrs. Grossman has come to visit, for the first time, a house her late husband designed 49 years ago for one of the three co-founders of Cadillac Fairview, Joseph Berman. A clean, white-brick box with a gentle butterfly roof, it's one of only about a dozen homes Irving Grossman designed in his native city. The fact that it took her so long to see the house was really a matter of bad timing. When she met her future husband in 1964 (having arrived here as a Swedish au pair a few years earlier), he was one of the busiest architects in town. He found it easier to bring clients -- old and new -- as well as friends together at his Sultan Street studio, where legend has it the parties were highly enjoyable. Mrs. Grossman saw the Bermans over the years, but never at their house. By the time the swingin' sixties were over and the Grossmans came up for air, the Bermans had sold their 4,000-square-foot home.