Bylaw: (2009)-18752
Legal description: Part Lots 18 and 19, Prior’s Block, Plan 8 (as described in Instrument No. CS49252)
Designated portions
The heritage attributes that support the cultural heritage value or interest of the two storey limestone and pale yellow brick structure include:
- The exterior stone walls, including the front and rear walls, including sills, surrounds, and dressings of the front façade; and
- The architectural details of the front façade, including all original door and window openings, the windows and shopfront details, the parapet cornice and shopfront awning.
It is intended that non-original features may be returned to documented earlier designs or to their documented original without requiring City Council permission for an alteration to the designation.
Property history
Built in 1878, the building at 9 Douglas is a two-storey structure built of locally quarried limestone and pale yellow brick. Designed in the late Italianate style, the building has a low sloped shed roof, projecting architraves to semi-elliptical window heads, incised arch stones and paneled keystones, and a paneled and denticulated cornice. The building is adjoined to the north wall of the Brownlow/Gummer building.
Contextually the building, with its location along Douglas Street and its close affiliation with the Brownlow/Gummer Building and Victoria Hotel, provides important information about the commercial development of late 19th century Guelph. These buildings also encompass a key visual landscape in downtown Guelph, and help provide the old-world, 19th century charm of Douglas Street, one of the first officially recognized streets following Guelph’s inception as a Town in 1856. The property is linked to two of the most prominent families in the history of Guelph, the Tovell and Mitchell families and was the site of one of Guelph’s earliest and most successful undertaking businesses. The Mitchell home was located next to the undertakers shop in 1892 but was demolished in 1967 and replaced with a parking lot.
The property’s significance is it’s link to the late 19th Century development of the City; association with a pair of prominent families in Guelph’s history, the Tovell and Mitchell families; and its contextual value in defining the charm and character of the downtown streetscape of Guelph, in particular St. George’s Square and Douglas Street.