600 Parliament Street in St. James Town is a visual reminder of resistance to the area’s development in the 1960s. Sitting on Parliament Street near Wellesley Street East, I have passed this building hundreds of times; every time I pass by it strikes me as incongruous to the rest of the neighbourhood.

The family of Lucio Casaccio had owned the semi-detached building since 1910, running a tailoring business from the premises. When the St. James Town apartment complex was planned in the 1960s, many of the old row houses along Parliament Street had to be demolished to make way for the new towers. When approached, the owner, Lucio Casaccio, refused to sell his house unless the developers paid him $100,000 – twice the amount paid for neighbouring houses. When negotiations failed, developers tore down the other half of the semi and built a Y-shaped, 32-storey building called The Halifax, which wraps around the former Casaccio home:

Lucio Casaccio continued to fight the building’s developers even after The Halifax was completed. In 1968, he sued Howard Investments Ltd., the firm behind the Halifax’s construction, for $1,000,000. In an unusual legal argument, Casaccio claimed the company violated his property’s air rights by swinging materials over his building during construction. Ultimately, Casaccio was awarded $1,200 by a judge, but also required to pay $60,000 in legal costs.

Today, the building houses New World Laundry, a laundromat run by Korean immigrants, who renovated the building in 2012.

On its upper floors, the building has 4,300 square feet of space which incorporates 10 rental units. Here’s the view around the rear of the building where the apartments are accessed:

If you have some spare change and want to invest in real estate, the building is currently on the market for a cool $5,980,000.00.

References

Heritage Toronto