About Us

The new home of Dancap Family Investment Office and the Aubrey & Marla Foundation is located in midtown Toronto at 1067 Yonge St, just north of the Rosedale Subway stop, designed by Dewson Architects https://www.dewson.com/, and built by Vaughan Construction https://www.vaughanconstruction.ca/. By blending an existing century house with a high-performance, mass timber addition, the new headquarters reinforces its’ commitment to preserving Toronto architectural heritage, while taking the lead in creating sustainable legacies going forward.

The existing Georgian Revival house, constructed in 1914 for Jennie Elizabeth Jarvis, widow of Lieutenant-Colonel Salter Mountain Jarvis, serves as the development’s base. City records show that the original house remained in the Jarvis family until 1928, after which it was repurposed into a funeral home from 1935 to 1946. Following WWII, the Goethe Institute acquired the property for its offices, built a three-storey addition to the rear, and converted it to their teaching centre. Subsequent iterations as a commercial office space during the early part of this century culminated in the acquisition by Dancap in December 2018.

The original Georgian Revival house is structurally sound, however the 1950 rear addition is not. Successive decades of haphazard internal renovations, along with poor-quality exterior reparations have left it sorely in need of repair. Dancap has committed to its full restoration. All original architectural elements, including slate roof, eyebrow dormers, muntin windows, historical metal work, interior centre hall plan, and much more will be faithfully restored to their former glory. By integrating current Passive House envelope strategies into the original double-wythe brick walls, foundations, and roof assemblies, the century house will be infused with longevity and energy conservation technologies, sustaining the building far into the future.

As for the new four storey addition, the design drives towards Net Zero Energy consumption. The mass timber structure, with all its embodied energy attributes, is milled and prefabricated locally. This structural skeleton is wrapped in a high-performance envelope employing the three pillars of Passive House design: continuous air barrier, no thermal bridging, and high insulation values. Photovoltaic electrical arrays and triple glazed thermally broken window systems all reinforce the rigor of creating a 21st century building.

The rear addition would include two underground garage levels topped by three floors of office, meeting room, kitchen, and flex space. A fourth floor is planned to include a gym and yoga studio facing east with a clear view of beautiful Rosedale.

The new structure’s north, south, and west elevations are to be clad largely in black metal panels in brick-shaped and diamond patterns. The three rectangular muntin windows on the west side of building above the heritage house ties together the new and the old with a large triangular window, where at night, it will look like a giant spotlight on a theatrical stage. The addition’s east elevation, overlooking an open-cut section of the Yonge subway, will be finished largely in curtainwall glazing along with vertical solar fins, and a frame of the same metal panels proposed on the other three elevations.

By taking the longevity of the existing heritage house and marrying new durable construction materials and technology to it, Dancap is pushing the reborn building forward for generations to come. A building that will hold cultural value for centuries. A truly sustainable legacy.