If you are looking for a unique location for your wedding you might want to consider renting the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse on Trinity Street in downtown Toronto’s east side. The interior is filled with exposed beams which add textural warmth and light streams through gothic style windows. The building is made of beautiful ochre brick, and the exterior offers a historical backdrop next to manicured flowerbeds and lush park land.
The one-room school is a historic site and museum that was built by Enoch Turner in 1848 to educate the children in the neighbourhood surrounding his brewery. Many of the families in that neighbourhood were from Cork, Ireland, and were poor, and Turner, a wealthy brewer and philanthropist, provided the funds to construct the school and operate it for the first three years of it’s existence after which the city used taxpayers dollars for it’s operation. It had space for 240 students and was the first free school in Toronto. As the neighbourhood was filled with people from Cork, Ireland, this Toronto region is now known as Corktown. It is the oldest schoolhouse still standing in the city.
While it was only used as a school from 1849 to 59, it has continued to be used until the present and, as one of the oldest, continuously operated buildings in Toronto, remains a unique architectural and historical treasure.
Little Trinity Church used it as a Sunday School and Parish hall until the 1960’s. Little Trinity Church added the west hall in 1869. It was a Boer War recruitment centre in 1899 and during the two World Wars was a Servicemen’s home away from home. During the dirty thirties a soup kitchen there served 1500 people each week. In the 1950’s, Little Trinity Church Neighbourhood youth clubs met there. It was a temporary meeting place following the church fire. Concerts, community youth programs and performing & visual arts events continued into the 1960s; however, the building was very decrepit and in danger of being torn down. The building was saved and restored due to the foresight and efforts of architect Eric Arthur and other concerned citizens. It was opened as a historic site and museum in 1972 and was designated under Ontario Heritage Act in 2000.
The room can accommodate up to 150 guests and is a perfect size for a ceremony, and a cocktail before dinner, and as many couples are married there, they have staff, caterers, a baby grand piano, florists, and many other conveniences to make your wedding arrangements simple and effortless. They even have no corkage fee to keep your costs low. Check it out: