Built c. 1845 at no. 159 Main Street North.
"The Wales House is located at 159 Main Street North, on the east side of Main Street North, south of Parkway Avenue in the Town of Markham. The two storey coral and yellow brick house was constructed circa 1845.
The property was designated by the Town of Markham in 1978 for its heritage value under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act (By-law 4-78).
Located at 159 Main Street North in Markham, The Wales House was built circa 1845 by Henry R. Wales, a local wagon and carriage maker. The house is set back from the street beyond a row of old maple trees that were planted when the house was first built.
Sarah and John Wales immigrated to Canada from England in 1832 with their two sons Henry and George. At the time Henry and his brother George travelled to New York to learn about the carriage trade. Circa 1840, the Wales family moved to Markham, and George and Henry established the Phoenix Carriage Works on Main Street. Henry built the Wales House circa 1845 behind the shops for his large family. The house remained in the family for 70 years.
The Wales House reflects a mixture of architectural styles. It is best defined as Georgian-Regency with some Italianate and Neoclassical details. The house is topped with a hip roof with a large joined stack brick exterior chimney. The roof is trimmed with a boxed cornice and dentil moulding on the soffits. Italianate details are seen in the four pairs of brackets with dropped round finials that highlight the roof trim on the facade. The double hung sash windows are six-over-six with concrete voussoirs, shutters and stone lugsills typical to Georgian and Regency style. The veranda extends across the facade and is supported by four freestanding and four engaged posts. The entrance has a double set of transoms of six panes and three pane sidelights in typical Neoclassical style.
The original bake oven and smokehouse are also still intact in the rear garden. The smokehouse has yellow-orange brick walls with beige quoins as well as shuttered eight-over-eight windows with surrounds identical to the house. Although difficult to classify, this property remains one of the most outstanding and prestigious landmarks in the Town of Markham." - info from Historic Places.
"Markham (/ˈmɑːrkəm/) is a city in York Region, Ontario, Canada. It is approximately 30 km (19 mi) northeast of Downtown Toronto. In the 2021 Census, Markham had a population of 338,503, which ranked it the largest in York Region, fourth largest in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and 16th largest in Canada.
The city gained its name from the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe (in office 1791–1796), who named the area after his friend, William Markham, the Archbishop of York from 1776 to 1807.
Indigenous people lived in the area of present-day Markham for thousands of years before Europeans arrived in the area. The first European settlement in Markham occurred when William Berczy, a German artist and developer, led a group of approximately sixty-four German families to North America. While they planned to settle in New York, disputes over finances and land tenure led Berczy to negotiate with Simcoe for 26,000 ha (64,000 acres) in what would later become Markham Township in 1794. Since the 1970s, Markham rapidly shifted from being an agricultural community to an industrialized municipality due to urban sprawl from neighbouring Toronto. Markham changed its status from town to city on July 1, 2012.
As of 2013, tertiary industry mainly drives Markham. As of 2010, "business services" employed the largest proportion of workers in Markham – nearly 22% of its labour force. The city also has over 1,000 technology and life-sciences companies, with IBM as the city's largest employer. Several multinational companies have their Canadian headquarters in Markham, including: Honda Canada, Hyundai, Advanced Micro Devices, Johnson & Johnson, General Motors, Avaya, IBM, Motorola, Oracle, Toshiba, Toyota Financial Services, Huawei, Honeywell, General Electric and Scholastic Canada." - info from Wikipedia.
Late June to early July, 2024 I did my 4th major cycling tour. I cycled from Ottawa to London, Ontario on a convoluted route that passed by Niagara Falls. during this journey I cycled 1,876.26 km and took 21,413 photos. As with my other tours a major focus was old architecture.
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