Pass through Kenneth Montague’s front door, and he starts showing you the art. In the 1919 house near Wychwood Park in Toronto that he shares with his family, the front hall has been reshaped into a two-storey gallery where art climbs the walls.
Black figures, mostly seen from behind, in portraits and street photographs; a long tapestry by Preston Pavlis that depicts a woman beaming within a joyous cloud of butterflies. Then there is a construction-paper crown made by one of his kids. This is a place for art and living, each framed by a personal lens.
Dr. Montague and his wife, artist and educator Sarah Aranha, live here with their two sons and one of Canada’s largest private collections focused on Black art. This home, recently renovated by SOCA Architecture extends that tradition. The renovation mirrors Dr. Montague’s collecting ethos: support the work, show it, continue the conversation.
Dr. Montague recently retired from his dental practice, but continues a parallel career as a collector. Today he is a trustee and an adviser to the Art Gallery of Ontario. Since founding the Wedge Collection in 1997, he’s assembled more than 400 works exploring the culture of the African diaspora and contemporary Black life. “There’s a tradition for me of working with emerging Black artists – as well as emerging Black architects,” Montague explained.
His engagement with architecture began two decades ago when his downtown Toronto loft, designed with interior designer Del Terrelonge, became the Wedge Gallery – a space that was both private and public. The process continued with architect David Anand Peterson and a loft in Roncesvalles.
Ms. Aranha and Dr. Montague got married, started a family and decided to find a house. Then architect Tura Cousins Wilson showed up in Dr. Montague’s dental chair. “We were sitting there talking about architecture and design rather than working on a filling,” Dr. Montague recalls with a laugh. “We liked each other, and there was a lot of synergy about love of Caribbean culture. Both of us have Jamaican heritage. A lot of things went unspoken.”
Mr. Cousins Wilson and his business partner Shane Laptiste both share Caribbean roots and a deep interest in the art world. SOCA’s work includes the home of Toronto’s Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism, opening this year, and design for a 2023 Magdalene Odundo exhibition at the Gardiner Museum. (Full disclosure: Mr. Cousins Wilson and I are friends.)
The Montague-Aranha house presented a chance to engage with the Anglophile tendencies in Toronto history. Its designer, Eden Smith was a leading architect in early-20th-century Toronto; he and his sons designed more than 250 houses that exuded a sense of vague English antiquity. This one features Tudor-style half-timbering and tall roof gables nested one inside the other. Inside, Mr. Smith often created unconventional floor plans that put the kitchen and even the front door at the back. A space of contemporary domesticity was wrapped in a costume of peaks, dormers and odd corners.
SOCA’s renovation responds with confidence and subtlety, uncovering possibilities that always lived here. Light now floods rooms once dark with panelling, entering through skylights and windows, sometimes passing through doorways or even second windows before reaching the interior. The new millwork – white oak finished in a warm hue – echoes the original palette while feeling contemporary. By removing the front staircase, adding internal windows and carving strategic voids, the architects amplified the spatial complexity that always defined the house’s character.
That double-height entry atrium makes the boldest statement. But Mr. Cousins Wilson’s deft hand with spatial cuts and displacement – what Dr. Montague calls the “cutaway Jenga kind of thing” – appears throughout. A Gee’s Bend quilt hangs over the stair up to the third floor, framed by a wall of art books below and a square window that cuts through a wall into one of the kids’ rooms. That window is roughly the same size as the quilt, and this is no accident; SOCA geared many aspects of the interior to engage with specific pieces in the collection.
The central fireplace, the spiritual heart of the original structure, anchors the living room and library at the front. Toward the back, the kitchen and family room handle homework, TV and hanging out. An Oracle turntable and Dr. Montague’s epic record collection live here too, and the stuff of everyday life: above the record cabinets, proofs for one of the kids’ school photos slide alongside photos by Brazilian artist Afonso Pimenta. Art meets life.
“The larger agenda of our practice is about cultural and public buildings, and this is much more public than most houses,” says Mr. Cousins Wilson, who is also working on a new facility for Montreal’s Afro-Canadian Cultural Centre. He points to a small office serving Dr. Montague and his curatorial assistant Hannah Sommers. The public rooms regularly welcome guests.
Throughout, the house mixes art from the Wedge Collection with family pieces. Two sculptures by Dr. Montague’s father, an industrial arts teacher, rest on a teak credenza from the family home in Windsor. Around the corner hangs a painting by Jamaican artist Eric Smith. Upstairs, Ms. Aranha’s textile works hang alongside other fruits of the collection.
The architects added 1,000 square feet at the rear: a master suite with a bathroom bathed in natural light – a first for both Dr. Montague and Ms. Aranha. An indoor sauna in the basement gets frequent use, flanked by a family room full of guitars and a drum set. In the attic, a workout space offers downtown views through strategically placed windows.
“The idea was a beautiful envelope for the artwork and the books,” Dr. Montague explains, “rather than going for grand gestures.” SOCA delivered exactly that. What emerges is less a showcase than a proposition: that architecture can sustain a dialogue between private life and public imagination. In SOCA’s hands, the Toronto house – an artifact of borrowed English ideals – finds a new voice as a vessel for contemporary Black creativity.