A 1850s home on the border of Mississauga and Milton got approval for a heritage designation.

The home at 5104 Ninth Line, near Eglinton Avenue West, is up for designation under the Ontario Heritage Act. The City of Mississauga’s Heritage Advisory Committee voted in favour of the designation this month.

The current brick home was built in the 1850s, but a much earlier log home was constructed on the property by the O’Hara family, settlers in the area.

The log home was on the property in 1819 when Irish Catholic settlers Charles O’Hara Jr. and Bartholomew O’Connor asked a priest named Father O’Reilly from the Hamilton area to come to O’Hara’s log cabin to celebrate a mass and perform the sacraments, a heritage report on the property notes. O’Reilly, and perhaps other priests, continued to include the O’Hara cabin on their circuits until 1823.

It is likely that these were the first Catholic masses in the area, the report notes.

The current home was built in the 1850s by Charles O’Hara Junior with bricks “harvested from his own farm,” the report states. The log home may have been incorporated into the current brick structure.

The property stayed in the O’Hara family until 1948. Various property owners have lived in the house since that time, and it is unclear when the additions were added to the rear of the house, or who is responsible for them.

The one-and-a-half-storey Neoclassical-style brick house retains physical/design value. The residence features a central entrance with symmetrical windows, sidelights and a transom, a rectangular footprint, and a moderately-pitched gable roof.

The property also has historical and associative value from its connection with the O’Hara family.

“As an early settler with an important connection to the community known as the Catholic Swamp, O’Hara is considered to be a significant contributor to the early settlement of the area,” the report states. “This contribution to the community is also commemorated locally in the naming of nearby O’Hara Park.”

For more information, see the agenda and reports here.

Lead photo: City of Mississauga submission


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