Toronto's iconic Palm House at Allan Gardens reopens after restoration

CBC News

· Posted: May 14, 2025 12:50 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

The iconic Palm House astatine Allan Gardens Conservatory successful Toronto reopened to the nationalist connected Wednesday aft closing for captious restoration enactment to sphere the structure's architectural heritage.

Construction began successful October 2022 connected the historical conservatory building, 1 of Toronto's oldest attractions. The Palm House, designed by City of Toronto architect Robert McCallum, opened successful 1910 and is the 3rd horticultural pavilion connected site.

The Palm House features a wide array of palms, banana plants and different gangly specimens. It showcases a assortment of thenar trees and other tropical plants similar cycads, gingers, hibiscus and seasonal exotics. 

Its 12-metre-high, 16-sided cardinal dome is an iconic diagnostic of the building, earning it the nickname "The Dome" — ample capable to showcase immoderate of the building's tallest plants.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow attended the ribbon-cutting, saying successful summation to its agelong and important past successful Toronto, on with its divers types of plants, "it's besides a spot for societal alteration wherever we travel unneurotic and larn not conscionable astir our past, [but also] to signifier our future." She noted that it was a spot wherever galore activists met passim the 20th century.

The gathering houses tropical plants inside 5 clime controlled greenhouses, with the Palm House being the oldest of the greenhouses astatine Allan Gardens. The Palm House was destroyed by a occurrence successful 1902 but reopened and expanded doubly since then.

Construction connected the Palm House included model glazing, solid cladding replacement and modernizing the ventilation and aerial prime systems and controls.

The installation is escaped and unfastened to visitors regular from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., according to the City of Toronto.