Approaching by the main driveway, or on foot from the open parkland opposite the house, this inward structural angle seems to offer welcoming feelings of shelter and inclusion to the arriving visitor or resident. On closer approach those feelings are sustained by the elegant porte-cochère that crowns the central doorway and extends across the double car-width, circular drive. Its solid, wrought iron and glass construction anchored in the limestone trim protects those arriving from the weather, while leaving the entranceway open to natural light. This treatment was awarded second place in the "Details" category of the Ontario Association of Architects' Toronto Chapter Architectural Exhibition in 1927. Arthur commented that "The entrance... is a clever combination of stone and iron work which is both dignified and appropriate." Cladding the walls in waterproof, pebble-dash stucco of a light cream tone added more warmth and charm to the exterior than the usual stone or brick, with no loss of strength -- the walls' inner construction was heavy brick below grade and hollow, terra cotta tile above grade to add fire protection. This durable structure was employed on all of the estate buildings, along with the two-coloured, Spanish roof tiles that are still soundly in place on the manor and gate cottage.

    The interior layout was configured to take maximum advantage of the house's siting on the brow of the West Don Valley. A long, screened terrace, a loggia with large picture windows and the dining room offered breathtaking views along this north-east vantage, while providing some daylight through to the central, lateral gallery. (Unfortunately, the two crude structural appendages grafted on by the U of T in 1956 for more floor space, although now put to good use as the bookstore and Gallerie Glendon, have significantly reduced access to the exterior views and natural light.) The living room and library looked out to the south and east on the tableland's gardens and parks, while the second and third floor rooms still enjoy views in all directions.

    Interior finishes in the principal rooms were lavish blends of walnut panelling, sometimes in conjunction with two-toned, silk damask walls, hand-moulded plaster walls and ceilings, inset bookcases of black walnut in the library, and oak or marble floors. There are a host of surprises and accents ranging from Dresden china door-handles to the elliptical grand staircase, lit from above by a skylight with lighting fixtures installed behind it for the same effect at night. Most of these special features and finishes, built to last, are still intact or at least evident, while a few rooms like the library have been substantially restored. The furnishings and artworks were not part of the property bequest, although several portraits survive (at various locations) from the family series commissioned for Glendon Hall in the 1920s. In addition, Mrs. Wood bequeathed five historic European portraits that hung in the manor to the Art Gallery of Ontario.

    Formal gardens have been an integral aspect of country estates for several centuries -- celebrated in, and refined through art and literature.

    The Woods were interested in the principles and beauty of landscape gardening, beginning with the idea of garden design as a creative, decorative art form that celebrates the wonders of nature and ultimately, for religiously observant people like the Woods, the glory of God. Formal gardens were always located beside the house as an outdoor extension of its living space, and a first stage outward to increasingly natural settings -- grassy parkland, then on to wilderness spaces. Glendon's front entranceway garden and the east, formal garden (later the Rose Garden) that was linked to the living room by a modest outdoor patio were laid out as soon as the manor itself was completed. Then, about 1931, the Woods commissioned the renowned landscape architecture firm of Dunington-Grubb and Stensson to execute a dramatic, more architecturally imposing makeover of both areas. Happily, those two projects have survived, substantially intact.

    What also survives is much of the joy and friendship that enlivened the home. Glendon students and alumni with fond memories of the Café de la Terrace will not be surprised to hear that that same lower-floor area (minus beer and wine, since the Woods were teetotallers) was originally a combined ballroom, music room and billiard room. Then, as now, it opened onto the rear, outdoor patio with the commanding view of the valley. Today's older generation of Wood descendants have happy memories of Edward and Pheme hosting convivial Sunday evening dinner parties in those spaces, with as many as 30 guests. They were also fond of hosting garden parties, on a much larger scale, and that custom has also been restored to the College. The Bruce Bryden Rose Garden, as it was re-dedicated in 1992 and subsequently restored, is once again the scene of lively garden parties in one of Canada's most spectacular warm-weather settings.

    But who were the Woods? In 1899, Sir William Mackenzie, then head of the Canadian Northern Railway (later part of the CNR), arranged for the new Saskatchewan village of Erwood to be named after E.R. Wood. He was just 33-years-old at the time, and 17 years Mackenzie's junior. In 1914 Wood was mentioned in connection with vacancies for Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and Canadian High Commissioner to Britain. By 1926, when the U of T conferred an honorary LLD upon him, and North York Township renamed Westbourne Avenue in the Glendon neighbourhood as Wood Avenue, the Wood family was nationally prominent and respected. Yet the Woods, consummately modest, never spoke of those accolades and they were quickly forgotten.

    Edward Rogers Wood (1866-1941) and Agnes Euphemia Smart (1868-1950) were both born in Peterborough to Northern Irish Methodist families of average circumstances. Having migrated with two brothers from Enniskillen, County Fermanagh in 1847, Ed's father, John W. Wood, "was a prominent resident of the town and had obtained a large measure of success as a teacher," according to a 1910 account, although with a teacher's customarily modest level of income. In his early teens, while still in school, Ed Wood joined the G.N.W. Telegraph Company owned by Peterborough's Mayor George Cox, where Joseph Flavelle, eight years Wood's senior, was already learning the ropes. Cox, Flavelle and the Woods were also active in the George Street Methodist Church and the temperance movement. Soon after completing school Edward was moved upstairs to Cox's financial firm, Central Canada Loan & Savings Company, established in 1884. This clearly was Wood's métier, and in 1888 at the age of 22 he was summoned to join Cox and one of Cox's sons his own age, Fred, at the firm's newly-opened Toronto headquarters. Flavelle also relocated to Toronto in those years, leaving Cox's employ in the process and ultimately attracting fame, fortune and a spell of considerable notoriety.

    During their 35 years in Toronto before moving to Glendon Hall, the Woods' family life and socio-economic standing evolved through a number of discernible stages, as they progressed from middling circumstances to enormous wealth and a fair degree of public acclaim. The initial stage, following directly after Wood's early years in Peterborough of apprenticing under Cox as a telegrapher and then a bookkeeper, occurred between 1888 and 1896. During this period he acquired an intricate base of knowledge that allowed his acumen for business and finance to flower as a journeyman financier in the Cox group. Then from 1896, as Wood turned 30 and by then having ably proved himself, his responsibilities at Central Canada were greatly augmented as Cox became a Senator, the president of both the Bank of Commerce and Canada Life, and an active financial partner with other leading entrepreneurs like Mackenzie and Mann.

    Wood was fortunate that this career stage encompassed the economic boom period (with a few years of recession) between 1896 and 1914, the year that Senator Cox died and the First World War broke out, during which time Wood had matured as a leading financier while becoming a millionaire in his own right. In that era he first became active in philanthropy and lifelong pursuits in volunteer leadership roles for the U of T, hospitals, churches and the YMCA. Wood's next two career stages comprised the years of the First World War, during which (by now around age 50 and too old for uniformed service) he donated his financial and managerial expertise for critical civilian roles. After the war he returned to the financial community with continued success, from 1919 until nominally commencing formal retirement in 1929. From then until his death in 1941, Wood retained his key business directorships and apparently all of those in the voluntary, not-for-profit and charitable realms. Even while retired he was invited to join other important boards, such as that of the gigantic Massey-Harris farm machinery enterprise in 1937.

    The Woods built and lived in Wymilwood from 1902 to 1924, on a vacant, two-acre lot leased from the U of T. It abutted at the rear a small ravine that was still reserved (since 1852) for the university's botanical gardens. The property fronted on Queen's Park, which was then a quiet, two-lane stretch of tree-lined boulevard between Bloor Street and the familiar, oval-shaped park to the south. Although leases were granted to the Flavelles, the Woods, and for two other elegant homes where the Planetarium and Museum now sit, the botanical garden reserve was maintained at the rear in a wooded ravine through which Taddle Creek had flowed not long before. The structural features, architecture and interiors of Wymilwood, during its initial period as a family home have been well documented, especially through an illustrated chapter (L.B. Martyn, 1980) that was enriched by the collaboration of the Woods' senior granddaughter Beverly Gaby (who recently died). Moreover this elegant, Elizabethan-style mansion of rose brick and limestone trim, along with the Flavelles' sumptuous Holwood (1901-2) next door to the south, are still largely intact, although their grounds have fared less well. By 1920, when the Woods began a four-year process of acquiring, laying out, building, and eventually moving to Glendon Hall, the popular and professional media had offered favourable judgements of Wymilwood. Architect Frank Wickson commented favourably that year in Construction, a leading journal of his profession, on the emerging quality of domestic architecture in Toronto. "Such buildings as Sir Joseph Flavelle's in Queen's Park, E.R. Wood's in Queen's Park (and five others) are worthy of being mentioned..."

    By one of those cosmic coincidences, Wymilwood/Falconer Hall was loaned much later by U of T as York University's first, temporary home for the academic year 1960-61, while planning and construction were in progress for the move the following year to Glendon Hall.

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