Yorkminster Park Baptist Church (Toronto)

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Yorkminster Park Baptist Church is the biggest Baptist church in Canada.

Yorkminster Park Baptist Church is the largest Baptist church in Canada, built 1926-8 by the architectural firm George, Moorhouse and King, and is named after the 10th century York Minster in York, England. It is located in Toronto's Deer Park neighbourhood, at the northeast corner of Yonge and Heath Streets.

1 Structure
2 Features
3 Congregation
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Structure

Its immense size gives Yorkminster Park seating for 1,200 people in the main sanctuary and room for 500 more in the transept and galleries. This is made possible, in part, by having a 55-foot nave unobstructed by pillars, a feat accomplished by a technique not available to the medieval architects of the original York Minster: a steel trussed roof.

From the west wall to the chancel steps is 158 feet, and the crossing measures 107 feet.

Built in the Gothic Revival style, the church is made of Owen Sound rubble stone walls, and Indiana limestone was used for the piers, arches and traceried windows in the aisles, nave and transepts.

[edit] Features

The entrance wall to the church's tower includes a piece of carved stone from the original cathedral. A brass plaque below the carved stone reads:

This stone for more than five hundred years formed a part of one of the mullions of the clerestory windows of York Minster, the great cathedral founded at York, England, in 927 A.D., and was presented to this church by the Dean of the ancient Minster.

The church's organ was built by Casavant Freres of St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, and was installed in 1928. It was rebuilt in 1965, and with additions over the years now has 77 stops and 5,328 pipes; Yorkminster Park is one of the leading organ recital halls in Canada.

[edit] Congregation

The congregation began in what is now Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood, in a schoolhouse on Yorkville Avenue, in March 1870. The next year a Baptist church was organized on Scollard Street and then, in 1884, the congregation established a new church at Bloor and Bay Streets.

The rapidly growing congregation required bigger premises (the Uptown Theatre, now demolished, accommodated the overflow for Sunday evening services) and in the 1920s the decision was made to erect a much larger church at Deer Park, a rapidly growing residential community in what was then the city's northern area.