It was once a gathering spot for strikers, fist-shakers, “hysterical women,” and hecklers who came together for fights, funerals, dances and furious debates.

Spadina Avenue’s Labour Lyceum was a hub of activism from the early 20th century to the late 1960s — a space to dream and scheme for fair pay and working conditions when the strip was crowded with garment-making factories that sometimes paid pennies a piece.

Its transformation also mirrors that of the city surrounding it: once the labour movement’s “palace,” it’s now a sleek office space.

Originally envisioned as an education centre for Jewish working men, the Labour Lyceum was founded in 1913 by machinist Sam Easser and Henry Dworkin. At the time, some 80 per cent of the city’s Jewish population lived near the stretch of Spadina, between Queen and King streets.

Toronto’s textile industry was booming. But working conditions were bleak.

“The work was quite unstable, especially for women,” says Anne Dublin, author of the children’s book “44 Hours or Strike!” about the 1931 Toronto Dressmakers’ picket.

“They call it now precarious work. Well, that was one of the big issues.”

The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union organized many of the workers — mostly women — toiling in Spadina’s sweatshops, often for around $7 a week, below the $10 minimum wage of the time. In 1931, a widespread strike organized from the Lyceum saw 1,500 workers walk off the job to demand better pay and a 44-hour work week.

Although few material gains were made, it was a high-profile venture — one that, according to a 1931 Globe and Mail article, even attracted the attention of American “muscle men” who pitched up at the Lyceum to offer their “services.” The building’s superintendent, a war veteran identified as “Caretaker Cohen,” informed the men that “trade unionists in Canada won without resorting to violence.”

For a group of workers diverse in background and political belief, the Lyceum was a “palace to the labour movement,” according to its description at the Textile Museum of Canada.

But like most great houses, it was home to its fair share of rivalries.

The Lyceum’s assembly hall played host to jam-packed and by all accounts raucous meetings; its capacity was 900 but the room sometimes overflowed with 1,400 workers. Harder left-leaning attendees were sometimes tossed from the building for their political allegiances; other times, factions simply brawled.

At one 1932 meeting a particularly vocal Communist firebrand reportedly had her face “smacked” by a detractor.

“I’m not going to be distracted in my address by hysterical women sent here to break up the meeting,” union leader and former Star journalist John Simpson shouted at the crowd that night. (Unfazed, the woman apparently continued heckling.)

Despite its divisions, the Lyceum served as a common ground for dances and social events, with entry fees sometimes going to support striking workers. When its founder Dworkin died in a car accident, his funeral procession drew 15,000 people to the garment worker district. His body was brought to the Lyceum for visitation where he was described as a leader who “never forgot in the midst of his success that he had been a working man.”

But the common experience of poor working conditions in the district continued; a 1935 Royal Commission, for example, heard that female garment workers were “badgered” and “harassed” if they did not meet production quotas.

Dublin has a personal interest in their story.

“My parents were Holocaust survivors, my father was a tailor, and we came to Canada in 1948 through what was called the garment workers’ scheme, or the tailor project.”

By that time, she says, conditions were still tough: her father made about $1 an hour, but his wages were deducted to pay for the family’s passage to the country.

“We were immigrants. My parents came with nothing, literally nothing except maybe their wedding rings. We lived in one room on the third floor of a house with no running water upstairs.”

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The grind left her father with little time for union activity, although he remained involved with his landsmannschaften, or Jewish mutual aid society. In 1972, the Lyceum moved to a building on Cecil Street, now the United Steelworkers Hall. The old building, once the heart of “Red Spadina,” was reinvented as a Chinese restaurant — remaining equally recognizable for its green roof and sunny yellow front.

Last year, following a series of renovations, the former labour palace and current office space unveiled a new shade: grey.

“I am kind of sad that so much of our garment industry has disappeared. A lot of it is outsourced now,” Dublin says.

While the living and working conditions associated with the sector offer little to pine for, Dublin’s book pays tribute to the colour and clamour of “masses of people” who met and marched at the old Lyceum.

“In those old days, that was something else.”