If I say the word Jilly’s, does it mean anything to you? Yes? No?

Well, here’s what it means to me.

Jilly’s is a rather large strip bar at the corner of Queen St. E. and Broadview Ave. It’s housed in a grand, late-19th century building known today as the New Broadview House Hotel. The hotel is a lot taller than anything around, and it’s richly detailed, two qualities that make it a major urban landmark. And, while South Riverdale is old enough, and interesting enough, the question still arises, “What is that big, old, grand building doing at the corner of Queen and Broadview?” “Why so big?” “Why so grand?”

My friends, it is there because of one man, and to tell the story of Jilly’s is to tell the story of that man. It is also, in a way, to tell the story of east-end Toronto.

If I say the name Dingman, does it mean anything to you?

No? No?! Well, that’s no surprise. But Archibald W. Dingman is the guy East Toronto burlesque fans have to thank for this substantial facility. You see, Jilly’s came into the world as something called Dingman’s Hall. In 1891, Archibald W. Dingman (Archie to his friends) forked out $25,000 to erect this noble edifice. He was just over 40 years old then and, with true Victorian bravado, he gave his building his name.

Archie is one fine protagonist. He’s what we in the local-history industry call a “name” — he did stuff that left records. A descendent of United Empire Loyalists, Archie was the youngest of eight children, and was born near Picton, Ont., in 1850. He would become one of those happening Victorian gents who lived through extraordinary technological changes and had the wherewithal (or dumb, blind luck) to be involved with many of them.

He started with the modern miracle of cameras in Picton when he was 21 — he was listed as a photographer in the 1871 census. Then it was on to Pennsylvania, where he worked on the world’s first oil wells. By 1882, he was a married merchant living in Toronto, where his interest soon turned to soap. Yes, soap: the world is a cleaner place because Victorians perfected the product, and Archie Dingman was right there at the sink. There was a Dingman Soap Company, and a Pugsley and Dingman Soap Company whose ads for Electric Soap are not hard to find in old newspapers.

By the late 1880s, Archie appears to have worked up quite a lather of cash. And, to put things a bit too dramatically, he looked to the East.

Now, I don’t mean east as in China. I mean east as in across the Don River. In 1884, the City of Toronto annexed what today we call Riverdale. This annexation meant city services, and city services turned farm fields into real estate; by 1889, the horses that pulled the city’s streetcars were pulling the city itself eastward across the river. There were two routes: one along Queen St. to The Beach, the other north on Broadview to the village of Chester, at Danforth Ave.

It was at that important Queen and Broadview corner, centre of the old village of Don Mount and right in the path of the expanding city, that Archie put up the tallest building east of the Don, in the then very fashionable Richardsonian Romanesque style. We’re talking red brick, big stone foundations, gargoyles and towers. Think Old City Hall. Think the Parliament Buildings. Think ponderous. Think permanent.

Think Archie in the corner tower, looking out over the city and grieving the death of his first-born child. Ten months and 20 days old, little Harold Roy Dingman died just after the first tenants moved into Dingman’s Hall.

The first tenants were a (not yet Imperial) Canadian Bank of Commerce on the ground floor, and lawyers, dentists and realtors in offices above. The halls of Dingman Hall were at the top of the building, and with their big windows and high ceilings they were apparently state-of-the-art venues for concerts and assemblies.

These privately built Victorian halls had a long tradition (Albert’s Hall, Massey Hall, etc.), and by 1900 Archie’s building was the centre for a dizzying array of Victorian groups, among them the Sons of England, the Juvenile Sons of England, the Daughters of England, the Maids of England and, not to be left out, the Sons of Scotland.

But the truth is that by the early 1900s, Archie was ready to move on.

Life had been busy since he poked his tower into the Toronto skyline. He and his wife had welcomed a daughter and a second son into their fashionable home at (ahem) 49 Huntley St. And, from soap and real estate, Archie had jumped to the next big thing — electricity. For several years, he managed an electric streetcar company running deep into Toronto’s eastern hinterland.

He even found time to patent several coaster brake designs for the newly popular two-wheeled “Safety Bicycle.” But by 1902, Archie was gone — gone west, that is. He arrived just in time to see the creation of the Province of Alberta and, in true Archie style, was soon deep into another new technology: natural gas. Archie’s gas company would light half the streets of Calgary for more than 40 years.

The absentee landlord Archie seems to have held on to his Hall for a few more years. But in 1907, T.J. Edwards bought it. He promptly hired architect George Gouinlock and spent $3,000 to turn Dingman’s Hall into The Broadview Hotel — rooms went for a $1.50 or more a night.

Architecturally, Romanesque buildings were out of fashion just a few years after Dingman’s Hall went up. The new century wanted light and air, not Archie’s arches and gargoyles. It probably didn’t want Victorian halls, either. Eventually, Jilly’s moved in.

But what the building did for Archie isn’t important. What is important is that the building still stands, and Victorian piles like Dingman’s Hall seem able to withstand any change of use without losing their somewhat goofy pretence to importance.

They’re more interesting when they’re debauched, proving that, despite where you start in life, you never know what your future holds. I can’t possibly sign off without telling you about Archie’s further adventures in the west. It seems Archie’s real legacy wasn’t destined to be Electric Soap or Dingman’s Hall after all.

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In 1913, Mr. Archibald W. Dingman bankrolled a southern Alberta farmer who had noticed something funny bubbling up in one of his fields. Are you thinking Beverly Hillbillies? Well, check a book on Alberta history and you’ll see it written in bold black and white: Dingman #1 was the first commercial oil well in Alberta.

That Archie: Always the right place, always the right time. He died in Calgary on March 7, 1936. He was 85 years old and, by all accounts, he was still excited about the future.