Beaches Branch, Toronto Public Library 1916 Designed in 17th-century English Collegiate style, Beaches Branch by Kew Gardens replaced a storefront library opened in 1914 at the corner of Queen Street East and Hambly Avenue. The new building was one of three nearly identical libraries (together with Wychwood and High Park) built with a $50,000 grant to the Toronto Public Library from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. George Locke, the chief librarian, wanted the three buildings to "bring to the mind of the people of the outlying districts some recollection of their Scottish and English village type of architecture." The Toronto architecture firm Eden Smith and Sons completed the design, "a decided revolt" from the Classical styling of earlier Carnegie libraries. The brick and stone building features an upper floor modelled on a Tudor Gothic great hall. It boasts a soaring hammer-beamed ceiling, a plain stone fireplace, lead-glass casement windows, and a minstrel gallery. The west wing, built when the library was renovated and restored in 2005, replaces a 1980 addition.

see Toronto Plaques: Beaches Branch