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Casa Loma, meaning "House on the Hill" was the Toronto home of financier Sir Henry Mill Pellatt. It is on Austin Terrace at the south end of the northern section of Spadina Road, atop an escarpment which was the shoreline of Lake Iroquois, the predecessor of Lake Ontario.Begun in 1911, the house cost $3.5 million, and took three years to build, start to finish. Sir Henry commissioned Canadian architect E.J. Lennox to build Casa Loma. Upon completion in 1914, it was the largest private residence in North America. Notable amenities include an elevator, an oven large enough to cook a steer, a bowling alley in the basement, and a secret underground tunnel connecting the castle to the stables. In the end, however, the project and its enormous tax bill bankrupted Sir Henry, and he was only able to enjoy life in the "castle" for ten years.
Today it is regarded as one of Toronto's premier tourist attractions and is operated in this capacity by the Kiwanis Club of Toronto. For a short period of time in the 20th century, Casa Loma was a hotel, with its own in-house Big Band, the Casa Loma Orchestra, which became a major Swing Era dance band. Parts of the movie X-Men were shot at Casa Loma, which stood in for Professor Xavier's school for gifted mutants. The castle was also the setting for Canadian children's author Eric Wilson's murder mystery, "The Lost Treasure of Casa Loma".
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