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| Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna was the youngest child of Emperor Alexander III of Russia. Her older brother was Tsar Nicholas II. |
At age 19, on the occasion of her wedding in 1901, Tsar Nicholas granted his youngest sister a 200-room starter home — a $453-million St. Petersburg neo-Palladian with a 47-window front façade. It's a far cry from such opulence to the house at 716 Gerrard Street East where she died in the upstairs front bedroom Nov. 24, 1960.
Listed last week on MLS, the modest two-story Riverdale semidetached was the final residence of the Tsar Nicholas II’s last surviving sibling, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandranova. The highest ranking member of the Russian imperial family to emigrate to North America, Olga convalesced in the care of Russian friends who ran the beauty shop on the main floor.
She was bedridden for a year and ate nothing but ice cream, according to Nick Barisheff, who was 15 when the 78-year-old duchess succumbed to cancer in his family’s apartment.
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| The exterior of 716 Gerrard Street East, where Grand Duchess Olga of Russia lived in Toronto, is pictured on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2014. (Matthew Sherwood for National Post) |
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