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London's downtown core is laid out as a grid on either side of its main east-west thoroughfares, Dundas Street and, one block to the north, Queen Avenue. At the west end of Dundas, close to the river, is the chunkily modernist Art Gallery , 421 Ridout St N (Tues-Sun noon-5pm; free), designed by Raymond Moriyama of Toronto. A once fashionable architect, Moriyama favoured dramatic concrete buildings characterized by a preference for contorted curves and circles rather than straight lines, but here the end result isn't all that successful. Inside, the gallery's permanent collection features a somewhat indeterminate mix of lesser eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Canadian painters and there's a modest local history section too, but the temporary modern art exhibitions - some of which come here straight from Toronto - are usually excellent. London's oldest residence, Eldon House (Tues-Sun noon-5pm; $3) is a couple of minutes' walk north from the gallery, at 481 Ridout St N. Built in the 1830s by John Harris, a retired Royal Navy captain, the house is a graceful clapboard dwelling, whose interior has been returned to its mid-nineteenth-century appearance. The British influence is also easy to pick out in the nearby St Paul's Anglican Cathedral - take Fullarton from the Eldon House as far as Richmond. A simple red-brick structure built in the English Gothic Revival style in 1846, it's in marked contrast to its rival cathedral, St Peter's Catholic Cathedral , just to the north at Dufferin and Richmond, a flamboyant, high-towered, pink-stone edifice typical of the French Gothic style that was popular amongst Ontario's Catholics in the late nineteenth century.
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