These innovative two-story Colonial Revival row houses provide a visual transition from the freestanding houses of College Street to the density of the downtown business district. Insurance agent and former Vermont adjutant general Theodore S. Peck built Leslie Terrace as an investment property intended to demonstrate that row housing could be attractive and practical. Each house has a pedimented porch and dormer and is separated from adjoining units by corbeled parapets that project above the roofline. Inherently simple, the houses vary in size and composition and gain distinction from the quality of multiple brick header courses, fine cornice moldings, simple modillions, shallow bay windows, and idiosyncratic, small arched windows. Each unit steps down from the previous to accommodate the site, which slopes down College Street and wraps northward on S. Union Street. Reflecting the Garden City idea of compact housing that preserves meaningful common open space, the complex looks inward upon a three-sided court that originally featured a large oval driveway around a lawn and flower beds.
Consciousness of late-nineteenth-century English design and urbanism along with window types and details of construction consistent with his other buildings point strongly to Willcox as the designer of this complex. Peck named the complex after his wife's family, immigrants from Dundee, Scotland, who founded the Toronto Examiner. Originally rented as apartments, the units were sold as private houses in the 1940s.