Your History

Its Not the Trail: It’s the Land it Crosses

Ron Williamson — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:22:31 -0500

I was recently asked to participate in a conference in which I explored the concept of place as that might relate to the origin of the word Toronto and the carrying place trails. While acknowledging that there continues to be discussion about the origin and meaning of our city's name, it is essential to recognize that a sense of place is about "memory" and that memory tends to narrow through time, especially across centuries and cultures. If the original term used to describe a trail was actually exceedingly expansive in its original intent, what does that mean for how we think about and interpret the trail today?

Garrison Garnishings – reclaiming unloved history at Fort York

Andrew Stewart — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:07:26 -0500

The place near the foot of Bathurst Street that we call Fort York was known for most of its history simply as the Toronto garrison or the Old Fort (as distinct from the New Fort, which was built in 1841 -- the only structure of which survives being Stanley Barracks). The walled fort we see today within Fort York National Historic Site contains one of the largest collections of War of 1812 buildings in North America. It is this brief period of investment in military infrastructure that Fort York's seven original buildings, dating to 1813-16, recalls today (other buildings from this time of war and its aftermath, built to house hundreds of soldiers, are gone). Many other buildings, built inside and outside today's walls throughout the nineteenth century, also did not survive.

Everybody's Darling

Marta OBrien — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:22:52 -0400

If you've ever admired a stone bank building with classical columns or a dignified University of Toronto building, then you may have been looking at the work of Scarborough-born architect Frank Darling (1850-1923).

Darling worked with several partners. After a brief association with Henry Macdougall, Darling formed a more lasting and productive partnership with Samuel Curry in 1880. Darling & Curry designed one of our city's best-known buildings: the Bank of Montreal - now the Hockey Hall of Fame - at the corner of Front and Yonge streets. When completed in 1886 its 16.8 metre (55 feet) square banking hall was the largest in Canada. Many of its features have been preserved, including the colourful stained glass dome. This ornate structure operated as a bank from 1886 until 1982.

Did you know that Toronto had the first children's hospital in North America? Darling & Curry designed the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children (1889) on College Street. The innovative E-shaped building maximized light and ventilation while looking solid and reassuring in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. It's now the headquarters for Canadian Blood Services.

Avenue Road's Grand Apartments

Marta OBrien — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:00:45 -0400

Long before luxurious condos and penthouses, Toronto architects and developers tried to make apartment living appealing through beautiful architecture. Some of the most opulent buildings were erected beginning in the late 1920s along Avenue Road, halfway between Davenport and St. Clair. This article will focus on four of my favourite examples.

Toronto’s First General Hospital and the Irish Famine of 1847

Ron Williamson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:16:48 -0400

A few years back, Archaeological Services Inc. was retained to undertake an archaeological assessment of the Toronto International Film Festival Tower redevelopment site on the northwest corner of King and John Streets in downtown Toronto. Detailed archival research undertaken by Brian Narhi and David Robertson revealed that a portion of Toronto's first general hospital was preserved under the parking lot at that location. While the majority of the Festival property encompassed the formal front grounds of the hospital, the south wall of the hospital appears to extend across the north boundary of the property. Its alignment oriented to magnetic north stood out in contrast to the present-day street grid which is not on true north.

City of Consolation

Andrew Stewart — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:48:19 -0500

Michael Redhill's novel Consolation, a tale of Toronto told in two centuries, was the starting point for a group of presentations by local archaeologists at the Society for Historical Archaeology annual meeting in Toronto earlier this month. David Robertson of Archaeological Services, Inc., was inspired by this book to herd these cats into a morning's exploration of Toronto's past through their presentations.

The pace and scope of archaeological investigation of this city has increased since the Archaeological Master Plan was introduced in 2005 and digs have been going on all over the city. The presenters gave us some insight into the following places:

The Evolution of Roundhouse Park

Derek Boles — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:35:47 -0500

The Toronto Railway Heritage Centre at Roundhouse Park is scheduled to open later in 2009. The museum is located in the old John Street Roundhouse, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1929 to service the CPR passenger trains using the new Union Station. The CPR abandoned the Roundhouse in 1988 and turned it over to the City of Toronto. For over twenty years, there were various schemes to build a museum but only in the last year or so have these plans come to fruition in time for the 80th anniversary of the Roundhouse.

Probably the most unique feature of the museum is its location on Bremner Blvd. between Simcoe and Rees Streets. Most rail museums in North America were built in isolated locations where land values were relatively inexpensive. There are noticeable exceptions: the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum, although the latter is located in a run-down and seedy part of town.

Grandeur at 49 Yonge Street

Marta OBrien — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:36:46 -0500

Have you ever wondered about the grand building on the northeast corner of Yonge & Wellington streets? Now home to the Irish Embassy Pub, it began life as the Bank of British North America's main Toronto branch.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

The first Bank of British North America building on this site - designed in 1845-46 by well-known Toronto architect John Howard - was ideally positioned between the import and wholesale activity of Front Street and the busy retail shops on King Street. It was part of the city's first financial district and its Wellington Street neighbours included insurance companies and other banks. Of this group, only the facade of the Commercial Bank of the Midland District (1845-46, William Thomas) remains - rebuilt within the galleria of Brookfield (formerly BCE) Place.

Blockhouse reverie in Toronto's grid-land

Andrew Stewart — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:07:06 -0500

We like to think of the possibilities of breaking down barriers, making connections and bringing communities together. These are worth striving for. On the other hand, we sometimes like to set things apart, gain perspective on places and admire things from a distance. We like architectural and other landmarks that distinguish places and neighbourhoods.

Icons of an Era, but where are ours?

Tanzeel Merchant — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:21:12 -0400

You'd have to be living under a rock to not know about the precipitous fall that global stock markets have taken these past few days. Anybody trying to call a bottom to this slide must either be a prophet, or insane. Gone with them are the legends of modern finance which has driven much of the world these past decades. Within days, names such as Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns and Merrill Lynch were relegated to the annals of history through a combination of bankruptcies and forced takeovers.

I was in New York last weekend to catch a play and let my feet wander, as they love to do. I couldn't help but notice how quickly the stories of these companies had vanished off the face of the city. Lehman Brothers' headquarters now bore the name of its rescuer, Barclays Capital, and the skin of video screens that cover the building's base flashed Barclays' blue instead. I had to walk just a block further to see the contrast with legends past.

Artistry in Brick

Marta OBrien — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:18:28 -0400

I love discovering and photographing the wonderful brickwork seen on mid-Victorian era buildings in Toronto. Dichromatic (two-colour) brickwork is quite common.

Brickwork on the Chadwick Home, U of T campus

Although polychromy - the use of various colours in architecture - was seen all over nineteenth century Europe, at the time Toronto's main architectural influence was Britain. Polychromy was promoted and popularized in Victorian England by architectural theorist John Ruskin. Inspired by the coloured stones and marbles of Italian architecture, Ruskin endorsed structural polychromy (producing colour by using different shades of bricks and stones) over the mere application of colour.

British architects produced numerous influential polychrome buildings. William Butterfield's All Saints Church (Margaret Street, London) and George Edmund Street's St. James the Less Church (Westminster, London) are outstanding examples of brickwork. Along with Ruskin and others, their work was part of the Gothic Revival in British architecture.

Toronto and Its Miniature Railways

Derek Boles — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:05:52 -0400

One of the feature attractions proposed for the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre at the John Street Roundhouse is a permanent operating miniature railway running through Roundhouse Park. While the track plan is still being finalized, an extensive operation is planned to bring animation and live steam to the museum site. Children and adults have always been fascinated by miniature trains, especially if they're large enough to ride on.

For the past several years, a temporary miniature railway has been one of the most popular features of the annual Doors Open event held at the Roundhouse during the last weekend in May. Toronto Railway Historical Association volunteers install track in an area near the turntable and visitors are able to ride the trains back and forth. This has proven to be one of the most popular and family friendly attractions at Doors Open.

From Torontoceros to the Jubilant Man: rounding up our assets

Andrew Stewart — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:43:41 -0400

If you haven't seen the new natural history galleries at the Royal Ontario Museum, it's high time you went. However admirable the dinosaurs, the local heroes are the mammals that roamed Toronto during past episodes of climate warming. They include antiques like the charmingly named stag moose that rambled through the open spruce forest of the last ice age. You'll also find the fossil of a new genus of deer, unearthed during a Bloor subway line extension in the 1970s. The animal was named Torontoceros after the place that was built, 12,000 years later, over its final resting place.

Remembering Our City

Gary Miedema — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:44:50 -0400

Like most others I know in this city, I wasn't born here. I migrated into this place about 10 years ago, first to the area of Queen and Carlaw on the east side of the Don River, then to Little Italy on College, then to Little Portugal at Ossington and Dundas, and then a few years back to what real estate agents are now flogging as "trendy Brockton Village". I've come to see Toronto as a transient city, filled with migrants like me.

In that context, people who have lived much of their lives on one street in this city strike me as rare treasures. My memory of this place - of the neighbourhoods I've lived in - is scant. Sure I can talk about how Brockton Village once wasn't as trendy. So can anyone else who has hung around for a few years. But what was Little Italy before the Italians? Or Queen West West before the used appliance shops? I can dig back in city records to figure that out. But I can't remember it.

On Heritage, and other things ‘so yesterday'...

Tanzeel Merchant — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:28:33 -0400

I've resisted blogging, preferring to save my ruminations for unsuspecting dinner companions, so this is a first of what I hope will be many, minus the food, but do take it with some wine and a pinch of salt ;-)

I wrote an op-ed piece many, many moons ago, when my head had no salt and only pepper in it, on what I then called the ‘jesus fulcrum'- how a single birthday became the benchmark for how we measure time and history, and how so many different cultures (and faiths) had their own pivots on which they balanced their teetering constructs. At some point one end of the seesaw gets too heavy, and through minor, bloody upheavals, we find a new event to prop it up with for a few more generations.

Unlike in the visual, performing and literary arts, where today is being recorded through the memorable lilt of a figure etched in paint or prose, the shape and form of our cities are left to the ubiquitous imaginings of nobody, leaving nothing of collective value to the future.

The First Ten Thousand Years

Ron Williamson — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:25:07 -0400

With its rustic woodland trail following the west bank of the Humber River, James Gardens is one of the most attractive parks in the city. Frederick Thomas James purchased the land in 1908 after which he spent four decades transforming his estate known as Red Gables into a family sanctuary. Upon his death, his family sold the property to the City of Toronto on the condition that these lands become a public park.

The estate was eventually encompassed within the Humber Valley Village neighbourhood, which was developed as part of Home Smith and Company's "Humber Valley Surveys." This large land assembly consisted of 3,000 acres along the Humber River from the Queensway north to Eglinton Avenue and included in addition to Humber Valley Village neighbourhood, the Kingsway, Baby Point, Old Mill and Princess Anne Gardens-Manor developments. The St. George's Golf Club off of Islington Avenue was also developed by Home Smith and Company.

Toronto's 1st Union Station

Derek Boles — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:10:20 -0400

2008 marks the 150th anniversary of the first Union Station in Toronto. This sesquicentennial will be commemorated by an illustrated lecture at 7 pm on June 23 at the Toronto Reference Library near Yonge and Bloor Streets. This presentation is co-sponsored by Heritage Toronto and the Toronto Public Library.

The railway era began in Toronto in 1853, when the first Ontario, Simcoe & Huron Ry. train departed from the city for Machell's Corners, thirty miles to the north. A year later, that community was renamed Aurora. The Toronto passenger station was located on the south side of Front Street about where the eastern entrance to Union Station is today. The Great Western Railway opened between Toronto and Hamilton in 1855 and built its own station at the foot of Bathurst Street.

Toronto's Third City Hall

Marta OBrien — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:38:35 -0400

I'm pleased to be one of the bloggers for the new Heritage Toronto web site and I hope you'll enjoy my entries about Toronto's architecture.

As an architectural historian, instructor, and walking tour leader I am often asked to name my favourite building in Toronto. My favourite old building is Toronto's Third City Hall, better known as Old City Hall, which opened in 1899.

Toronto-born architect Edward James (better known as E. J.) Lennox won the competition held to find the best design for a new city hall. It was 1886 and 32-year-old Lennox had been in architectural practice for 10 years.

Lennox's City Hall is a perfect example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style - a variation of Romanesque architecture developed by America's preeminent 19th-century architect, Henry Hobson (H. H.) Richardson. The Romanesque style originated in 11th- and 12th-century Europe and featured heavy stonework, round arches, square towers, asymmetrical massing, and intricate stone carving. This style was revived in Western architecture during the mid-1800s.

Hip Hub for Hid

Andrew Stewart — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:19:27 -0400

The turnout at Toronto the Good - the annual bash at the Distillery - is a sign that not all is bad in the city. A passion for history, architecture, planning and public space was clearly on display during this Festival of Architecture and Design (fAd) event, thanks to Spacing Magazine and its generous and creative partners. Thinking about an "urban centre," as explained by Shawn Micallef in the Toronto Star, was its theme: creating a place for history, information and debate; a beginning point for telling the story of Toronto.