Back in 1938, two Jewish boys posed for a photo on the steps of Toronto’s Ostrovtzer Synagogue on the north side of Cecil Street, just east of Spadina. Last week [July 2014], roughly 76 years after that first photo was snapped, Gurion Hyman and Gordon Perlmutter returned to the same spot and had…
This beautiful and huge stained glass window was made for Toronto’s then-new City Hall at Queen and Bay streets when it was constructed in the late 1890s. The window seems to depict in pictorial form some of the ideals of the city: “The union of commerce & industry.” Virtues cited along the top of the windows…
From The Toronto Evening Telegram, July 11, 1928 The T. Eaton Co. have called for tenders for the demolition of buildings in the block bounded by Yonge, College, Bay and Buchanan streets. All of the buildings are structures which have been erected for years and their destruction means the removal of old landmarks, the former…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, September 9, 1922 Toronto is becoming a bungalow city. Entire streets of new houses built this summer consist of nothing but one storey, four, five and six roomed bungalows. To sell a new house, real estate men say, you must describe it as a bungalow, even if it is a…
There is now a vacant lot where the house on 42 St. George Street stood. All that is left of Mendel Granatstein’s home, a property which is now owned by the University of Toronto, is the front portico. According to Heritage Toronto records, the home was the first in Toronto to be owned by a…
Told by Dr. Hastings, MHO, in his report on slum inspection 22 People Live in cellars; water on the floors MHO would have city expropriate land around city for future city planning From the Toronto Star, July 5, 1911 Dr. Hastings, Medical Health Officer, in his report to the local Board of Health, cited three…
We visited the historic and elegant Arts & Letters Club, also known as “St. George’s Hall,” on Elm Street west of Yonge Street today. The lovely interior is filled with beautiful works of art by the Group of Seven, many of whom were its members, and by other notable members of the club. Indeed, a…
Review of Unbuilt Toronto 2: More of the City That Might Have Been, by Mark Osbaldeston (Dundurn) Five years ago Toronto urban researcher Mark Osbaldeston came out with Unbuilt Toronto: A History of the City That Might Have Been, offering us a view of building projects and schemes that — in many cases thankfully —…
From The Toronto Evening Telegram, July 6, 1926 Southeast corner of Grosvenor Street and Surrey Place, which has been purchased for $57,500. The corner property was bought from Wm. H. and Elizabeth S. Van der Smissen for $29,000 and takes in Nos. 73 and 75 Grosvenor Street and No. 15 Surrey Place. The house on…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, March 25, 1911 EVOLUTION OF TORONTO’S MANY SHACKTOWNS — PIONEERS HAVE MADE GOOD WITH A VENGEANCE Between life in The Ward or in the locality of Eastern avenue and life in the poorest district in the outskirts there is an immense difference. In the Eastern slum people are living in…
