Historical
March 11th, 2010
Toronto has edged a little closer to the goal of creating a civic museum with the recent launch of the Toronto Museum Project online.The fantastic new website includes detailed images of 150 objects in the municipal collection. The project is innovative in the way it lets people interact with the collection online. A diverse group of 100 Torontonians were invited to view the objects and share personal stories, inspired as a result. These stories are all included in the website and highlight the importance of showcasing history to our collective civic conscience. Mayor Miller called it “An inventive new way for Torontonians to engage objects, stories and ideas, and to reflect on what they mean for the city’s past, present and future.”
The online project also includes 100 exciting ideas for exhibits at a future Toronto Museum. A look through the ideas is an interesting read. One exhibit proposal is about the ancient highways used by natives in the region and would include authentic hollowed out canoes, another, tentatively named ‘Home Brew’ focuses on the history of alcohol production in city. A more populist exhibit proposal dedicates itself to the city’s armchair athletes and includes items ranging from old team photos and jerseys to World Series memorabilia.
March 1st, 2010
Brantford city council recently voted to demolish three blocks of heritage buildings in the city’s downtown. Guest columnist Nigel Terpstra, of Urban Toronto, sent us this post about the situation.
Recently, the city of Brantford, Ontario announced its plans to demolish and remove forty-one structures from the south side of Colborne Street, in the heart of its historic downtown. The structures themselves date from 1850 to 1915 with the section stretching from 115 to 139 Colborne comprising one of the longest surviving collections of pre-confederation buildings in Canada. They represent a wide variety of architectural styles from the Beaux Arts of The Right House (1870), to the Georgian of The Shannon Building (1867), to the Edwardian of the Dominion House Furnishings Company (1915). Within that range are also included a number of Renaissance Revival, Second Empire and even Art Deco structures, all of which were created at different times, for different clients with different needs. They could very soon all be reduced to rubble.
February 20th, 2010
Brougham, a small village at the corner of Highway 7 and Brock Road in Pickering, doesn’t quite make the usual criteria for a “lost village” - urban sprawl is still far from overtaking the historic buildings, and the village looks much like it did 20 or 50 years ago.
But it is a lost village - or even a bona fide ghost town - in the making, and has been since March 2, 1972. On that date, the Government of Canada selected northern Pickering Township - along with sections of Uxbridge, Markham and Whitchurch Townships - as the site of a new Mirabel-sized international airport that would eventually replace Malton Airport (now Pearson) as Toronto’s primary airport. Brougham - in its entirety - was now the southeast corner of this 18,000 acre (72 square kilometre) land mass that then had to be expropriated. I have touched on the subject of the Pickering Lands before here on Spacing Toronto.
Before the federal announcement, Brougham was a small, yet growing, community, with a school, several churches, businesses and a community hall. Commercial House, pictured above, is one of only a few roadside taverns left in the GTA. Today, Brougham is largely by-passed by the extension of Highway 407, which skirts the southern boundary of the airport lands.
When the brakes went on in 1975, Brougham and the huge parcel of Class I farmland to its north and west was frozen in time, owned by the Government of Canada and rented out to farmers and residents (many of which were the former land owners). As only minimal repairs were taken on by the landlord in anticipation of future construction, many houses - of which quite a number appear to be exurban ranch houses built in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s - were simply vacated and boarded up. Approximately one-quarter to one-third of all houses in Brougham are now vacant.
February 10th, 2010
EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing is pleased to again partner with Heritage Toronto on their ongoing Building Storeys exhibit at the Gladstone Hotel that has been extended until April 25. A collaborative effort by Heritage Toronto and members of the photography groups the Shadow Collective and the DK Photo Group, Building Storeys is a visual documentation and anecdotal exhibit of the city’s heritage building and sites. This is the second in a series of posts on Spacing Toronto connected to the exhibit, and is by Wayne Reeves.
The recent furore over a developer’s attack on a “John M. Lyle” house near Casa Loma highlights one argument used to preserve buildings: a structure is worth keeping because it’s associated with a major architect. Minor buildings rise in value because they teach us about the working range of important designers like Lyle.
Rather more interesting are those cases where minor architects design great buildings. Toronto’s pre-eminent example is Thomas Canfield Pomphrey and the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant. Who was he, and how did he get such an iconic commission?
As befits a minor personality, no golden archive of letters, journals and photos has been found. Pomphrey’s military service file contains the basics: born, November 29, 1882; birthplace, Wishaw, Scotland; height, five feet six-and-a-half inches; complexion, dark; eyes, blue; hair, black; religion, Presbyterian; marital status, single; died, March 8, 1966.
The son of a stationer/printer, Pomphrey grew up 20 miles southeast of Glasgow and studied at the elite Hamilton Academy. By 1900, he was apprenticed to architect Alexander Cullen in Motherwell and attended classes at the Glasgow School of Art. Highly respected, Cullen had a prosperous practice which included many public commissions, including hospitals, schools, court houses, police and fire stations, libraries and municipal offices.
February 5th, 2010
Only a mere two kilometres north of Meadowvale, in Brampton, is another “lost” village, Churchville. Both communities share a lot in common: both were established as mill towns on the Credit River, both were served by the Credit Valley Railway when it arrived in the 1870s and the Toronto Suburban Railway, which ran from 1917 to 1931. Both are removed from major roadways, perhaps helping their survival.
In “Toronto’s Lost Villages” by Ron Brown, published in 1997 and one of the inspirations for this series, the author lamented that Churchville was about to be inundated by suburban development. Luckily, because of strengthened historical interest, and the proximity of floodplains that restrict new development, it remains relatively intact and somewhat interesting.
Churchville was the most northerly settlement in Toronto Township (which in 1968 became the Town of Mississauga) and is somewhat older than Meadowvale, established in 1815. At its peak, Churchville had several stores, a church, a hotel, mills and other local services. An ambitious network of streets was laid out, some of which do not exist today, but still appear on some maps (such as the Google Map linked above). After a a period of growth, the population level stagnated after nearby Brampton grew larger with the 1856 arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway and designated as the county seat. Many of the stores left, the mill was lost to time, and fire destroyed at least one of the churches.
February 3rd, 2010
Spacing is pleased to again partner with Heritage Toronto on the Building Storeys exhibit, opening tomorrow (Thursday).
After the success of our 2009 exhibit, Building Storeys 2010 returns in February 2010 …
January 31st, 2010
The latest installment in this series brings us to Meadowvale Village, a well-preserved rural settlement that is now all but lost in Mississauga’s sprawl. Indeed, without a map, Meadowvale is difficult to find, as road diversions and detours has removed all through traffic, with a complex detour necessary to follow long-established routes.
Meadowvale was established in the 1830s as a mill town on the Credit River and as a service centre for northern Toronto Township, featuring schools, churches, stores and a tavern. The Gooderham and Worts distillery empire had a significance here, even constructing a mansion built as a summer house for the Gooderham family. Later businesses included a auto service station and additional shops, but until the 1990s, Meadowvale remained a separate, distinct community.
Unlike Thistletown, Meadowvale had direct railway access. In the 1870s, Meadowvale became a stop on the Credit Valley Railway, which went from Toronto to Orangeville via Brampton (with a “branch” to St. Thomas via Milton and Galt from Streetsville), but quickly acquired by the Canadian Pacific. In 1917, the Canadian Pacific was joined by the Toronto Suburban Railway’s short-lived Guelph route, serving mostly small towns and villages between the line’s Keele and St. Clair terminus and Guelph. (The TSR Meadowvale Station survives, but is now on the grounds of the Halton County Radial Railway museum near Rockwood, itself on the old TSR route.) However, Meadowvale never became very prominent; losing out to larger nearby communities like Streetsville, an incorporated town and a major railway junction; and Brampton to the north, which was larger still and the county seat for Peel.
January 28th, 2010
EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing is pleased to again partner with Heritage Toronto on their upcoming Building Storeys exhibit at the Gladstone Hotel that runs from Feb. 4 to 27. A collaborative effort by Heritage Toronto and members of the photography groups the Shadow Collective and the DK Photo Group, Building Storeys is a visual documentation and anecdotal exhibit of the city’s heritage building and sites. This is the first in a series of posts on Spacing Toronto connected to the exhibit, and is by Derek Boles.
In 2010, the former Canadian Pacific Railway John Street roundhouse, a highly visible structure located adjacent to the Rogers Centre and the CN Tower, is being transformed into the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre. Eight kilometres to the north sits another considerably less conspicuous building that once performed a similar function to the downtown roundhouse. In the Leaside section of Toronto, northeast of Laird Drive and Esandar Drive, is the former Canadian Northern Railway Eastern Lines Locomotive Shop built in 1919. It’s hard to believe that this huge 92 x 46 meter building remained largely hidden away until 2006, when surrounding industrial buildings were demolished, clearly revealing the structure for the first time to passersby and residents west of Laird Drive.
January 22nd, 2010
Spacing readers are probably aware of the controversy surrounding the historic wartime era hangars at Downsview Airport. Relics from the abandoned Forces base that once occupied the site, the hangars have heritage status but are not subject to normal heritage review because of their ownership by the Department of National Defence. When crews were spotted last November preparing for demolition, a coalition of Torontonians that included developers, politicians and the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (ACO) successfully pressured National Defence into staying the demolition.
The issue arose again however on Christmas Eve when National Defence sent the ACO a letter stating that, unless someone could come up with $20,000 weekly payments very quickly, the demolition would have to commence; another letter writing campaign ensued. Demolition was again stayed and the issue returned to the back burner when a Lieutenant General wrote the ACO demanding an end to the barrage of distracting emails that were preventing him carrying on the business of administering a war.
January 10th, 2010
cross-posted from Steve Munro’s blog
Back in 1952, the TTC was about to open its first subway line and was contemplating the future of the streetcar system. Options included rehabilitation of its Peter Witt car fleet as well as the acquisition of more PCC cars.
By that time, new PCCs would be expensive as the market for them had more or less disappeared thanks to the onslaught of bus conversions in North America. However, many used fleets, some quite new, were on the market and Toronto was quick to snap them up.
A fascinating report to the transit commission dated June 3, 1952, was written by W.E.P. Duncan, Operations Manager, and it recommends among other things the acquisition of used streetcars from Cleveland and Birmingham.
This report is also interesting for what it tells us of demands on various major routes and the number of streetcars assigned to each line. The Bloor route, carrying 9,000 per peak hour/direction, would require 174 cars. Today’s network requires 192 cars in total, of which 38 are ALRVs. Demands have changed quite a lot.
