{"id":57024,"date":"2017-05-19T13:00:22","date_gmt":"2017-05-19T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=57024"},"modified":"2017-05-18T11:59:49","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T15:59:49","slug":"the-oddities-of-the-dundas-street-extension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2017\/05\/19\/the-oddities-of-the-dundas-street-extension\/","title":{"rendered":"The oddities of the Dundas Street Extension"},"content":{"rendered":"
In December 1954, the railway tracks near\u00a0Logan Avenue presented\u00a0the final obstacle in one of Toronto’s first major post-war road building projects\u2014the construction of Dundas Street East through the east end of the city.<\/p>\n
At the time,\u00a0Toronto lacked a direct route through the area east of the Don River that wasn’t already dense with streetcar traffic. At the time, most drivers\u00a0used\u00a0Keating Street in the Port Lands, which was was the primary waterfront route before Lake Shore Boulevard, in an effort to avoid the Danforth and Gerrard\u00a0and Queen streets.<\/p>\n
In\u00a01950, the Toronto Planning Board observed\u00a0that Keating\u00a0was almost at capacity during rush hour and new roads would be needed to handle the expected boom\u00a0in vehicle traffic.<\/p>\n
The solution was to create a new highway by widening Shuter Street, which at the time ended at Sherbourne Street, and extending it\u00a0to intersect with River Street.<\/p>\n
From there, the new highway would jog north to connect with a new Dundas Street, constructed out of several formerly disconnected residential streets between Broadview Avenue and Kingston Road.<\/p>\n
To extend\u00a0Dundas,\u00a0houses would be expropriated and demolished and in some cases whole streets razed and removed from the map.<\/p>\n
The budget for the Dundas Street East extension was set at $3.2 million in 1950.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe intersection of Dundas Street (now Ossington Avenue) and Queen Street in 1913.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Historically, Dundas Street has always been a hodgepodge. 100 years ago, the street\u00a0snaked into\u00a0Toronto from the towns to the west via the Junction, turning sharply south at present-day Ossington Avenue to terminate at\u00a0Queen Street West.<\/p>\n
Dundas became an east-west street beyond Ossington when the city decided to rename and merge several existing east-west streets in 1917. Arthur (Ossington to Bathurst,) St. Patrick (Bathurst to University,) Agnes Streets (University to Yonge,) and Wilton Avenue (Yonge to Broadview)\u00a0were all linked together and\u00a0united under one name.<\/p>\n
To make the connection possible, the new road had to swerve and\u00a0bend in unusual places, like on the eastward approach to Bathurst Street. At McCaul Street, Dundas still\u00a0does a little zig-zag, highlighting how its\u00a0constituent parts sometimes didn’t line up and had to be cobbled\u00a0together.<\/p>\n
The most famous Dundas Street jog is at Yonge Street, which eventually led to the creation of Yonge-Dundas Square.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nNorvale Avenue in Regent Park, April 10, 1949. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1266, Item 132927.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Work began on the Dundas Street East Extension began\u00a01950.<\/p>\n
One of the first streets to meet the wrecker was Norvale Avenue, a short residential cul-de-sac\u00a0of about 14 homes in the Regent Park area. Most of the residents were low-income renters\u00a0and many of the homes lacked furnaces or baths.<\/p>\n
The street was typical of those in the Regent Park at the time.\u00a0The\u00a0housing was dilapidated\u00a0and many of the residents\u00a0were living in extremely poor\u00a0conditions.<\/p>\n
Residents of Norvale interviewed by the Globe and Mail<\/em> were worried\u00a0they wouldn’t be able to find a new place to rent once their street was cleared.<\/p>\n
“Homes for our children are more important than an old road,” said Mrs. Martin, a 10-year resident of the street. “It would be different if they were building apartments\u2014but just a plain road…”<\/p>\n
Another key concern for Regent Park was the plan to run the new highway directly past Park Public School, one of the largest schools in the city at the time with about 1,000 students.<\/p>\n
“This atrocious plan will deliberately divert rush-hour and truck traffic to run in front of this large downtown school,” read\u00a0an editorial in the Globe and Mail<\/em>. “It flies in the face of all good planning practice in more enlightened cities.”<\/p>\n
Despite the objections of local residents and the media, Norvale Ave. was demolished in 1950\u00a0Shuter Street extended right past the main entrance to the school.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nWreckers clear the future path of Shuter Street west of Sherbourne Street. August 24, 1953. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 58, Item 2412.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
A similar story played out east of the Don River.<\/p>\n
To create\u00a0Dundas Street, the city planned\u00a0to stitch\u00a0together and widen approximately nine east-west\u00a0residential roads. The pushback against this plan was mostly centred around the future intersection of Dundas and Kingston Road.<\/p>\n
There, the owners of 17 homes near the south end of\u00a0Edgewood Road urged the city to redirect\u00a0Dundas up a nearby ravine to intersect with Kingston Road further north, closer to St. John’s Norway Cemetery.<\/p>\n
The Edgewood Road homeowners appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board, the provincial body that decides local\u00a0planning disputes, but lost.<\/p>\n
Rather than let his property be demolished by the city, the\u00a0owner of a\u00a0drugstore in the path of Dundas arranged to have his building\u00a0picked up and shifted a few lots to the north, where it remains (seemingly under the same ownership) at the corner of Tompkins Mews<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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