Toronto of the 1900s

Great work again Derek, I love the Old Union Station photo

The city just hasn't been the same since they got rid of the diving horse.

T.O. could use another good fire to clear the waterfront condos.

Fantastic finds! Great effort, Derek.
@ Janice - no, this is the narrowness of the city thinking of the day. They never saw beyond the quarter million people that the city was - never envisioned when it might be 2 or 3 million, or that people might want to get around easily. All those people crowding onto the streetcars would soon enough be abandoning them for cars, yet the city still couldn't see more than 5-10 years ahead. Vancouver, on the other hand, realized it's streets were too narrow and as that city began to expand beyond the Georgia Strait/English Bay isthmus, and into east Vancouver and Burnaby, the streets were PLANNED and widened to accomodate the future.
Imagine that.
Toronto, on the other hand, envisioned their citizens being rattled and shaken to Mimico and points west in streetcars. They didn't get busy with road building until the 1940s and by then it was too late - much of the city had surrounded its arterial roads and choked them off.
Off topic, but intriguing is that at the same time these photos were taken, Sao Paulo was also 250k people. Avenida Paulista was like Jarvis St, lined with coffee plantation mansions. However, that city exploded in the 1950s and 1960s like seen nowhere else before or since and the governments of the day were not hampered by NIMBY zealots and launched large scale public road building and subways, resulting in all the mansions along Avenida Paulista being bulldozed for a roadway that looks very similar to University, although about twice as long. Now, they have 18 million citizens to care for, which really puts Toronto's paltry issues in perspective.

That was fantastic

I almost want to mee Gadfly in real life. The man/woman who really believes that the city would be superior as a collection highway on-ramps.

I almost hope that the Board of Trade building was lost to the fire and not to demolition. To think that we tore it down is too awful.

I recognized the Queen and Spadina shot right away. Everything else looks different, but the building on the northeast corner fives it away immediately.

Board of Trade was demolished after its final tenant, the TTC, moved to Davisville in the late 50s. (Regrettable today; but it isn't as if it wouldn't have been demolished anywhere else at the time, pre-Penn Station et al.)

The picture that struck me the most, diving horse aside, was the photo of Avenue/Bloor with the Church of the Redeemer. I work just north of there and walk past it all the time and it is interesting to see the church in its original context as part of a residential community rather than its current situation as an oddity surrounded by office building and hotels. At least they resisted the urge to bulldoze it. It is interesting to see the gates in the foreground as well leading to Queen's Park prior to the ROM and additional university buildings etc.

The horse was likely prodded and jolted. See <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_horse"; target="_blank">this article</a> about the whole "jumping" horse phenomenon.

I have to agree with Adam S. about the "1900" photo of King St. That's not a 1900-model automobile in the picture, but something from a few years later.

It's interesting to see how automobiles appear more and more on the scene as we approach 1909. Bicycles and horses still remain popular, though.

Get that damn bike off Jarvis! Can't you see that streets are for cars, trucks, and buses?

No, Larry, I think Toronto should be emulating that first photograph: hundreds of people squished along a narrow sidewalk (because the city never envisioned widening a single street, ever!), waiting to be jammed into a tiny tin can and bone shaked to their next destination, while 2 cyclists squeeze by. Let's turn the clock back to 1900! Why would we want to progress beyond that? Streetcars and bicycles - suddenly, it's 1900. That's progressive!
Don't you dare compare Toronto with Sao Paulo. I only mentioned it because there was a city that met its future, for better or worse, head on. They are still tearing up their downtown core for a new subway line. Perhaps we should be taking a look at all this hodge podge of development and ask ourselves, 'what are the real advantages of living in 'mega-cities?' Does the quality of life improve? Is there some point where maybe, just maybe, growth should be stopped because quality of life hits some sort of wall and then declines precipitously? Do we want Toronto to turn into another HK, or SP? Is that the answer? Should we all be forced into 400 sq ft boxes in the sky, because some socialist nightmare decrees that is how we should live?
I find it amusing, because the few people I know who own bicycles don't use them to scurry around crowded downtown streets (they wouldn't be caught dead downtown ever), but strapped to the roof of their car to go up to Algonquin with their canoe. Real people with real lives that go beyond the stench of Kensington Market and the crowded chaos of St. Lawrence.
Makes me wonder what the self-appointed chattering classes are smoking these days.

I agree -- you are.

Yep. Have to agree with everyone else. Need to meet this Gadfly character. I have the feeling it would be fascinating. In a visiting-a-bitter-old-man-at-retirement-home kind of way. How can we arange this, BlogTO?

Next thing we will hear is gladfly's ancestors lit the great fire to try to get the city to widen the streets for future traffic when rebuilding

Couldn't agree with you more. Maybe not the fire aspect, but it would be great to rid ourselves of those horrible lakefront condos.

Finally, someone with something intelligent to say, rather than just the usual 'attack the messenger, not the message' mentality.
I would not promote Sao Paulo as a model of anything; rather, it's a city I know well and despite its incredible growth (obviously 4Xs faster than the GTA's in the past 100 years), it does work reasonably well as a city, all things considered. For one, it has a far better subway and bus system than Toronto (when you pay cash, it spits out an automatic ticket, just like Toronto and you can pay for distance - something I doubt the TTC union will allow any time soon. They also run smaller buses on smaller routes, not the behemoths I see 3/4 empty trying to navigate Bay St., Richmond and Strachan!)
There seems to be a critical mass of downtowners on these pasges who feel that only 'their' views are acceptable. They refuse to even contemplate that some people might prefer Don Mills or even Brampton as a place to live (for the record, I do not, but much of my family lives out in those areas and I do appreciate their merits.) It amazes me how a vocal 3 or 4 % not only hijack the agenda at City Hall, but on most of these blogger pages as well. This kind of thinking is not necessarily normal, it's just common around here, by the way.
Truthfully, folks - do you not get bored of patting each other on the backs and congratulating each other for regurgitating various versions of the conventional thinking of the day? Do you not realize that in 20 years an entirely new batch of Ry-high grads will come along and tell you that you are wrong?
Toronto has a great many things going for it, but the way it totally fumbled its early growth (as in the picture I was discussing earlier) is going to haunt the city big time. It's easy for folks to say the city would never dare bulldoze throroughfares to make room for more traffic, but many cities have had to do it and are still doing it. At 10 million, the city may have to bulldoze Bloor/Danforth or Kingston Rd. or whatever to make room for dedicated streetcar lines, more traffic or something, because they are wholly inadequate for what they are expected to handle today.
You are not going to accomodate 10 million in the GTA with access through or around downtown with our current or planned roads/highways or subways. Streetcars are a joke and an impediment - at least as they are laid out now in most parts of the city.
So, before the city hits 5 million, we (the people) had better get our heads out of the sand and start pressuring public officials of all levels to build the kind of city that MOST people want. Although condos are a more recent phenomenon, MOST people want some sort of a backyard and light without obstructed views. Even the more crowded, 'enlightened' countries such as Germany and England still have burgeoning suburbs.
But, no, let's just sit back and sling arrows at those who dare espouse a different viewpoint from what the conventional thinking is around here. Gawd forbid if we actually learned from history and the starkness of those photos to try and build a better city for EVERYONE. (Not just for those who have recently grabbed the microphone and think streetcars and bicycles are what 50,000 years of Civilization has aspired to.)

Are those tracks in the photo of Elm Ave?

I really, really love my box in the sky. No snow to shovel or grass to mow. And the view is beautiful.

Hi, my name is Sabrina, I'm writing an article about whatwasthere.com. I saw you contributed to the site and was wondering if you'd answer a few questions. Namely, where and how did you get these pictures of old Toronto? Why did you think it's important to circulate these photos and contribute them to that website?

You can email me at sabsofsteel@gmail.com or on Twitter @sabsofsteel

Thanks,

Sabrina

If you like suburbs more than the city, why not live in them? I don't understand why you come on a Toronto blog, and live in Toronto, when you would clearly prefer the suburbs. I don't like the suburbs, and that's why I chose to move out of them to the city. I like my apartment better than a house, and I love being able to live in a convenient location where I can walk to everything and don't have to own a car. It seems like what you want is to change the city to be exactly the way you want it, despite what everyone else wants, when really you could just move. If you already own a house in the city you could easily get enough money from selling it to buy a suburbs house. I wouldn't change the suburbs to be the way I want it, because it's selfish. I don't think they are sustainable, but some people are willing to trade time in traffic and commuting for a big house and yard. In the same way I am willing to trade a big house and yard for convenience and location.

I am looking for the location where my grandmother, Lavinia Dunsmore, would have lived in Toronto in the early 1900's. It is described at Toronto West, Ward 5. She was a milliner and her father, Henry Dunsmore was a shoemaker. Would anyone have some information in this regard

Just great. I was at St. Lawrence Market today.I hope that you will add more pictures of that time here(but then).

I now live in London UK but was born in Toronto in 1940. During the war we lived on Briar Hill off Dufferin just north of Eglinton. There was nothing but farmland behind us all the way to Downsview. People used to ask my mother why she lived way up there! Dufferin was just a two lane unpaved road with ditches on both sides. In the winter storm of 1944 we were snowed in for 3 days. Even the HORSE carts couldn't deliver bread or milk so we were really cut off.

Black Friday at Eatons 1905.

Iam from scotland my fathers siblings were all emigrated to. Canada also my mothers sister and her husband lived in old davenport road who were george and mary park or parks they had three children jean george john also my cuz stayed with them for a while she was called sandra/sandy hill but sadly iv lost touch with my cousins. In canada iam going to aplace called barrie next month and it would have been great to have met one of my long lost cousins. I also had cousins called david woodsfrom guelt I too was born in 1945 and iam a twin.it was great looking at old photo,s of toronto. My uncles were mathew and hugh mcintosh they were the old timers who emigrated from scotland 1920s