That time Toronto filled in the harbour

Often when I'm digging through the archives for one of our visual histories posts, I'll stumble upon interesting photos unrelated to the subject at hand. Sometimes I make a note to pursue them later, and other times I think they're intriguing enough to get started on something right away. Such was the case when I found the photo above, a shot of freshly reclaimed land alongside the Toronto harbour in 1926.

I've long known that most of the land that currently exists below Front Street is the result of landfill, but I'd never seen any photographic evidence of the undertaking. It was just one of those things that happened in the past that's not particularly important. In some sense that remains true, but seeing this image compelled me to look for more like it, and, of course, some before and after shots.

In the early 1920s, the Toronto Harbour Commission made good on a plan hatched years before to fill in a portion of the harbour, which eventually gave rise to Lake Shore Boulevard, the new street that can be seen in the above photo. Subsequent projects dating as late as the 1950s extended the city even further south into the lake. For my money, the most interesting way to track this expansion of the city is via the relationship of the Harbour Commision Building to the shoreline. When it was built in 1917, it sat right on the water. Today it's more than a half a kilometre away.

Check out the photos.

BEFORE

The harbour in 1883:

Yonge Street Dock 1906:

Aerial of the waterfront in 1918:

Harbour Commission Building 1920:

Harbour Commission Building 1920s:

Dredging the Lake:

AFTER

Harbour 1920s:

Harbour 1926, post-infill:

Harbour area in 1928:

The waterfront from the Royal Bank 1929:

Waterfront aerial 1938:

Harbour Commission Building 1980s:

The changing harbour:

Photos from the Toronto Archives