Scenes From Open Streets TO 2015 – Bloor Street West

On September 6, 2015, Toronto opened its streets for the second time this year for Open Streets TO. Last time, I walked the dynamic Yonge Street, noting the history and influence of Eaton’s on the strip. On this day, I decide to tackle the other main street: Bloor.

10. Open Streets TO
In the course of walking this 3km stretch, I came to the curious realization that I’m actually walking three Bloors: the Mink Mile upscale shopping district, the museum/UofT/Annex row, and the smaller shop and bar section within the Koreatown BIA.

I suppose there could be a fourth if I include Bloor east of Yonge: the neglected, forgotten Bloor. (Seriously, I have no idea what’s there.)

2. Bloor Street West Mink Mile
Yonge and Bloor is changing. It’s had a long history, beginning as the gateway into the Village of Yorkville and continuing to be reinvented today. Its southern corners will eventually host two massive towers – one that’s well far along and the other that’s just a plot for now (formerly occupied by the fallen Stollery’s building). When One Bloor East Number One Bloor and The One are completed, they will be imposing gatekeepers.

1. One Bloor

4. Stollerys site & One Bloor
The Mink Mile lines both sides of the street from Bloor to Avenue. There’s nothing modest about the size of its storefronts – and for good reason. It’s the most prestigious commercial real estate in the city and country. It’s an exclusive part of town, and even though I’ve walked the stretch many times, it’s easy to feel excluded because of it. Still though, it’s a beautiful and walkable stretch of street with colourful planters and wide sidewalks.

3. Bloor Street West Mink Mile 2
5. Bay & Bloor
At Queen’s Park, the ROM crystal boldly juts into the street. It’s a controversial structure in the city. The museum is beloved as a classy, archaic building, the original Romanesque Revival wing which lines Philosopher’s Walk opening in 1914. But then there’s this thing that’s been slabbed onto it. You either like it or hate it.

And I get the hate – it represents everything that many feel is wrong with redevelopment & heritage in Toronto. It’s the new ruining the old – whether it’s attaching a tower to an older pediment or obliterating the old with a new tower completely (cough*Stollery’s*cough). But to me, the ROM is a structure that works aesthetically. I like it.

7. ROM
The ROM kicks off the campus/museum-y row. Beside it is the Royal Conservatory, built in 1880 as the first McMaster University before it moved to Hamilton. As one might expect, there’s a musical performance in front of it. Like the ROM, the Convervatory also has a modern addition which really meshes old & new. And Koerner Hall is a great venue.

8. Royal Conservatory of Music

9. Open Streets TO chalk message
The Bata Shoe Museum mans the southwest corner at St. George. It’s a Raymond Moriyama design, who intended it to look like a shoe box. That was in 1994. In 1924, the corner looked a bit different.

12. St. George & Bloor Bata Shoe

Bloor St. George 1924
Source: City of Toronto Archives, 1924.

166 St. George Street looks somewhat similar to the George Gooderham house (1892), which survives diagonally from it. They were both built in the 1890s in the castle-like Romanesque Revival style, as highlighted by their mighty turrets and fine masonry. The Gooderham residence, now the York Club, is the last bastion of residential Bloor Street.

George Gooderham York Club
Taken April 2015.

At Huron is the former Rochdale College. I feel especially connected to this site because of its association with 1960s Yorkville, which effectively got me into learning about Toronto history. The school opened in September 1968, following the Yorkville hippie ‘exodus’ after the hepatitis crisis of that summer. The building wasn’t even finished.

13. Rochdale College Bloor Street
Rochdale was intended to be an innovative, experimental alternative to conventional university education, which by accounts of Rochdalians (see comments) had its plusses and  negatives. Being an outsider who was born long after Rochdale, I’m cautious about commenting about its legacy. I do wonder if it’s an “you-had-to-be-there-to-know” kind of history. The dominant perception that seems to have prevailed in history is that Rochdale was a chaotic, drug-filled environment that succumbed to its own dangers. But its influence and legacy goes beyond that limited view. The Unknown Student (1969), created by the Rochdale Sculpture Group, sits in despair in front of the building.

14. Unknown Student Rochdale College
For more on Rochdale and the Unknown Student, there’s Stuart Henderson’s incredible thesis and book Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s, Dream Tower: the life and legacy of Rochdale College, Rochdale, the runaway college, and this very informative blog on the sculpture (featuring some great shots of the lost houses across the street).

Spadina Avenue/Road marks the end of UofT and the beginning of what I call the modest commercial strip that extends to (and past) Christie. I’m welcomed by a jovial band.

16. Open Streets TO music Spadina
Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church is another interesting landmark to me for its Eaton family connection. Timothy Eaton, with his empire already quite profitable, helped f(o)und the construction of Trinity Methodist Church, as it was first named in 1889.

There are few nearby Eaton homes in the Annex as well. You can see their locations and other Eaton affiliated sites in my T. Eaton Co.’s Toronto map.

17. Trinity-St. Paul's United Church
While caught up in the examining Trinity-St. Paul’s, I hear ringing behind me. I have to sidestep the oncoming cyclist, who I’m pretty sure is Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam.  It’s serendipitous, because she is an advocate for city building & public space, and responsible for bringing us Open Streets. She tells me a ‘thank you’ and rides out of sight.

Next, I come to two nearby structures which I believe were once neighbourhood theatres. Actually, the first – now housing a Bulk Barn and the Annex Billiards Club – looks like a one-time theatre, although I can’t confirm.

19. Annex Billiards
The second – the muralled Lee’s Palace (of Scott Pilgrim fame) – was Allen’s Bloor, opened here in 1919. I’ve taken in one concert at Lee’s: an intimidate showing by 90s rock outfit Econoline Crush in 2007. I have to puzzle at why or how someone painted ‘WE HATE YOU’ on the top (or who is ‘we’).

21. Lee's Palace Allen's Bloor 2
At Bathurst & Bloor, Honest Ed’s buzzes with Open Streets activity. A train of cycists ride by some yogis. Nearby, people partake in some road hockey. Behind them, Ed Mirvish’s store – a Toronto institution since 1948 – is set for closure and redevelopment in 2017. It’ll be another project to track, especially in what happens to Mirvish Village.

22. Open Streets TO Honest Ed's Hockey

23. Open Streets TO Honest Ed's Cyclists Yoga
The next stretch of street encompasses downtown Toronto’s Koreatown. It’s a neighbourhood whose beginnings reach back to the 1960 & 70s, when the first wave of Korean immigrants came to Toronto and began to rent out these shops on Bloor West.

25. Bloor Koreatown
The Korean Village Restaurant, for example, opened in 1978 and is one of the oldest and best Korean eateries in the city. There’s a date marker above its door, taking it back to the 1900s. I like to imagine the layers of occupants in this structure over the years. Those are a lot of stories.

26. Korean Village Restaurant 1

26. Korean Village Restaurant 2
Approaching Christie, I stop to take a photo, because I’m reminded of an archival shot I saw days before of the same location in 1920.

29. Christie & Bloor
The Bloor Street of 1920 at Christie Street was residential, streetcar lined, and cobblestoned with a recently created Christie Pits/Willowvale Park.

Series 372, Subseries 58 - Road and street condition photographs
Source: City of Toronto Archives, 1920.

As it should, Christie Pits bookends Open Streets TO as an activity hub. There’s target shooting and more yoga.

32. Christie Pits Park
Finally, I gaze back east. Number One Bloor is somehow still visible kilometres away! Between where that tower and I stand, there are several neighbourhoods and several moods and many landmarks with their own stories, all linked together by this one stretch of road. It’s amazing how that happens – and we have so many examples of it across our city. With that, it’s off to the next adventure!

30. Open Streets TO Christie Street 1

Scenes From Open Streets TO 2015 – Yonge Street

On Sunday August 16, 2015, Open Streets TO ran the first of its car-free street initiatives this year which aim to promote healthy-living and vibrant cities and reimagine public space.

Yonge Street Open Streets
Beyond supporting the awesome event and its cause, I wanted to take advantage of the time and open streets to stroke my historical and urban curiosities, particularly in regards to Yonge Street and the T. Eaton Co.

I’ve embarked on a project to map the history of Eaton’s transformative influence on Toronto. Much of it relates to the Yonge Street we see today. Check it out here.

The streets were open on Bloor from Spadina to Parliament and Yonge from Bloor to Queen, but I elect to walk southwards from College. The intersection’s landmark is, of course, College Park, opened as the ambitious Eaton’s College Street in 1930.

College Park (2)
It was to be the T. Eaton Co.’s headquarters, moving from its flagship store about a 1km to the south. It was also supposed to have a 36-storey tower, but the penny-pinching of the Great Depression scaled it back. Luckily its ornate Art Deco-ness as it exists today hasn’t changed since the 30s.

College Park 1930s
Source: Archives of Ontario. 1930s.

Yonge Street won’t get any emptier than this at noon.

Yonge Street
The College department store was built with many entrances, one of which leads up to the Carlu. The store closed in February 1977 along with seventh floor restaurant and event space, The Round Room and Eaton Auditorium (which opened in 1931). It was locked until 2003, when it was rebranded as the Carlu, after the space’s architect, John Carlu. In 1983, the Round Room and Eaton Auditorium were designated a National Historic Site to prevent demolition.

College Park Carlu

College Park (3)
I had to take a peek inside.

College Park
Passing the store completely, I can’t resist a look back, if only to compare with an dingy looking shot from the 1970s.

College Park 1970s
Source: City of Toronto Archives. 1970s.

College Park Yonge Street
The Downtown Yonge Street strip is next with RyersonU’s towers looming above it all.

Yonge near Gerrard Open Streets
Beyond that, the Eaton Centre, another ambitious Eaton endeavour, is continuing on its perennial makeover of its oldest part from 1977. Nordstrom’s is set to become its third anchoring tenant after the recently closed Sears and the namesake store before it.

Eaton Centre
There are many making use of the free street – walkers, runners, cyclists, skateboarders, rollerbladers – but it’s a wonder seemingly a bigger majority still are using the sidewalk. It’s intuitive behaviour in any normal circumstance, but so counter-intuitive to the whole purpose of Open Streets.

The Toronto Eaton Centre also redefined the street grid around Yonge. Where Baton Rouge is now, one would’ve been able to turn on Albert Street.

EatonsFactories1919
Source: Archives of Ontario. 1919.

Eaton Centre (2)
Beside the 1905 E.J. Lennox designed Bank of Toronto building is the Massey Tower pit. Fun fact: Heritage Toronto’s former logo is based on the bank. I didn’t know that.

Massey Tower Construction
I wonder if the people manning the table in front of Danier know they’re in front of the site of Timothy Eaton’s  first store at 190-196 Yonge Street, opened in 1883.

Eaton Centre Open Streets

Eatons1884catalogue
Source: Wikimedia Commons. Inaugural Eaton’s catalogue, 1884.

The walk ends at Queen Street with a gaze at the 1896 Robert Simpson Co. building, which housed Eaton’s historic competitor. The irony is the Chicago-style structure occupies the site of T. Eaton’s first dry goods store he opened in 1869.

Simpson Building Queen StreetFinally, turning back up to face Yonge, I ponder another historical bookend. I wonder what our 19th century brethren in the pre-automobile age might have thought about Open Streets.

Open Streets Yonge at Queen

Yonge_Street_north_of_Queen_Street_by_Micklethwaite
Source: Wikimedia Commons. 1890s. The T. Eaton Co. flag flies high above the main store.