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- 10 Toronto Street housed the seventh post office of Toronto. It was built in the Greek neo-classic style by local architect Frederick Cumberland in 1853. Here is some historical and more current information about the building.
I joked with a traffic controller (actually, giver of traffic tickets) in front of the building that this colonial outpost on 10 Toronto Street could be compared to 10 Downing Street. (Number 10 in London looks much more parochial than this grand structure at Britain's outpost in North America). He didn't get my reference, nor my joke. But he did point me towards the Adelaide Street post office, the first post office of Toronto.
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[Photo by KPA]
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- 17-19 Toronto Street were part of the Consumer Gas Company, first built in 1852, with various renovations through the centuries. 19 Toronto Street is now part of the Rosewater Restaurant. It is not clear what 17 Toronto Street houses now - it looks like office facilities.
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[Photo by KPA]
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[Photo by KPA]
- 23 Toronto Street is an odd, one-story glass building, clearly much more recent than the rest. It looks like some kind of private English as a Second Language school for foreign business students (which looks like it is now out of business - no pun intended. At least its website is non-functional). My (educated) guess is that whatever was originally between 19 and 23 Toronto Street was torn down.
For example, one building called The Masonic Hall built in 1858, originally on 20 Toronto Street, was demolished (what a horrible word) in 1965 during Toronto's "urban renewal" frenzy. Here is an archival photograph of the original several-storey building. What stands there now is a multi-functional high rise completed in 1963, without much character or design (the demolition was also without much character or design - a "just get rid of these old buildings" frenzy).
- 25 Toronto Street was also part of the Consumer Gas Company, and now is an Italian Restaurant. The photo of the window below is from the building. There is an inadvertent homage to the ancestral Scots in the tartan-looking curtain on the restaurant's windows. The Scots were significant players in Toronto's, and Canada's, history and formation. (Here is a link to the official Tartans of the provinces.)
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[Photo by KPA]
The buildings with even numbers, on the other side, are far less interesting, except for the post office on 10 Toronto Street, and the Excelsior Life Building on 36 Toronto Street, which still stands in its original form. It was built in 1915, and might be an early example of a high rise bordering on a sky scraper. Probably that is why it was spared, as it fit in with the "build up" mentality of the demolishers.
One interesting contemporary history about 10 Toronto street is that it was Conrad Black's head office for his Argus Corporation, and it was there where he was video taped taking out boxes of incriminating information. The building is now owned by a Canadian investment firm.
My plan was to go back to the King Edward Hotel, to photograph more of its facades, but I got lost (sidetracked?) along the way to the nearby hidden Toronto Street.
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[Photo by KPA]