Queen Street East and Jones: July 1986 and July 2015. The mural, which depicts Alexander Muir, has since been freshened and updated.
I came across the following picture this evening while working on another project and felt it would be good to share.
In June 1964, when it was completed, František (Frank) Stalmach’s Ontario Telephone Employees’ Credit Union building on the south east corner of Wilson and Avenue Road in North York was featured in the Toronto Star for its use of sun shades to cut air conditioner usage. Perhaps a testament to their efficacy, the tinted plastic shades remain in place today, more than fifty years on.
Last year, when I wrote a brief piece about the Kenniston, I neglected to include a photograph of the dining hall that was a feature.
Recently, on the Lost Ottawa Facebook group, an individual named Ronald Temchuk shared some photographs of Elgin street from the early 1980s. It’s not just because I’m a very happy Elgin resident that these stood out to me: I’ve written stories in the past about a few of these places (with many more in the hopper).
This one is probably better off in the ‘Blog’ section, as so much of the story is in the notes. Nevertheless, because the front hasn’t seen much since February, I’ve put it here.
Every Spring we get one: an abnormally warm day that brings us all out. When I recently came across this 1986 photo in the Toronto Public Library’s digital archive, I couldn’t help by want to look up the sort of slow-day lifestyle reporting that it accompanied.
After having recently been stuck on a short turn of the 506, I couldn’t help but notice the neat brickwork at the top of the Dollar Tree store on Coxwell. After tripping over the photograph above for an unrelated search, I decided to dig a little.
Last summer, I wrote a very brief story about the corner of Bank and Slater that mentioned Saro’s Stereo and Television Centre.
If you’ve had a chat with me in the last year or so, there is a good chance that I found occasion to slip something about apartments, Centretown, or both into the conversation. It should come as no surprise that during the Depression, construction of all sorts ground to a virtual halt. If you were take a look around the neighbourhood during those years, it would appear that someone forgot to let a small group of developers know that the party was over.
Continue reading Centretown’s Apartments, Civil Servants, and the Great Depression
As I wrote about a few times this past Fall, one of the homiest neighbourhoods in Toronto for me is the Junction Triangle. I won’t go over the ultimately poetic reasons again, but there are also more mundane things that really pull me in. One of those is one of my favourite examples of buildings being integrated with infrastructure is the warehouse on Bloor built into the first of the two subways (underpasses) in the area. I should note that in the time I’ve been researching this, the good folks on the Urban Toronto discussion boards have also been sleuthing the same underpass.
Continuing apace, here is Charlotte Whitton on housing in 1955.
Continue reading Mayor Whitton on Housing, 1955