Tag Archives: Drake Hotel
Art flourishes in old buildings, while chains hold condo neighbourhoods in bondage
The franchise economy and condo culture combine to create a sameness on our city streets.
Christopher Hume – Toronto Star
One of the most interesting shows in Toronto right now is on display in one of the most interesting neighbourhoods in Toronto right now.
The exhibition in question is a fascinating collection of photographs of the Model Operas performed in China under the patronage of Jiang Qing, the notorious Madame Mao. Shot by Zhang Yaxin in the 1960s and ’70s, the pictures can be seen at the Stephen Bulger Gallery on Queen Street west of Ossington,
Housed in a late 19th-century hardware store across the road from the newly rebuilt campus of CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health), the gallery is part of small complex designed, brilliantly, by Toronto architect Siamak Hariri in 2004.
Back then, this was not the sort of place you’d expect to find an art gallery. But the Drake Hotel had just reopened blocks away, followed by the Gladstone, and West Queen West was suddenly one the city’s newly cool neighbourhoods.
Nearly a decade later, it still is. Unlike Queen West, which emerged as a cultural/commercial hotspot in the late 1970s and early ’80s, West Queen West remains relatively unspoiled. The franchised forces of urban homogeneity – Shoppers Drug Mart, Tim Hortons, Subway and so on – have yet to make their deadening presence felt.
They will, of course, as inevitably they must. And as Toronto’s streets are taken over by the officially sanctioned mixed-use condo complex – commercial at grade, residential above – this process of retail sterilization has reached into almost corner of the city.
“The city wants commercial at grade, in all buildings,” says Toronto-Danforth Councillor Paula Fletcher. “That’s basically a requirement in mixed-use areas – you want commercial on main avenues, and above it, residential. That’s the street pattern that exists.”
That’s the theory, and it’s a good one, even if it doesn’t always achieve the intended purpose. Recently, for example, the owners of the Real Jerk on Queen St. E. thought they had found a new location for their landmark eatery in the ground floor of a condo a few blocks west of the original site (an old bank) at Broadview Ave. But then residents said no; they didn’t want a restaurant serving food and alcohol in their building, thank you very much; bad for sleeping and property values.
These condo towers, each one a NIMBY fortress, speed the deadening effects of globalization and corporate hegemony. Years ago in an interview with the Star, a Queen St. W. landlord, who had turned out a popular yoga studio in favour of a national coffee-and-doughnut outlet, claimed that he had no choice: The banks, he explained, liked big chains they’d heard of, not small ones that haven’t.
As these trends play out, Toronto is fast becoming a shopping desert, a retail wasteland where only heavily advertised global brands are on offer.
“New ideas,” Jane Jacobs famously opined, “need old buildings.”
What happens when the supply of old buildings runs out? Before that occurs, the search will have moved beyond the traditional city core. One day, the Stephen Bulgers will have moved to Hamilton or, perhaps, operate out of strip malls in Scarborough and North York where space is available, rent low and parking plentiful.
That’s hard to imagine, but so was Queen St. W. once upon a time, not to mention Ossington, DuWest (Dundas St. W.), St. Clair Ave. W., Lansdowne … . Sadly, though, distances and differences in built form will be hard to overcome. The transit network that knits downtown into a seamless whole doesn’t extend much beyond the core.
Maybe one day it will; but by then it will likely be too late. The city will be bound in chains and fully franchised.
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416-388-1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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Parkdale
Parkdale spans from Dufferin Street to Roncesvalles Avenue. It is bounded by the Lake Shore to the south, and the rail line to the north, all the way up to Bloor Street.
Once upon a time, Parkdale was one of the most upscale neighbourhoods of Toronto. The wealth of South Parkdale’s residents and the quality of its housing stock challenged that of even Rosedale. Many summer homes of wealthy Torontonians were built in here.
Parkdale became Toronto’s ‘playground by the lake’ in 1922, when the Sunnyside Amusement Park and Bathing Pavilion opened for business on Parkdale’s beaches. Sunnyside Beach was the place to be and be seen for a generation of Torontonians. It was a lakeside village, with the massive, Coney Island-esque waterfront playground at its doors. Combined with the more middle-class oriented North Parkdale (above Queen), the entire neighbourhood offered popular appeal to a broad range of Toronto residents.
Parkdale Real Estate Map
Of course, Parkdale ‘s history started long before the presence of Sunnyside Park in the area. The Village of Parkdale was established in 1812 when a great parcel of land was granted to James Brock, the cousin of Sir Isaac Brock, in lieu of salary. However, the development began only after Brock’s death in 1830, when his widow Lucy Brock sold the lands that became the major part of Parkdale to John Henry Dunn and William Gwynne.
By the late 1800s, Parkdale has become one of Toronto’s most upscale and desirable addresses, an elite residential suburb. Parkdale’s status as an independent village was controversial at the time; local legend has it that gypsies were signed up as local residents in order to provide enough numbers to qualify Parkdale as independent. Parkdale was eventually annexed into the City of Toronto in 1889.
Unfortunately, Parkdale’s prominence took a major downturn in the 1950s with the closure of Sunnyside Amusement Park, and the construction of the Gardiner Expressway. With access to Lake Ontario severed by the Gardiner, many of Parkdale’s affluent citizenry departed the community. Property values began to decline, and further plummeted with the construction of various low-rent apartment buildings and social housing. The remaining South Parkdale mansions fell largely into disrepair, as they increasingly became divided into rooming houses and bachelor apartments through the 1970s.
Parkdale Real Estate
Parkdale still has some ‘big city’ social problems to contend with. However these concerns are being addressed as the neighbourhood revitalization has been well under way for decades, helping the area to recover its poise. A local residents group known as the Parkdale Community Watch, dedicated to the safety and well-being of the neighbourhood, recently received an award as the best neighbourhood watch group from the International Society of Crime Prevention.
Though Parkdale lacks the mega renewal projects taking place in other inner Toronto neighbourhoods, there are many indications that the community is slowly reinvigorating itself. Property values are on the rise, as the trendy shops and galleries of Queen Street West continue to pop up further and further west, now reaching well into Parkdale. Former hotels such as The Drake and The Gladstone have been transformed into cool urban night spots.
The new lofts and townhomes of King West and Liberty Village are also at Parkdale’s doorstep and with that, a new generation of homeowners with fresh eyes will continue to drive improvements to Parkdale’s commercial stretch. At the other end of Parkdale is Roncesvalles Village, a neighbourhood very much on the rise in popularity, with its sphere of influence touching the western periphery of Parkdale.
Homes in Parkdale
Homes in South Parkdale, below Queen, are truly remarkable. There are several grand, detached Victorian mansions, many of them three storeys high with five or more bedrooms. Those with their original details still intact make a prefect canvas for the artistically inclined. These grandiose mansions were built between 1875 and 1895 and some of the bay-and-gables mansions that had been converted into rooming houses are now being immaculately restored, mixing elements of Queen Anne and Richardson Romanesque styles.
You will find affordable grand detached Victorian housing, often three storeys high with five or more bedrooms, on Cowan Avenue and Dunn Avenue, south of King Street and on Melbourne Place. These homes on the wonderful tree lined streets remind us that Parkdale was once Toronto’s wealthiest district.
North of Queen, the homes are on a smaller scale and are intermixed with semis, but nonetheless offer appeal on many levels. Houses in the north end, above Queen Street, were mainly built between 1900 and 1910.
Queen Street West in Parkdale
The Parkdale neighbourhood possesses many positive attributes. It has some of Toronto’s most vibrant shopping districts, wonderful tree lined streets, affordable Victorian homes, and impressive mansions that remind onlookers that Parkdale was once Toronto’s wealthiest district. Parkdale is also within walking distance of Toronto’s waterfront parks and other green spaces.
The main commercial shopping area in Parkdale has historically been on Queen Street. This vibrant, creative shopping district seems to be in a state of perpetual activity; it includes an eclectic mix of shops and restaurants, many cafes, chic bars, boutiques and galleries. The liveliest stretch of Queen West, including the Gladstone Hotel, has some of the best architecture west of the Annex.
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416−388−1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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West Toronto Real Estate
The West End of Toronto is bounded roughly by Ossington Avenue to the east, St. Clair Avenue to the north, the Humber River to the west, and Lake Ontario to the south. The West End covers a vast swath of Toronto and includes ethnic enclaves and quiet, residential neighbourhoods inhabited largely by recent immigrants to Canada. In recent years, the West End has undergone explosive growth and gentrification, and is quickly becoming one of the hottest areas in the city in which to live.
The neighbourhoods of the West End are some of the most diverse in the city, owing largely to its significant immigrant population. Traveling west along the 506 College streetcar from the downtown core takes you through some of the city’s most colourful and unique neighbourhoods.
From the early 1900s, Italian immigrants who worked in railroad and road construction began buying up affordable Edwardian-style homes and opening up shops along College Street, in the area now known as Little Italy. Recently, the neighbourhood has become popular with young professionals because of its great restaurants and cafes, vibrant nightlife, and proximity to the downtown core. More recent Italian immigrants have chosen to settle a little farther north, along St. Clair Avenue, in an area known as Corso Italia.
West End Real Estate
Further west along College from Little Italy is Little Portugal, which is the best place to find an authentic churrascaria in the city. Keep going west and, before long, you’ll come across Roncesvalles Village, named after a valley in northern Spain, which, oddly enough, is the heart of the city’s Polish community.
After you’ve tired yourself out from all the culinary delights you’ve tasted along the way, you can take the streetcar to the end of the line — High Park — Toronto’s very own Central Park.
The trip along the 501 Queen streetcar from the downtown core is a little different. It’s almost a lesson in gentrification and urban renewal, as it travels through some of the city’s formerly derelict neighbourhoods that have, in recent years, become its most trendy locales.
Extending westward is the ultra-hip West Queen West neighbourhood, a derelict industrial area that has recently been revitalized and turned into lofts, home to many of Toronto’s young artists and musicians. The area is home to many of the city’s hottest bars, lounges and cafes, including the ever-popular Drake and Gladstone Hotels.
As renters are being priced out, West Queen West is quickly merging into neighbouring Parkdale, a notoriously crime-ridden part of town that is becoming the new “it” neighbourhood, with its antique shops and quaint Victorian-style homes.
On the north end of High Park you’ll find The Junction, so named because of the railroad lines that meet in this neighbourhood. To the west of the Junction lies Bloor West Village, a residential area that’s popular with young professionals and new families. Quaint shops, lovely grocery stores with fruits and flowers piled high outside and a wide variety of restaurants line Bloor Street from Jane to Runnymede, while older houses, many in the American Craftsman style, line the area’s side streets.
Visit the neighbourhoods of West Toronto for yourself:
- Bloor West Village
- Brockton Village
- Carleton Village
- Davenport Village
- Earlscourt
- High Park
- Parkdale
- Roncesvalles Village
- Swansea
- The Junction
- Wallace-Emerson
- West Toronto Junction
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416−388−1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
—————————————————————————————————–
Incoming search terms
