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Seaton Village
Seaton Village is a centrally located and family oriented Midtown Toronto neighbourhood. Remarkably, this neighbourhood has managed to maintain the feel of a small town village, even though it is situated in right a busy part of the city.
Seaton Village is bordered by Bloor Street to the south, the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks to the north, Christie Street to the west and Bathurst Street to the east. It is within the broader ‘The Annex’ neighbourhood, as defined by the City of Toronto, thought not in most Annex residents’ minds!
Although the Koreatown shopping district is at its southern border, Seaton Village can sometimes be referred to as the “West Annex”. While Seaton Village shares several characteristics with the area to the east (notably its architecture and its popularity with University of Toronto students), it is generally quieter, more family-oriented – and with smaller, less expensive homes.
Seaton Village Map
The area consists of primarily semi-detached single family homes dating to the start of the 20th century. Most are of solid brick construction, while some have only a facade of brick. Most of the trees planted at the same time as the houses were built are still standing.
Vermont Square Park is almost right in the middle of Seaton Village. The park has a playground, including a wading pool. St. Albans Boys and Girls club (where I hung out after school) and the Bill Bolton hockey arena (where I played hockey as a kid) are also located in the park. Christie Pits is right on the western edge of the area, providing a wealth of outdoor activities.
There are several small businesses located along Dupont Street, with a Loblaws supermarket located on the northeast corner of Christie and Dupont. The neighbourhood is served by two subway stations – Bathurst and Christie. Buses run north from both stations, and buses run along Dupont. Many streetcars run out of Bathurst station, as far down as the lake and Exhibition Place.
Seaton Village Real Estate
The Village of Seaton once existed as an actual village – north from Bloor to Hammond (now Dupont), between Bathurst and Hope (now Manning) Streets. Situated just west of Yorkville, this area was annexed by the City of Toronto in 1887 as the city made its northward push into what was then the suburbs. The origins of Seaton are an interesting tale involving some of the earliest residents of Toronto.
Seaton Village was originally settled by Colonel David Shank and Captain Samuel Smith. Both men were loyalists who served under John Graves Simcoe in the Queens Rangers. In the early 1800s, the Shank and Smith farm lots were acquired by George Crookshank.
The Crookshank estate began at the foot of Bathurst Street where it overlooked the lake. A laneway from the Crookshank house ran north to his country farm, where Seaton Village is today. The Crookshank laneway is now part of Bathurst Street.
Seaton Village is named after Lord Seaton, a former Lieutenant Governor of Canada. The Village was laid out on the old Crookshank farm in the 1850s. However, residential development of the present day neighbourhood did not commence until around 1888, after Seaton Village was annexed into the greater city proper.
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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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New tower gives St. Clair West a welcome jolt
John Bentley Mays – Globe and Mail
If the planning mandarins at city hall get their way, and if Mayor Rob Ford doesn’t wreck the house in the meantime, Toronto will be ready for the 600,000 new people expected to arrive here during the next couple of decades.
Developers will help make room for this welcome influx – such is the dream, in any case – by putting up mid-rise residential blocks along arterial streets throughout the city. They will also construct tall stacks of condominiums at important intersections, on the biggest thoroughfares (especially in the core) and near key transportation nodes, such as subway stations.
Heavy public-sector investment in an increasingly effective, sophisticated regional transit network will support the intensification. Main streets that are currently run-down will be rejuvenated and the gobbling down of Ontario farmland by suburban sprawl will be halted.
And, before you ask, I should say that, no, Hogtown’s streets will not be paved with gold. In fact, unless there’s a sharp upswing in public-spirited hospitality in this city, none of the good things in the official plan for our urban future may come to pass. Nor do Torontonians seem convinced that, if the changes proposed for our avenues come about, we will really like the resulting mix of low-rise houses, European-scaled mid-rises and glassy North American towers.
For my own part, and despite some reservations about the details, I haven’t seen a comprehensive revitalization scheme that looks better than the one that’s percolating at city hall these days. But don’t take my word for it. In just a few years from now, we will all be able to see a sample of what a lot more of Toronto could be like in, say, 2040.
The place I have in mind is the long stretch of St. Clair Avenue West between Bathurst Street and Keele Street. Sparkling in some spots – there are wonderful Italian restaurants and ice-cream parlours west of Dufferin Street – but mostly dowdy and tired, this zone has been targeted by the city for the kind of regeneration described above.
At the eastern limit of the designated area, where St. Clair crosses Bathurst on its way to Yonge Street, the official plan has foreseen a cluster of high-rises. This feature, perched on the high shoreline of ancient Lake Iroquois and overlooking Toronto’s downtown towers, was intended, it appears, to mark the significant intersection as the gateway between the upscale Forest Hill neighbourhood to the east, and the redevelopment region lying along St. Clair Avenue to the west.
Something monumental and special was called for – a tight group of distinguished tall buildings that embodied the new vitality and urban energy about to surge westward along St. Clair toward Keele Street.
If creating such a place was indeed the objective of the plan, the gesture has so far fizzled badly. The mixed-use tower that recently opened on the northwest corner of the intersection, a joint project by the Goldman Group and Lash Developments, is a hulking architectural bore; and its sister-tower, developed by the same business partnership and now under construction next door, promises to be no better.
There may yet be an interesting landmark at this important crossing, however, if the newly-launched Rise condominium building, on the southeast corner, lives up to its renderings.
Designed by Toronto architect Enzo Corazza, founding partner in the firm of Graziani + Corazza, for Reserve Properties Ltd., this 25-storey structure is, in most respects, much like any other new condo building in central Toronto. It has the usual amenities. The prices (around $550 a foot) and suite-sizes are reasonable in this market. And the project is pitched to the buyer every developer hankers after nowadays: Either young or retired, kid-free in any case, affluent and urbane. The block will not attract families into the condo lifestyle.
But Rise does have one element that sets it apart from the usual run of new condominium towers. It’s a kind of architectural exclamation point. To make an unmistakable statement about his structure’s situation at St. Clair and Bathurst, Mr. Corazza has sculpted the tower’s most conspicuous corner into a bold, syncopated abstract composition in black and white that soars straight up from grade to the summit.
The skeptic in me would like to write off this dramatic move as just a marketing ploy – and, were the building anywhere else, I would probably do just that. Here, however, this corner treatment works. It will likely make the building stand out very boldly, exactly as it should. As the makers of the new St. Clair Avenue west of Bathurst redo the streetscape in preparation for some of those 600,000 newcomers, they will soon be able to look east and get an attractive jolt of visual electricity from what Mr. Corazza has done.
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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
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Toronto: A city of special neighborhoods
George Medovoy – Daily Press
When people think of Toronto, they usually picture a modern skyline of skyscrapers and condos, those icons of Canada’s largest city.
But when I think of Toronto, it’s “The Beaches” that immediately comes to mind — a charming, lakeside neighborhood, where years ago, Toronto urbanites would retreat for the weekend and which is now a much-desired area at the far eastern end of the Queen Street electric tramline at Lake Ontario.
One morning, we boarded one of the city’s quiet, brightred, electric trams — endearingly known to locals as the “Red Rocket” — and slipped along the tracks to discover “The Beaches” for ourselves.
The Beaches’ main drag, Queen Street, is filled with antique shops and quirky little stores and cafes. The nearby leafy lanes, filled with cottage-style charmers, lead to the boardwalk and parkland along Lake Ontario.
At the beachside boat station, we saw lifeguards arranging rowboats, and in a fenced-off area, people were chatting as their dogs frolicked in a sandy doggy playground.
It wasn’t warm enough to go swimming, but three souls wearing jackets sat on beach chairs emblazoned with the red maple leaf of Canada, admiring the lake view within sight of Toronto’s modern skyline to the west.
As modern as the skyline may be, however, it still holds relics of a bygone era, like the majestic Royal York Hotel, which opened on June 11, 1929 and occupies a hallowed place across the street from another historic Canadian icon, the Beaux-Artsstyle Union Station, inaugurated in 1927 by the Prince of Wales when the train linked Canada’s far-flung cities.
The Royal York, now a National Heritage Landmark, is dwarfed by modern architectural giants, like the neighboring Royal Bank of Canada Plaza Towers and the 54-story Toronto-Dominion Centre.
Under the Royal Bank is an entrance to the PATH, whose 16 subterranean miles of shops, cafes and restaurants link 48 office towers, six hotels, and five subway stations, making it the world’s largest underground shopping mall.
In this downtown neighborhood you’ll also find the Eaton Centre — a three-block, three-level shopping complex at Oscar Peterson Square, named for the famous Montreal-born musician.
The city’s transformation has had other manifestations beyond architectural. I was reminded of this while reading an interview with Lorne Michaels, the Canadianborn producer of the U.S. TV show, “Saturday Night Live,” in the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Michaels remembered Toronto as “the best of all worlds in terms of comedy grounding.”
Why?
Because when he was growing up, it was “an unbelievably dull city,” so he would have to find ways to amuse himself.
Today “dull” is a thing of the past in a city considered very “hip.”
But new or old, there are some wonderful “behind the scenes” stories about Toronto told by Bruce Bell, the author, with photographer Elan Penn, of “Toronto: A Pictorial Celebration” (Sterling Publishing Company).
Bell took us backstage at the Royal York to an old dressing room with a big star on the door – it was Marlene Dietrich’s when she last worked the hotel’s supper club in 1947.
Bell, an 18-year-old busboy at the time, remembered being “summoned” to Dietrich’s dressing room.
“She said to me, ‘Get me gin’. We knocked back a few. She was wonderful, (but) I was so nervous.”
By lunchtime, Bell led us to the historic St. Lawrence Market on Front Street, a crowded, Victorian-style bee hive of vendors and wonderful aromas, where you can buy everything from fresh vegetables to cheese and salamis.
We had lunch at a small Italian stand, where a hearty, Italian-accented woman in a white smock with a smile to match the food served us giant foccacia sandwiches bulging with eggplant and peppers.
After downing our sandwiches with a cold Coke, we walked to Jarvis Street, where Canada’s historic Freedom Trail tied into the Underground Railroad that brought escaping Black slaves across the border from the United States.
After making their way to Rochester, New York, the slaves would cross Lake Ontario, the majority winding up at what was then the Jarvis Street dock.
The abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who published a newspaper called “The Northern Star,” would always advise the slaves to “follow the northern star,” said Bell, who led us into nearby St. Lawrence Hall, where a plaque commemorates the Underground Railroad and where, in 1850, a convention of “Colored Freedmen” took place.
The next morning we hopped a ferry to Ward’s Island with a group of young campers on an outing with their bikes. The trip from Harbourfront Centre in downtown Toronto to Ward’s Island took a mere 10 minutes, but once on the island we felt miles away.
From Ward’s, you can rent a bike or a canoe and look back at the city skyline.
There are beaches here, too, including a clothing-optional beach at Hanlan’s Point, which at one time had a 10,000-seat stadium, where Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run in 1914.
After a midday ice cream, we took the ferry boat back to the mainland and spent the afternoon at Toronto’s pedestrian-only Distillery District, home to the largest and best preserved collection of Victorian industrial architecture in North America, interspersed with artisan galleries and boutiques, theaters and restaurants.
On our last day in Toronto, we rode the trolley to Chinatown.
It started to rain, but we opened up our umbrella and took a stroll as planned, eyeing all the fresh produce and bargain clothing that spilled onto the crowded sidewalk.
Chinatown merges with another neighborhood, lively Kensington Market, which in the 1920s and 1930s was a distinctly Jewish area with at least 30 synagogues.
That night, we went up to the top of the CN Tower, the world’s tallest free-standing structure, for a different perspective of Toronto, taking in wonderful, panoramic views of this city of charming neighborhoods that spreads out by the lake.
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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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