Anybody know what this is? York Mills & Bayview

[Lone Primate]

This has fascinated me since I noticed it in the city's aerial photos and a few oblique angles in ground shots that never seem to quite point in the "interesting" direction. It looks like it was a makeshift solution to the dog's leg on York Mills at Bayview for a few years, but to my surprise, it just carried on forward for as far as the plates go... right up to 1992. I gather that corner was reworked in the late 90s to its current configuration, and every trace of the old route visible to the casual passerby is obliterated. But given one end of it was just opposite one of the entrances to York Mills Shopping Centre, it must have been pretty trick for a while. And that weird peanut-shaped building in the middle of it all, two or three stories high... what in the world was that? Do any of you remember the road, the building... using that road to actually get anyplace?

Here it is in 1947 (above). Looks kind of like just a farmer's shortcut.

By 1956, the plaza's there, and the route looks like an ersatz correction for folks heading west. Looks a little complicated...

I figured the correction of the dog's leg about 1960 would have extinguished this little shortcut, but nope, there it is, still doing its thing... whatever its thing was, by then... in 1975. And this persisted till the mid-90s, I've read.

And hey, while we're at it... does anybody remember this thing at the northeast corner of Leslie and York Mills (photo's from 1968)? There's a PetroCan station on the site now, but for a long time it was this weird building with curving drive-thru lanes in and out of it. Anyone remember this, and what it was? I don't think I've ever seen the like...

 

[adma]

Definitely both gas stations.

 

[Lone Primate]

I was thinking that the one at Bayview was probably a gas station... in some ground level shots, it looks like there's a B/A British-American sign there. But there sure are an awful lot of park cars in the Leslie location for a gas station. I know cars broke down a lot more in the 60s, but hey. Still, the lanes... guiding you to the pumps... that does seem pretty likely.

 

[jimha]

North West corner of York Mills & Bayview was definitely a B/A gas station (later Gulf). The road ran behind it. Never knew the reason for it but the jog explains it all.

 

[adma]

It seems to me that the road pretty much lasted until the present plaza was erected on the site in the late 90s or so (IIRC said plaza had one of the last new branches of Lichtman's before that chain went under). I presume it was maintained as a picturesque right turn lane benefiting the downtown-commuting rich folks in the neighbourhood...

 

[themarc]

North West corner of York Mills & Bayview was definitely a B/A gas station (later Gulf). The road ran behind it. Never knew the reason for it but the jog explains it all.

"Marshalls Gulf" for years also sponsored boys hockey teams at York Mills Arena to the southeast across the intersection.

 

[Lone Primate]

As legend has it, if my memory serves me well, I seem to remember reading somewhere that in the 19th century there was a blacksmith shop on the northwest corner of York Mills and Bayview and the curved road behind it was a service lane for wagons, etc., but the general traffic used it too if they were headed for York Mills (village) at Yonge St., where there were three mills. We used that little road until the early '90s to cut off the corner and avoid the light at the corner, when driving westbound on York Mills. In the 1947 aerial photo there is no sign of a blacksmith shop, so it must have been demolished before the gas station was built. Today that little road is but a remnant, the driveway to the underground parking garage of a small shopping mall.

I wondered if anyone every used it as a road. It looked kind of like they did, but it was hard to be sure. Looks like it might have been a little handy if you were heading south on Bayview and wanted to head west on York Mills. It looks like at one point it was the best way to dodge the dog's leg that used to be there.

 

[Marmaly]

I wondered if anyone every used it as a road. It looked kind of like they did, but it was hard to be sure. Looks like it might have been a little handy if you were heading south on Bayview and wanted to head west on York Mills. It looks like at one point it was the best way to dodge the dog's leg that used to be there.

It was a clear roadway. I definitely used it to bypass the traffic light.

 

[adma]

And IIRC that dogleg was even shown on road maps.