Urban Shocker
Doyenne
It goes to the ferry docks? Or to some other docks where big brawny guys unload stuff from ships?
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Miscellany Toronto Photographs: Then and Now
- Thread starter Mustapha
- Start date
androiduk
Senior Member
Bingo, Anna.... cat's out of the bag.
Ellis Wiley was quite prolific wasn't he? His shots of street scenes and life from the 40s through the early 90s, all in colour, bring to the viewers eye a different 'reality', that black and white can't suggest. Some of the 80s colour pics I predict, will be of especial relevance and remembrance to the gen X'ers and Y'ers here at UT...
Adelaide looking W towards Shepperd street, and further on, Bay street.
May 8 addition.
Great pic as usual Mustapha. You're lining them up very well. Do you carry a copy of the B&W when you go shooting or do you just do it from memory.
adma
Superstar
I'll definitely presume, the bus that leads to the ferry docks. (Might the label have something to do with the fact that the Island ferry was under TTC jurisdiction until 1961?)
Interesting to consider that "functionalist" precursor to the Simpson Tower (was it part of Simpsons?)
Interesting to consider that "functionalist" precursor to the Simpson Tower (was it part of Simpsons?)
Mustapha
Senior Member
Great pic as usual Mustapha. You're lining them up very well. Do you carry a copy of the B&W when you go shooting or do you just do it from memory.
I carry a copy of the B&W. Thanks androiduk, and lol, no one has pointed out there are more cars in the Then pic.
NomoreaTorontonian
Active Member
It's the bus stop for the bus to the Docks for the island ferries. Well, on that corner it's got to be the bus from the Docks.
There was a picture on another site the other day of the last Bay Street streetcar. We lived on the island when I was a kid. Waiting on that streetcar down at the docks in early May could be really cold 10-15 minutes.
Mustapha
Senior Member
May 10 addition.
Toronto's lost 'Greenwich' Village.
A nice Toronto Star writeup here:
http://www.thestar.com/article/558280
Gerrard Looking E towards Yonge, from a point just E of Bay.
Please have a look at the pics below. I'm don't know where the Now' locations are. If anyone can help, that would be great. Perhaps a family member would know...
Toronto's lost 'Greenwich' Village.
A nice Toronto Star writeup here:
http://www.thestar.com/article/558280
Gerrard Looking E towards Yonge, from a point just E of Bay.
Please have a look at the pics below. I'm don't know where the Now' locations are. If anyone can help, that would be great. Perhaps a family member would know...
adma
Superstar
Wow. Simply wow. How poignant can you get. To the youngster, it's like Kensington 50 years earlier and 50 times better. (Though on a more ominous note, one might also note the roots of the overindividualistic storefront cacaphony that presently plagues Yonge in North Toronto, etc. But we sure didn't recognize it as such then.)
Re the first of those pictures (Jack & Jill Espresso): I remember going with my parents to some dumpy lowslung old cottage thing at, I think, Hayden & Laplante for dinner back in the 70s--could that be what had been Jack & Jill? (Where the McMurtry-Scott building is now.)
And that second photo's interesting for one of the businesses having a sign in the window announcing a Sep 3 move to (where else?) Yorkville Ave--and a similar closing dateish thing in the Framing Gallery to its right: a real "right before the fall" scenario there...
Re the first of those pictures (Jack & Jill Espresso): I remember going with my parents to some dumpy lowslung old cottage thing at, I think, Hayden & Laplante for dinner back in the 70s--could that be what had been Jack & Jill? (Where the McMurtry-Scott building is now.)
And that second photo's interesting for one of the businesses having a sign in the window announcing a Sep 3 move to (where else?) Yorkville Ave--and a similar closing dateish thing in the Framing Gallery to its right: a real "right before the fall" scenario there...
Anna
Active Member
Groovy
I looked up the Jack and Jill in the Toronto Star Pages of the Past
and found this ad from the fall of 1963:
I looked up the Jack and Jill in the Toronto Star Pages of the Past
and found this ad from the fall of 1963:
Jack and Jill
Coffee House
We are one of the lucky ones who can stay in
The
Village
Operating year ‘round
Serving our specials
Nightly 8 pm until ???
Sunday 5 pm until 1 am
Closed Mondays
67 Hayter Street
Coffee House
We are one of the lucky ones who can stay in
The
Village
Operating year ‘round
Serving our specials
Nightly 8 pm until ???
Sunday 5 pm until 1 am
Closed Mondays
67 Hayter Street
Anna
Active Member
The Village Art Gallery was 69-73 Hayter Street - you can see the Jack & Jill across the street (LaPlante?) behind it.
barrytron3030
Active Member
wow, gerrard was actually beautiful at one time. i must say, yonge and gerrard/ bay and gerrard is one of the ugliest parts of the city. it needs a serious injection of character.
Blovertis
Active Member
Amazing. These are the first pictures I've seen that really show what the Village was like.
I'd never heard of Jack & Jill but it looked like a real oasis of European "sophistication" -- so much for Cafe Diplomatico's claims to have pioneered patio dining in Toronto.
I'd never heard of Jack & Jill but it looked like a real oasis of European "sophistication" -- so much for Cafe Diplomatico's claims to have pioneered patio dining in Toronto.
adma
Superstar
And it almost all seemed to have bit the dust and vanished off-radar at just about the last possible moment when it was possible to do so, i.e. right before Jane Jacobs came to town...
Blovertis
Active Member
And except for those few houses at the NW corner of Bay and Gerrard and one or two on Elm west of Bay, there's not even a trace of the village's built form (much less the "vibe"). It's hard to think of a neighbourhood that was so radically transformed in such a short time.
BTW Anna -- how did you find that ad so quickly? Do you have an archive in your basement?
BTW Anna -- how did you find that ad so quickly? Do you have an archive in your basement?
Anna
Active Member
Yes, when my computer's in the basement.
Toronto Star - Pages of the Past
Free on the TPL website with your library card.
http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/fin_art_az.jsp#t-v-w
I found the original article, written by Pierre Berton, referred to in 2008 - May 9, 1962 - 47 years ago to the day Mustapha posted the pictures - "Maytime in a village that refuses to die" - page 35.
It includes the history of the some of the buildings in the area. The block west of Bay was to be demolished for a hospital parking lot. I think the block east of Bay survived until the early 70's.
Mustapha
Senior Member
Thanks adma and Anna. This is good corraboration. I took two 'Now' pictures this Sunday afternoon: the corner of Hayter and Laplante (Jack & Jill) and Hayter (or rather, the the old alignment of Hayter - it's been built over W of Laplante) looking E at Laplante in the distance past The Village Art Gallery. I'll post them tommorrow. The home PC here is a mess with IPod cables coming out of every USB port. Oddly enough, if you Mapquest '67 Hayter Street Toronto', the arrow points at the long gone Jack and Jill location where the McMurtry-Scott building is now.
May 11 addition.
University and Queen looking NW.
