its a shame we lost a lot of those massive homes. another big teardown in Rosedale was the home of Sir Edmund Osler, Craigleigh, on South Drive where the only thing standing now are the gates.
Osler bequeathed it to the city in 1924, and the city saw fit to tear it down in 1932. it was not as grand as Chorley, but was built quite a bit earlier, in 1876.
Fascinating. This shows the Bathurst street bridge at a SW/NE angle instead of N/S as it is today, the pumping station at John street on the lakefront, and the baseball stadium on Queen at Broadview...
At first I wondered if the map was translated from a series of photographs - some intrepid fella going up in a hot air balloon. Not necessarily, though, since such maps had already been produced for centuries.
One of those Birds Eye views of Toronto (from 1876) can be found on the U of T Data, Maps & GIS Centre website - the same one that appears on pages 78-79 of Hayes' Historical Atlas of Toronto.
At first I wondered if the map was translated from a series of photographs - some intrepid fella going up in a hot air balloon. Not necessarily, though, since such maps had already been produced for centuries.
It's interesting to see the dense streetscapes, and the structures that once stood where the oases of green space we enjoy today - Berczy park and St. James park, in the section above, for instance - are now. It's as if, in their creation, we've reclaimed a little of our arboreal heritage ... though of course some nice old buildings were lost along the way.
Premier Mitch Hepburn closed it down in the 1930s for two reasons. Firstly, it was during the Depression, and the place -- which was the Lt. Governor's home -- represented a huge annual outlay for the province, and cutting what was a sop to the idle rich during a time of suffering and poverty was an obvious vote-getter. Secondly, Hepburn had creeping republican sentiments and resented any overly overt display of British imperialism, and closing Chorley Park was his means to humble the Crown in Ontario. Whether or not this has anything to do with the fact that he was the last Liberal elected premier of this province until 1985 is open to interpretation.
Interestingly, though, it was Nathan Phillips, no less, who actually tore it down, in the early 60s. You'd think it would have been Fred Gardiner...
