Mustapha
Senior Member
Excellent site!
+1
Excellent site!
thecharioteer began this fantastic thread,
Like most of you, I have spent considerable time looking at, or tracking down specific plates of the Goad Atlas of Toronto. Aren’t they beautiful?
![]()
I was excited to see Atlases put up by the TPL, but soon discovered that navigating their catalogue was painful, as the database titles don't include plate numbers, nor can you sub-sort results by plate. Meanwhile, the version put up by the Archives suffers from being trapped in a wretched file-format that is essentially unsupported on Linux and OSX.
I decided to put together a simple website to allow myself to easily locate and view the maps. The result -- isn't anything you haven't seen before, but it has sufficient advantages (and disadvantages!) that make it a rudimentary, but useful and complementary mode of accessing Goad’s Atlas (1884, 1890, 1893, 1899). You should be able to use any major browser, any platform, no extra software required.
Rather than keep the tool to myself, I’d like to share the work with you, and other Toronto heritage enthusiasts at large. I hope some of you will find it of use. (I know the maps aren’t 'rare' in the sense of not being familiar, and so technically this doesn't belong in this thread, but -- I trust you will indulge me.)
Here’s the introductory post to the site -- enjoy exploring Victorian Toronto!
Note: best viewed using a large monitor (a double monitor setup is even better)
Cool info, thanks. I'm working on a period show set in 1900 and it's great to get these old maps. We already have a couple but it's always good to get more material. Totally different sensibility, appearance-wise, than a contemporary map. Really rather elegant windows onto lost eras. I was at an antique paper fair at St. Lawrence north a couple of months ago and managed to score some great paper goods to use as source material and reference for various hand prop and set-related stuff; our propsmaster is a regular down there and has scored some good city maps from the late 1800s and early 1900s.For anyone who is interested ... just to let you know that one of the dealers at the Sunday St. Lawrence Antique Market has, for the past three weeks, been selling single sheets from old Goad's street and fire insurance maps of the city - late 19th/early 20th century. I was tempted to buy one of my Riverdale neighbourhood, but it was in rather iffy condition. The dealer is on the east side aisle of the building, closer to the south side.