Yonge and College Streets

Eaton’s College Street: Known Today as College Park, originally uploaded by asylumbythelake.com.

In the spirit of the previous post about the Odeon Theatre, I decided to dedicate this post to other notable landmarks of this neighbourhood.

The first one, visible aboove, is College Park, originally known as Eaton’s College Street. Built in Art Deco style, it is one of my favourite buildings in Toronto. T. Eaton Company Ltd. claimed that it was “the largest furniture and house furnishings store in the British Empire.”  On this postcard, this has been changed to “Canada’s largest housefurnishings building,” helping to indicate the decade in which this postcard was issued.

The depiction of the traffic in the intersection and the different modes of transportation are perhaps the two most interesting features of this postcard, aside from the building itself, whose exterior has not undergone any changes. There are streetcar lines on Yonge Street, a route that  ceased to operate after the opening of the subway.

The above postcard depicts the Maple Leaf Gardens, located one block east at Carlton and Church Streets.  It was also built in the Art Deco style, but with an addition of Streamlined Moderne. Sadly, at the expense of preserving this historical structure, it will soon be partially converted to a supermarket. Although it appears that this news was greeted with my enthusiasm among the city residents, I think thatthe building would have more diginity as a community centre, which it certainly deserves as an important piece of local history.

Both of the above cards were purchased on eBay.

Odeon Theatre Featured at Torontoist!

Odeon Theatre, originally uploaded by asylumbythelake.com.

The above postcard was featured in this article, which discusses the closing of the Carlton Cinema. Previously, it was the Odeon Theatre that stood on the site of Carlton, but it was torn down in order to make way for an apartment building in 1973.

University College in Moonlight

In addition to Victoria University, University College is one of my favourite structures on campus. I remember getting lost there during my first month as a student at the University of Toronto, in vain trying to find the classroon where tutorial sessions for one of my courses were being held. The building is an interesting maze of various staircases, hallways, and locked up rooms.

The postcard was published in Toronto by W.G. MacFarlane, number D216. There are numerous rumours and ghosts stories associated with the building, but probably the most well known is the story of Ivan Reznikoff and Paul Diablos. Due to its romantic elements of the plot involving revenge and murder, it is one of the city’s most beloved and enduring ghost stories, so I won’t repost here. The Toronto Ghosts and Hauntings Society has a very good summary of the tale here.

Victoria University

Victoria University, originally uploaded by asylumbythelake.com.

I am not dead yet, although I have been very busy with school, as it is usually (and unfortunately) the case during this time of the year.

Here I present a postcard of the Victoria University, part of the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto. It is one of my favourite buildings, and I have been fortune in having a couple of classes there, in my first and third year of my post-secondary career. Strangely, both time I ended up in the same classroom on the second floor.

The building, built in the style of Romanesque revival, and affectionately known as the “Old Vic” among the faculty and staff,  has not changed at all over the years, but I can’t same the same about the landscape surrounding it. Two buildings were constructed over the years, the beautiful E. J. Pratt Library and the the Northrope Frye Hall. Moreover, it appeared as though the construction around the site (first with the front steps and then with the garden) lasted for years. It was finished, I believe last summer, and the buildings, in addition to its immediate vicinity, has been looking quite superb since. I shall certainly miss it when  I eventually (and hopefully) graduate.

The postcard above was published by I. Wurster.

This postcard, published by John Valentine and Sons, number 101,802, year unknown. It depicts Queen’s Park Avenue East looking south from Avenue Road and Bloor Street West. The building visible on the left is the Annsley Hall, a student residence of Victoria University and a National Historic Site.

An Article on Postcard Collecting

Check out this excellent article on collecting postcards, which appeared in Financial Post on July 26, 2009.

Queen Street West and Roncesvalles Avenue

Queen Street West and Roncesvalles Avenue, originally uploaded by asylumbythelake.com.

This postcard was published by Valentine and Sons in 1900, number 107503. This web site has an old map of the area.

The building depicted on the postcard is the former Ocean House Hotel. In 1882, Thomas E. Scholes, owner of the Scholes Hotel at Queen Street West and Dundas Street West, bought a lot at the southeast corner at Roncesvalles Avenue and Queen Street West. Following the sale, he announced his plan to erect a “first class summer hotel” in the spot. Park Hotel opened in December 1884 and it must have been quite a commercial success as it is evident in the fact that Scholes built an addition consisting of fifty rooms in 1885.

In the next decade, the proprietor’s involvement in the management of the hotel became sporadic and the name was changed to Sunnyside Hotel. When this postcard was published in 1900, the hotel changed ownership to John Kane and it became known as Ocean House Hotel. Kane operated the hotel until about 1908, when John Edward Laxton purchased it and ran it for many years after.

In 1922, Sunnyside Amusement Park opened. It was a hugely popular summer destination for tourists and Torontonians alike and it appears that this attraction,  with addition to the nearby Parkdale Theatre at Tiller Avenue, provided sizable profits to the hotel. Several interesting historical snapshots on the City of Toronto Archives web site show that the owner realized the lucrative advertising potential of the building, as it was on top of the hill overlooking the crowds visiting the park, and thus the roof was adorned with a huge billboard. Moreover, the first floor was enlarged in order to offer rental space to retailers. Over the years, they included Laura Secord, Bake-Rite, Tamblyn Drugstore, United Cigar, Men’s Toggery, shoe shine parlour, a dentist’s office and later a bridal salon, clothing shop, and Sunnyside Stamps & Collectables. This alteration required that the handsome back porch be demolished and converted into a store.

City of Toronto Inventory of Heritage Properties specifies that the hotel was altered during the 1930s, when it received its present shape, with one large store and a restaurant.

In 1955, the nearby amusement park closed, one of the major casualties of the construction of the Gardiner Expressway. In the same decade, the hotel shared in with the pitiful decline of Parkdale. It is now known when it ceased to operate as a hotel, having been converted into an apartment building. It is also not known when the copula was removed in order to make way for a much larger billboard on the roof, but several photographs on the City of Toronto Archives web site reveal that it was already gone in 1959.

Due to its late Victorian architectural features, the municipal government recognized the former hotel as a heritage property and the building is now protected by the Ontario Heritage Act.

The present address of the building is 1633 Queen Street West. The main floor is occupied by a restaurant and a dirty chain coffee shop.

This photo and this one as well show the present state of the exterior. It is a shame that such a beautiful building was allowed to deteriorate. However, this postcard provides an insight into the potential of the building if it would undergo a rigorous historical restoration.

College Street and Spadina Avenue

College Street and Spadina Avenue, originally uploaded by asylumbythelake.com.

This is the first postcard I have ever bought. I originally found it on EBay and after eight bids or so, it was mine. This is also the card that inspired me to start my collection.

It was mailed in Toronto on March 13, 1908 at 10:30 am and published by Valentine and Sons, year unknown. Number on the front of the card is 101183.

There exists also a similar postcard of the intersection, published in 1908. However, the view depicted here is different, from south east.

Recently,  I also came across these two:

University College from Queen’s Park

 

University College, originally uploaded by asylumbythelake.com.

I haven’t found any references to this gate, but it is long gone. It led from Queen’s Park to University College and it was probably located north of the present Gerstein Science Information Centre, a library which is part of the University of Toronto.

I purchased this card on EBay and it was published by Valentine and Sons, number 600,185, year unknown.

Update: I found a modified version of this postcard, but this one has a decorative border around it.

 

St. George Street

St. George Street, originally uploaded by asylumbythelake.com.

This is one of my favourite postcards. It depicts the intersection of Bloor and St. George Streets. It was manufactured in 1906 by Valentine and Sons, number 100502, according to Vintage Postcards.

The most striking building on the card is the former Gooderham Mansion, built in Romanesque Revival style. Now located at 135 St. George Street, it has been home to the York Club since 1910.

Valentine and Sons also published a similar postcard, but this one with a border and edited print, in about 1910.

Problems with EBay Sellers

I realize that most postcard collectors find items to enlarge their collections on EBay. The vast majority of my postcards were also purchased from various sellers on the auction site. Most of the time, the transactions make me happy, as the prices are low and the shipping and handling charges are reasonable, and the cards vary rarely get lost in the snail mail.

However, today I had a very unpleasant experience, and I’m writing this as a sort of a warning to other postcard collectors.

I placed a bid on five different cards from one seller. All of the auctions indicated that they were multiple items listings, which seemed a bit strange, but each of them stated that two postcards were available. Vintage postcards are not that hard to find, so I thought that the seller had some extra ones.

Today I got an automatically generated e-mail from Ebay, stating that I have won all of them. But that was followed by an e-mail from the seller, telling me that the auctions weren’t in fact mulitple style listings and that I did not in fact win any of the cards, since someone else placed a bid after me.

I e-mailed her back, writing that she should still honour the auctions as if they were multiple style listings. I looked it up in the help topics here, and it states, “If two bids have the same price per item, the earlier bid is given priority.”

She e-mailed me again, which made me even more angry:

“Sorry, the other winner name was first on the list Ebay sent me, and he paid for the lots instantly and I already have posted them to him… Again sorry about that… but you got TOTALLY SOME FREE old Canada postcards instead… and they are very similar to the one you missed… Again very sorry about that…”

I know that she is trying to remedy the situation and sent me some free postcards, but I don’t honestly give a fuck about those, since I’m only collecting postcards from Toronto, not from the rest of Canada. And how can they even be similar?

I understand that mistakes happen, but judging from her overall feedback, she appears to be an experienced Ebayer, so I don’t understand why she would fuck up five different auctions. Lesson learned, I’ll never buy cards from her again.

I haven’t left her any feedback, but for now I’m leaning toward negative one. Or maybe I should wait until she sends me the “totally free” ones.