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James Victor Salmon, Toronto photographer, 1911-1958

thecharioteer

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One of the best photographers of "old" Toronto was James Victor Salmon, whose over 15,000 photographs are in both the Toronto Public Library and Toronto Archives. Many of his pictures are iconic images of the changing city (both downtown and the suburbs) and are an invaluable resource (and many are quite beautiful just as photographs). It would also appear that, like many of us at UT, he was an "amateur" passionate about this city. This thread will celebrate his work.

Biographically, Mr. Salmon is described on the Toronto Archives site thus:

Very little is known about James Salmon. He was born in Toronto in 1911 and grew up in West Toronto Junction. He later moved to Willowdale, Ontario which is evidenced by the fact that Willowdale is stamped on the back of many of the prints. Salmon wrote a history of the Toronto Street Railway and was interested in the history of Etobicoke, York Township, and West Toronto Junction. He died in November 1958 at the age of 47.

Salmon was a keen collector of photography from the Toronto area. His entire collection consists of 15,000 prints and negatives most of which are housed in the Canadian History section of the Metro Toronto Reference Library. In 1974, Toronto City Archivist Robert Woadden negotiated the transfer of approximately 2,200 of those prints and negatives from the Library to the City Archives. These images, mostly created by City Works Department photographer Arthur Goss, were acquired to complement the Archives holdings of Goss images in RG 8.

James Victor Salmon was a designer for the Toronto Hydro Electric System for thirty years and was fascinated by the history of public transportation. He was knowledgeable in the history of Etobicoke and York Township, particularly West Toronto Junction where he was born. He collected 14,000 photographs (Goss – see SC 229) on subjects that interested him, especially Toronto landmarks, vehicles and ships. He wrote Rails from the Junction, the Story of the Toronto Suburban Railway, but upon his death at age 47 in 1958 it was yet unpublished. His widow Jean Salmon completed the task of publishing the history in 1970.




Looking south from the Hydro Building on Carlton Street 1955:

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SE:

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Shea's Victoria, Richmond and Victoria, 1955:

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Court Street, 1952:

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Yonge, south of Grosvenor, 1955:

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Victoria Street side of the Arcade Building, 1952:

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Yonge and Front 1953:

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Manning Arcade, 1955:

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Front Street, 1954:

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Bathurst, north from the 401 overpass, 1955:

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Thanks, deepend! I look forward to some of your wonderful closeups of his work!

Though I may be reading much into some of his work, there is often a feeling of melancholy in his downtown shots of buildings about to be swept away forever. Could be that so many of his shots are devoid of people and seem overcast (even if it appears the sun is out).

Adelaide Street East:



Front Street East:









Church Street north of Charles:



Bay Street north of Bloor:



Bloor Street west of Bay:



Yonge and Alexander (across from the famous St. Charles):

 
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Great post charioteer! I came across many of his photos just recently while trying to find pictures of a lost bridge on the Humber, and was wondering who this guy was.

I suspect many UT members will sense a kindred-spirit here, if not a giant whose shoulders we all stand upon! I know I certainly do - besides having the same middle name, I was just showing someone around the Junction (where he grew up) yesterday...and I would estimate my own collection of Toronto photographs would be at around 15,000 by this point too (though not exactly Library/Archive-worthy).

Truly a subject worth celebrating...
 
Any idea where the Front Street photo - second one in post 2125 - was taken? Is that the St Lawrence Market covered section in the distance? If so it must be about Sherbourne or Princess, I think.
 
Gloucester and Yonge, 1955:



SE corner of Yonge and Wellington, 1955:



Yonge and Esplanade (the former Great Western Railway Station), 1951:



Construction of the Wellesley Subway Station, 1952:

 
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Though I may be reading much into some of his work, there is often a feeling of melancholy in his downtown shots of buildings about to be swept away forever. Could be that so many of his shots are devoid of people and seem overcast (even if it appears the sun is out).

I agree that these photos have a very lonely feeling about them, precisely because they are of buildings that are no longer with us. The feeling they produce is in that way not dissimilar to the feeling produced by photographs of long dead individuals.

As you say, what is also sad is that he was photographing buildings right at the end of their life. Structures (many of them magnificent) once considered vital, useful and necessary to the life of the city, now deemed irrevocably obsolete.

These images are the last we will see of these buildings, but of course it didn’t have to be the end of their story.

Like all cities in the emerging post-industrial world, Toronto struggled not only to know what to do with all the vacant manufacturing space, it also struggled to see that the buildings themselves—the vessels that contained the space—had any value.

But if only the city had been able to wait! If only the area had been allowed to lie fallow or even go further into dereliction. We all know they would have been discovered anew, with a new sense of purpose.

This inability to imagine a world where these buildings would become desirable again is of course, completely understandable. But the loss is still maddening.

This photo, taken in 1978, on my first trip to New York (a photo taken by Patrick Cummins (Collations)), shows clearly what happens when a city can wait. It’s a photo taken at the corner of Crosby and Bleecker, just north of E. Houston.

A deeply suggestive shot of a lonely and dangerous looking street in a destitute area. And yet within 5-7 years this area would be home to the biggest and most important art galleries in the United States, and would soon become known for having some of the most expensive real estate in the Western world.

 
I agree that these photos have a very lonely feeling about them, precisely because they are of buildings that are no longer with us. The feeling they produce is in that way not dissimilar to the feeling produced by photographs of long dead individuals.

As you say, what is also sad is that he was photographing buildings right at the end of their life. Structures (many of them magnificent) once considered vital, useful and necessary to the life of the city, now deemed irrevocably obsolete.

These images are the last we will see of these buildings, but of course it didn’t have to be the end of their story.

Like all cities in the emerging post-industrial world, Toronto struggled not only to know what to do with all the vacant manufacturing space, it also struggled to see that the buildings themselves—the vessels that contained the space—had any value.

But if only the city had been able to wait! If only the area had been allowed to lie fallow or even go further into dereliction. We all know they would have been discovered anew, with a new sense of purpose.

This inability to imagine a world where these buildings would become desirable again is of course, completely understandable. But the loss is still maddening.

This photo, taken in 1978, on my first trip to New York (a photo taken by Patrick Cummins (Collations)), shows clearly what happens when a city can wait. It’s a photo taken at the corner of Crosby and Bleecker, just north of E. Houston.

A deeply suggestive shot of a lonely and dangerous looking street in a destitute area. And yet within 5-7 years this area would be home to the biggest and most important art galleries in the United States, and would soon become known for having some of the most expensive real estate in the Western world.

Great points, deepend. In the same way the Romantics revelled in the "pleasure of ruins", which expressed the fragility and temporal quality of our existence, we look at these old pictures with a mixture of feelings, frustration combined with our own melancholy, over "what might have been". This goes beyond a simple of discussion of good versus bad architecture but actually touches beyond the poignancy of "the human comedy", of the struggle of previous generations. In the same way that a theatre seems to contain the ghosts of every actor who played there, so do these forlorn buildings photographed by Salmon, prior to their demise. Salmon, in a sense was paying "witness" to these emblems of previous generations.

His photo of the 1862 Bank of Toronto building (NW corner of Church and Wellington) in 1955 embodies all the emotions just described. When built (by George Gooderham, no less) it was probably one of the finest buildings in the city (as seen in the 1870 photo below). By 1955, the world had moved on....



 
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I also mourn the loss of those buildings, but Salmon's photos are yet another illustration of just how shabby and dreary Toronto was looking by the late 1950s. I can almost (but not really) understand the yearning to clear it all away.
 
I can totally understand why new was better than old at that point. The depression and WWII would have resulted in serious underinvestment in many of these buildings. Better days would have meant progress which would have meant new. New house, new car, new appliances and new buildings.
 
One can understand the attitudes but still lament the losses, especially when you visit Guildwood Park. It didn't happen in every city to the same extent as Toronto, even though buildings were in bad shape throughout North American and European cities after the Depression and WWII.
 
I think that the losses documented by Salmon encompassed three levels: individual buildings, streetscapes and finally neighbourhoods. One neighbourhood that comes to mind is Market Square, particularly the almost Dickensian world of the narrow streets and back alleys beside the old market. Salmon captured some of that on Market Street in 1952 when it extended between Front and King:







salmonmarket3.jpg


Not by Salmon (about 40 years earlier), but perhaps of the same archway:

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As a postscript to Salmon's photos of the buildings on Market Street: could these be them?



From (post-1894, given the presence of the Beard Building):

 
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I also mourn the loss of those buildings, but Salmon's photos are yet another illustration of just how shabby and dreary Toronto was looking by the late 1950s. I can almost (but not really) understand the yearning to clear it all away.

I agree.

Given that these pictures are only a few years before the start of Don Mills and the post-war suburban boom, it's easy to see how you could look at these buildings and areas and think that it may as well be torn down. Contrast the rundown gloominess of soot blackened old Toronto, and the clean modern look of Don Mills, and it really becomes no contest. Would that they had left it to sit for just another 20-25 years, and we'd have had a fantastic market district.
 

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