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Lost Neighbourhood: Blondin Avenue

Lone Primate

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Hi, everybody. I'm new here; this is my first post. You folks have got some quality work up here; a lot of it is fascinating and inspiring. I hope I can offer something of quality to you all as well.

One of the things I've always been interested in is how cities change at the street grid level. Particularly poignant is when we abandon some place and give it over to nature again. This happens quite a lot; I'm constantly surprised by the number of places that were once common to the public that get lost, and how quickly forgotten they are.

I was at the City Archives on Friday to research the bridge at Flindon Road that once crossed the Humber in the vicinity of Albion Road. In the course of that, I also decided to look up a street a friend of mind spotted on Google Maps and found interesting... a little chunk of pavement still labeled on Google as "Blondin Avenue", but which appeared to be disconnected from the grid. What I found was truly remarkable.

Blondin Avenue used to have a substantial number of homes on it. For about fifty years, dozens of families made their homes there. Equally surprising to me was the discovery that at least as many homes had once been on the south side of Walsh Avenue, which today seamlessly turns Albion Road into Wilson Avenue and vice versa. All of this seems to have changed in just the last decade or so.

Let me start you off with some of the images I got at the Archives, matched to a modern image courtesy of Google Maps.

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Blondin Road is the little diagonal cut at the lower left. This is how the neighbourhood appeared in 1950. At this time, the 401 had not yet been built. You can see that the handful of homes on Blondin are among the very first in the entire area.


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This is how it appeared in 1959. The 401 existed by then and had an pitchfork-shaped offramp at Weston Road just south of what you can see in this view.


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Here's how the neighbourhood looked in 1975. You can see the "new" offramp system of the 401 now, built in the mid-60s. Notice that Wilson Avenue no longer connects to Weston Road, but at the time, Blondin Avenue itself still did. That must have made for some intense moments as people barreled off the 401 into people trying to make turns at 15 mph from Blondin onto Weston. Little wonder that the shots of 1983 show Blondin ending in a cul de sac just shy of Weston. Take note, too, of the plaza at the increasingly complicated intersection of Albion and Weston at the upper left.


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Here's how the place looks today, more or less. Blondin is cut off from the road system, and all its homes are torn down. Amazingly, and inexplicably, so are all the homes on the south side of Walsh... with the single exception of one, #35, which you can see at about the centre of the image. Even the plaza at Albion and Walsh is gone, replaced by a sales office for condos. This image is a screen cap from Google Maps.

Now here's some of what I saw when I was there yesterday (Saturday) to explore what I'd seen from "above"...


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Looking down Wilson Avenue eastward. To the left is Walsh, which in modern times sweeps traffic from Albion to Wilson and Wilson to Albion. What you're seeing here is a largely forgotten, but still open-for-business (literally) butt-end of Wilson Avenue... it's still officially called Wilson Avenue, in fact.


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Turning around, this is the view. Until the mid-60s, what you would have seen would be Wilson Avenue straight to Weston Road. When the 401 was expanded from four lanes to the current express-collector system in about 1965, Wilson was cut off from Weston by the land requirements of the new interchange of the 401 at Weston Road. But the intersection of Wilson and Blondin, just the other side of the heap of rubble, was still open. Until fairly recently (and I'm not sure exactly HOW recent; I'm hoping some of you might know), there would have been houses on the right beyond the foreground tree.


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Climbing the rubble that segregates Blondin from the street grid, this was my first view of what was once a tidy residential street. This is Blondin Avenue as it looks today. Jaw-dropping. It looks like something out of the Love Canal Photo Album. I think this scene would be heartbreaking for anyone who once lived there, especially if you grew up on this street. I'm no expert but the rate of decay here suggests to me that the neighbourhood was torn down 10-15 years ago. Does anyone know for sure?


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This is an infrared shot of Blondin Road as I moved past the fallen tree above and headed towards a rubble field that seems to have been dumped in the mid-point of Blondin Avenue.


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A couple of views across the field that was once two rows of houses and their adjacent backyards. The second, infrared, shot is probably the remains of someone's driveway.


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Humanity has a knack for making lemonade from lemons. Here, in the debris field in the middle of a one-time residential street, someone is growing vine vegetables. Looked like plum tomatoes.


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Clearing the debris field and catching an unhindered glimpse of the remainder of the road towards Weston.


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A couple of shots approaching the end of Blondin Avenue, where it once met Weston Road.


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Here's the cookie. Today, and for over 20 years now, Blondin Avenue ends in a cul de sac at the very edge of Weston Road, which you can glimpse through the gap in the trees at the left. Beyond the trees on the right, you would have been able to see a plaza at one time. Until sometime around 1980 or so, this would actually have been an intersection exchanging traffic between Blondin Avenue and the northbound lanes of Weston Road. Immediately to my right once stood what appear to be a couple of large multi-unit low-rises, and across the street on the right, there were bungalows... single-unit homes.


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These signs are visible from the field just south of Blondin Avenue and a bit north of the 401 offramp to northbound Weston Road.

At this point, I headed back. Blondin road takes about ten minutes to walk, but part of that is getting over the three or four dunes of sandy debris dumped midway. Anyway, the shots from here on in are the return trip away from Weston and towards Wilson again.


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Heading east in infrared, just before the resumption of the debris field in the road.


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Views of Blondin heading towards Wilson after clearing the debris field.


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This once would have been the view of anyone heading off the work, turning onto Wilson from Blondin... before all the crap was dumped here, of course. :)

Having cursorily explored Blondin, I decided to walk up Walsh, the other half of this devastation. I was particularly interested in the state of the one, solitary survivor of all this...


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Somebody's driveway once, fronting onto Walsh Avenue.


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This is the only house still remaining on the south side of Walsh, #35. As you can see by the car and the state of the place, someone still lives here. This is a great mystery. Why only this place? Did everyone else sell except them? Why didn't they sell, then? What's to become of this one, single remainder of that lost neighbourhood?


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And here it is... looks like it could be the reason for it all. At the corner of Walsh/Albion and Weston Road, where the plaza used to be, is now this small sales office for this development. I wonder how long they've been sitting on the land? Have they owned it all along, or did they just buy it up once the homes were torn down... and if so, why were they torn down in the first place? Are these guys waiting for the moment they can clear #35 off the block as well?

Well, that's the trip. I hope it peaked your interest. If any of you knows something more about the neighbourhood and how and why and especially when it was lost, I've love to learn more.
 
Interesting tour! I drive by there every day for work and never knew about those roads. It looks like nature is taking back what development once stole.
 
I don't know this corner of Toronto, but I still find your photo essay fascinating. The shots on the ground put me in mind of that new book The World Without Us, which imagines what would happen if all humans disappeared from the earth tomorrow.

From the condition of the pavement and the overgrowth, it looks like these blocks were bought up and cleared by developers quite a long time ago. They are obviously very patient.

You mention shots from 1983 -- could you post them?
 
This reminds me a bit of the area that I grew up in. If you look at an aerial photograph of the Leslie and Green Lane area, you can make out which streets (now minor side streets) were actually reclaimed from the original road allowances of Leslie and the second concession north of Steeles.

maps
 
Blovertis, hi... I hope I didn't misspeak myself to the point that you have high expectations. I have nothing from the street level other than what I took myself on foot yesterday. The 1983 "shots" I mentioned are, in fact, a "shot", and at the time I took it I was more absorbed with the Flindon Road bridge than Blondin Avenue because it wasn't till later, once I was home, it really clicked just how remarkable the shots were. It's often like that, I find. One thing almost always leads to another interest.

Anyway, here's what I have from 1983. You'll see that the principal change from 1975 is that Blondin Road ends in a cul de sac; its access to Weston Road cut off... and probably wisely, given the nature of traffic on Weston Road there.

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Chuck... amazing! You've bullseyed on one of my own interests. One of the things I've researched is Leslie Street... a poor, tortured, broken-up thing with dignity and resilience. And right where you were talking about, that's one of my big interests. Leslie north of Steeles. Why isn't it a through street? German Mills creek is so minor it can be forded; I've done it. Besides, Leslie never even crosses it. So why the gap? It sure has been a pain in my ass when the 404 and Don Mills are clogged with traffic. I've taken a fair number of shots of the Archives' area photos that area over time, and I still can't make up my mind if Leslie was ever a going concern there. I suspect that is was, but I'm not ready to bet on it. Anyway, here are some shots from 1975 that you might find particularly interesting.

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Here's Leslie Street in 1975; it runs up the very centre of the image. At the bottom is Steeles Avenue. Near the top is the quarry that was once there (it was there a long time; I suppose that's why Leslie was never through there in recent years), and above that, John Street.


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Here's a shot I personally find interesting because I'm on the 404 everyday. That open space immediately to the right of the subdivision is where the 404 runs today. This shot is also from 1975, roughly two years before the province turned Woodbine Avenue south of Steeles into the 404. This is, of course, the very place where it deviates from that track and takes its own course. At the very bottom is Simonston Blvd. where it crosses Don Mills Road. Just out of sight to the bottom is where the Shoppes on Steeles and the 404 mall is today. Up at the top, looking very roughed-in and incomplete, is John Street.


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And last but certainly not least, a shot that ought to be close to your heart. Here's your neighbourhood, more or less, in 1975. Things have changed enormously; even some of the major streets have changed course vastly. At the horizontal centre is the CN line. Below it, John Street. In the vertical centre is Don Mills Road, with its bridge over the CN line. Don Mills ends abruptly at 14th Avenue (if it was called that then), which of course no longer goes that far west. There is no real successor street to that stretch; it's simply been overbuilt. Most interesting of all is the winding road that leads up from the end of 14th Avenue to Green Lane, itself a successor to 14th Avenue. That's Bronte Road, which, of course, no longer links directly to Green Lane. I wandered over that area a little over a year ago, trying to imagine how it once was.
 
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this guy is not selling. i saw plans for westchester and the development goes around it. also, notice the remnants of a lane way next to this house.

p.s, i don't like how westchester will meet the corner of walsh (wilson) & weston.

lone primate, how did you get access to those photos?
 
Hi, Prometheus. :) They're not selling? Good for them. :) Though I think the construction's going to make their lives hell. I'm interested in seeing the plans... can you tell me where I can see them? When does construction start?

If you mean the aerial photos, there are huge aerial photos of the entire city, done grid by grid, available at the City Archives on Spadina Avenue. For the moment, you can access them and photograph them for free, though I understand that's likely to change eventually.
 
Hi, Prometheus. :) They're not selling? Good for them. :) Though I think the construction's going to make their lives hell. I'm interested in seeing the plans... can you tell me where I can see them? When does construction start?

If you mean the aerial photos, there are huge aerial photos of the entire city, done grid by grid, available at the City Archives on Spadina Avenue. For the moment, you can access them and photograph them for free, though I understand that's likely to change eventually.


i saw the plans from a friend a few years ago. i have no idea what's going on with the construction, it looks stalled.

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p.s, you have to photograph the aerial photos? no scanned digital copies?
 
you have to photograph the aerial photos? no scanned digital copies?

Bite your tongue! That's when they won't be free anymore. You won't be able to go in there and take out a shot, peruse it, see what's interesting, and shoot it. No, these sheets are about 4' square. Scanning them is a major undertaking. When I started going there four or five years ago, everything was available right back to 1947. Well, that year is out of circulation now, sadly, and you have to pay for access. But 1950 on up is still free. I shot something like 15 plates on Friday... just the stuff I wanted. Didn't cost me a nickel. One day, it will. :(
 
what will the costs be like? what are the costs for ones before 1950?
 
Thanks for posting the plan... fascinating!

I'm not sure what the costs will be or what the cost of accessing 1947 is. For the most part, 1950 is nearly as good. The city really started to change with the construction of the 401 in 1952, 1953, and thereabouts. At least the stuff I'm mainly interested in.

I know you were discussing Flindon... how do you think I found you guys? :) I was there a week earlier, and then went down to the Archives to explore it Friday. I'll post some of that soon. Pretty surprising, some of it.
 
Excellent post!

My first short article in Spacing (a last minute call-up) was on the weird interesction of Albion, Walsh and Weston. I mentioned the disappeared Blondin Avenue in the article, and still no one knows why all the houses disappeared, while the neighbourhood is intact on the north side.

Blondin was well known as a bus loop until the interchange was built - it was the end of the Weston 89 Trolley Coaches, as well as serving Wilson and Woodbridge buses. I have a postcard somewhere that shows a Marmon-Harrington Trolley Coach pulling out of Blondin Loop (with the post war 1 1/2 floor houses behind) in the early 1970s.

The Westchester sales office has been abandoned for at least a year now. Don't know what Sorbara Group is up to there anymore.
 
Man, it looks as though Blondin Avenue will ride again, resurrected as "Westchester Lane". And ironically, it looks as though it will reconnect to Weston Road. I think that's nuts, unless it's an entrance only.
 

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