The street with soul
Yonge St. is flaming again, at least for a few days, but greed is encroaching on its gritty truth
Apr 26, 2008 04:30 AM
Brent Ledger
Next Saturday, journalists Jane Farrow and Gerald Hannon will lead a tour of historic gay Yonge St. It may not be a moment too soon.
Before Church St. "arrived" in the late 1980s, Yonge St. was the centre of gay Toronto and home to bars like the Quest, the St. Charles and the Parkside.
Those landmarks will live again, however briefly, during the "Yonge St. is Flaming" tour next weekend, one of 50-odd looks at Toronto's history scheduled to take place during an annual ode to urbanist Jane Jacobs. (See janeswalk.net for details).
But what about the future?
With massive condo towers announced for both Yonge and Bloor and Yonge and Gerrard, and Ryerson planning to put a library (a library!) on the pivotal site of Sam The Record Man, I wonder how much longer my favourite street has got.
It's not like I object to towers in general or the siting of these towers in particular. Allowing Ryerson, an institution with an alarming record for ugliness, to expand onto Yonge St. is depressing, but the condos will replace nothing more exciting than a parking lot and some forgettable small buildings, so no great loss there.
What worries me more is the signal these developments send, the message that the street is – oh hideous phrase – "open for business." Meaning available for demolition.
We've already lost University Ave. to oversized institutions, Bloor St. to homogenized high-end shopping, and Bay St. to condos (was there ever a deader strip of street?).
Can Yonge St. be far behind?
People who don't go downtown much probably think of Yonge St. as just the place where pervs seek porn and people get shot.
For me, it's the place where the city is most alive and where I grew up.
I spent Saturday afternoons in adolescence walking up and down the strip with a friend, gawking at records and munching on Harvey's hamburgers.
I got my second gay proposition there – in the old A&A Records, looking at Dvorak, if you must know – and I found my first gay bar there – the old Parkside Tavern, at Yonge and Breadalbane, now a Sobey's.
But more than any personal associations, I love the rough-and-tumble of the street, its mix of muddle and confused coherence. Different styles, eras and functions all mingle here, giving the place a complex, layered feel.
A Starbucks huddles in an old fraternal lodge (Odd Fellows Hall, at Yonge and College) and the ghost of a gay bar (the St. Charles) lurks beneath a 19th-century fire hall tower.
Farther north, a Thai restaurant and a sexy clothing outlet find shelter in a lovely Victorian commercial block designed by Old City Hall architect E.J. Lennox.
Anchored by Morningstar at the north and Monster Records at the south, the 10-unit block at 664-682 Yonge shows what the street does best. Detailed enough to interest the eye (check out those dapper dormers) but not so massive as to overwhelm the street, it's a comforting presence that's open to all comers, respectable or not. This – and not the bureaucratically imposed developments to the south – is the real Yonge St.
Unlike the windswept plain of Yonge-Dundas Square or the tank- like facade of neighbouring Toronto Life Square, old Yonge St. was built for people, not advertising.
This city is in love with the glitzy and the grandiose and leaps at the chance to erect anything that smells of money. But it's in places like seedy old Yonge St. that you'll find Toronto's soul. And in an era of reckless development, we need it more than ever.
Brent Ledger appears every second
Saturday. You can reach him at
living@thestar.ca.
