Evocative Images of Lost Toronto

[LowPolygon]

David Boyle’s collection of Indian artifacts and remains from southern Ontario, on display at the Ontario Provincial Museum (housed in the Normal School on Gould St) ca.1908-1912. Boyle was a collector, museum curator and Canada's first full-time professional archaeologist. The Provincial Museum was the forerunner of the ROM, and one assumes his collection ended up there.

 

[Nicholas]

Men with cameras.

Going back for a moment to the idea of city as palimpsest, I've often found that this sometimes expresses itself in "ghost ads," old advertisements painted on buildings. Often literally layered one over another, they usually include interesting old typefaces, slogans, and advertising philosophies that connect us with our predecessors' consumer behaviour and experiences of urban space. I'm afraid I don't have any photos on hand, but there are plenty about.

 

[Nicholas]

I found one. Pardon my ignorance, but how can you attach full size photos in the message body? Thanks.

 

[Urban Shocker]

David Boyle’s collection of Indian artifacts and remains from southern Ontario, on display at the Ontario Provincial Museum (housed in the Normal School on Gould St) ca.1908-1912. Boyle was a collector, museum curator and Canada's first full-time professional archaeologist. The Provincial Museum was the forerunner of the ROM, and one assumes his collection ended up there.

Yes, some of his collection is on display in the ROM's Gallery of Canada: First Peoples.

David Boyle (1842-1911) In 1888, the Canadian Institute appointed David Boyle as Canada's first full-time professional archaeologist. From 1896 to 1911 he served as curator at the Ontario Provincial Museum, a forerunner of the Royal Ontario Museum that grew out of Ryerson's Museum of Natural History and Fine Arts in 1867. Today Boyle is remembered through The Boyle Memorial Lectureship in Archaeology, which finances lectures by archaeological visitors to the department of Anthropology. Read more about him in G. Killan (1983), From Artisan to Archaeologist: David Boyle. University of Toronto Press.

Also, from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online:

http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119....rval=25&&PHPSESSID=tiit3laamc2tj01m2echt5vh87

And:

http://www.ontarioplaques.com/Plaques_VWZ/Plaque_Wellington18.html

 

[LowPolygon]

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[Urban Shocker]

What the heck's this - an earlier version of the Canadarm?

It didn't take more than about twenty Toronto winters before the sandstone gargoyles and finials at City Hall began to erode - I think those photos were taken in the '20s, and a gargoyle fell of in 1938.

 

[thecharioteer]

The poetry of a finials, spires, gargoyles and towers is one that doesn't exist anymore. Once there did exist a city of "dreaming spires" which spoke both to the sky and to each other:

 

[LowPolygon]

The poetry of a finials, spires, gargoyles and towers is one that doesn't exist anymore. Once there did exist a city of "dreaming spires" which spoke both to the sky and to each other:

a beautiful shot!

 

[ganjavih]

Ditto. Nice find.

 

[thecharioteer]

Thanks guys! The other spire (which I think will appeal to Urban Shocker with his penchant for Toronto Georgian) is the old, long-gone St. Andrews Presbyterian Church that stood at the SW corner of Adelaide and Church. Its elegance is almost more evocative of Edith Wharton's New York than of Victorian Toronto:

 

[Urban Shocker]

Thank you, a thousand thanks. Yes, the early town, before the late Victorians replaced much of it with heftier and visually louder commercial buildings. The bottom half of St. Andrews was by John Ewart ( who designed the "coffin block" that preceeded the Gooderham flatiron in the same location ), with the spire added by John George Howard. Their British roots sure show in this building.

 

[jessytsmith]

I love these type of phone. Thank you so much for sharing

Jess

Thanks, deepend, for the photos. Here are a few more that have the same effect on me:

The famous diving horse at Hanlan's:

Yonge Street (note the bearded chap staring right at the camera):

Troops departing for WWI at the foot of Yonge Street:

Building the Bloor Street Viaduct:

Concession booth at Hanlan's:

Eaton's (I believe for the Coronation of Elizabeth II):

Celebrating the end of the war in Europe at King & Bay:

Royal visit at King & York (Globe & Mail Building behind):

 

[jessytsmith]

Wow These are priceless. Thank you for posting these photos. These deserve their own website.

Jess

David Boyle’s collection of Indian artifacts and remains from southern Ontario, on display at the Ontario Provincial Museum (housed in the Normal School on Gould St) ca.1908-1912. Boyle was a collector, museum curator and Canada's first full-time professional archaeologist. The Provincial Museum was the forerunner of the ROM, and one assumes his collection ended up there.

business process management

 

[Nicholas]

Curio seeking in fire ruins...

 

[LowPolygon]

What the heck's this - an earlier version of the Canadarm?

Some of them look like they are riffing on the idea of ‘rocket flight’--if so they are an early example of the influence of science-fiction on the culture at large. The 1930’s were obviously the heyday of Buck Rogers et al. and the idea of space travel was starting to have an influence on popular imagination...