Help ID this location - 1970s Downtown East

[UserNameToronto]

I really can't get this one.

- Streetcar tracks
- half-bay windows
- industrial building to the right of the frame
- house converted to commercial use at the left of frame
- looks Cabbagetown-ish
- masquerading as a Cabbagetown location, per the commentary on the source page: http://torontoist.com/2010/09/reel_toronto_the_silent_partner.php#

My guesses were Queen East jsut West of River; Parliament south of Queen; and Carlton/Dundas/Gerrard between Parliament and Sherbourne. However my Streetview-fu has yeilded no matches. The fact that the buildings were in good shape in the 1970s should also help yield a clue.

 

[Jonny5]

Oh this is a tough one. I like the challenge though.

What about the Dundas/Broabdview/Gerrard area? Or maybe King St in Parkdale?

Have any streets had tracks removed after 1978?

 

[Jonny5]

Oh I just had a thought, this looks like a lot of parts of Bathurst, especially from Front to Dundas.
The road right up to the buildings' property line is another clue.
There were lots of those half bay window row houses downtown on streets like Adelaide and Richmond too, both of which used to have tracks all the way to Bathurst.
I suppose it's possible this entire view is now gone.

 

[ReiwaMagi]

Hmm

If memory serves me correctly, this is where the current Lord Dufferin Public School is (I can remember stuff from 1990) as the school bus I took passed here many a time.

 

[west_end_kid]

There is an important clue in the photo! The polce car number. It looks like either 5321 or 5621. 53 division is currently north of Danforth but I have no idea what the boundries were back in the 70s. Although it doesn't look like St. Clair, that would have been the only streetcar route up there I think.

56 division no longer exists but the headquarters was at Queen & Pape. I think it ceased to be a division in 1974 or so. I can't find a boundry map but this probably would be Queen East.

 

[Oldcamera]

Possible location is Bay Gerrard area before the condos went up. I remember they shot that movie mostly around the Eaton Centre and north around Yonge, Bay, Gerrard area.

 

[Long Island Mike]

Early 70s era Metro Police car...Ford LTD?

There is an important clue in the photo! The polce car number. It looks like either 5321 or 5621. 53 division is currently north of Danforth but I have no idea what the boundries were back in the 70s. Although it doesn't look like St. Clair, that would have been the only streetcar route up there I think.

56 division no longer exists but the headquarters was at Queen & Pape. I think it ceased to be a division in 1974 or so. I can't find a boundry map but this probably would be Queen East.

WEKid: That MPD car caught my eye also-it looks to me like a Ford LTD or similar type...
When I first saw this pic I thought it was a Plymouth Fury or a similar Chrysler product-common police cars back then
but upon enlarging this pic I noticed the car difference...

I never knew that MPD assigned cars by divisions noting the numbers...
Those yellow MPD cars took some getting used to for me-especially being from the NYC area in which that color was a taxicab color...

Back in the early 80s era particularly there was a taxi company in Toronto that had medium blue cars with a white side stripe that looked to me just like the NYPD car color scheme of the same time...the only thing missing would have been the NYPD patch logo...

I remember being told that one reason the MPD stopped using yellow paint is that car painters were coming down with some sickness from something that was part of the paint pigment...

Does anyone know exactly when in the 80s MPD made the color change away from yellow on their police cars?

LI MIKE

 

[UserNameToronto]

WEKid: That MPD car caught my eye also-it looks to me like a Ford LTD or similar type...
When I first saw this pic I thought it was a Plymouth Fury or a similar Chrysler product-common police cars back then
but upon enlarging this pic I noticed the car difference...

I never knew that MPD assigned cars by divisions noting the numbers...
Those yellow MPD cars took some getting used to for me-especially being from the NYC area in which that color was a taxicab color...

Back in the early 80s era particularly there was a taxi company in Toronto that had medium blue cars with a white side stripe that looked to me just like the NYPD car color scheme of the same time...the only thing missing would have been the NYPD patch logo...

I remember being told that one reason the MPD stopped using yellow paint is that car painters were coming down with some sickness from something that was part of the paint pigment...

Does anyone know exactly when in the 80s MPD made the color change away from yellow on their police cars?

LI MIKE

The switch happened in 1986: http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/publications/files/misc/history/3t.html

A lot of theories in this thread so far, but no pictures or proof! Is UT going soft? Impress me, people!

 

[AlbertHWagstaff]

Location ID

I'm kind of new to this, but I just checked a couple of old streetcar slides I have which were taken on Parliament south of Gerrard and north of Queen in 1970. Parliament had big heavy-duty wooden poles, three storeys high, with the wooden box frames at the top on both sides of the street in 1970. At the very right edge of the photo we're studying there is a streetlight pole that doesn't resemble the ones in the slides on Parliament, and it's unlikely that those big wooden poles went anywhere before Hydro started its upgrade projects in the 1990s. The one in the picture looks like a standard concrete streetlight pole with a peaked top and the streetlight bracket appears to be just visible. I also looked in the distance of the slide taken above Queen and I couldn't see anything resembling the building at the right, so ít's unlikely that this is Parliament St.

Also, the police car is a Plymouth Gran Fury as it has the distinctive rear bumper which housed the horizontal tail lights. These were everywhere in the mid-1970s as police cars and taxis. But, is this a real Metro Police car or a movie car??? The font for "METRO POLICE" and the cruiser number don't look legit. Metro Police was in a narrow font, while this looks wide, and the crest on the door doesn't look quite right either, so I think the cruiser number is bogus and doesn't help.

Sorry not to have any definitive leads, but thought I'd add a couple of observations to the discussion.

 

[AlbertHWagstaff]

Location ID

I took a streetview walk along Queen from River to Parliament and then Dundas west from Parliament.

It's the south side of Dundas just east of the SE corner of Berkeley. The commercial building is still there at 413 Dundas St. East and the decorative lines in the brickwork over the windows match. The two gable-roof houses are still there, check the trim in the gingerbread and the half-moon brick designs. Most of the half-bay houses are gone though, except the one at the very east end. There is a streetlight pole in approximately the same spot too.

Consider this one done!

 

[Jonny5]

I took a streetview walk along Queen from River to Parliament and then Dundas west from Parliament.

It's the south side of Dundas just east of the SE corner of Berkeley. The commercial building is still there at 413 Dundas St. East and the decorative lines in the brickwork over the windows match. The two gable-roof houses are still there, check the trim in the gingerbread and the half-moon brick designs. Most of the half-bay houses are gone though, except the one at the very east end. There is a streetlight pole in approximately the same spot too.

Consider this one done!

Awesome! We have a winer. Though the city is a loser for having the row houses demolished for parking.

 

[adma]

So, the Pimblett's block?

Edit: my error re Pimblett's, I got Gerrard and Dundas confused...

 

[UserNameToronto]

I took a streetview walk along Queen from River to Parliament and then Dundas west from Parliament.

It's the south side of Dundas just east of the SE corner of Berkeley. The commercial building is still there at 413 Dundas St. East and the decorative lines in the brickwork over the windows match. The two gable-roof houses are still there, check the trim in the gingerbread and the half-moon brick designs. Most of the half-bay houses are gone though, except the one at the very east end. There is a streetlight pole in approximately the same spot too.

Consider this one done!

Well done - thank you!

I am surprised to see the rowhouses have gone, because they looked to be in reasonably good repair (no stucco, no paint, all trim matching). Then again, this stretch of Dundas is grim today, and I doubt it was any better in the 1980s-90s.

The easternmost houselooks like a newbuild, based quite faithfully on the old design. It is integrated with 2 other townhouses that go down Poulett / Poulette Street. One is on the market right now for $399K.

 

[adma]

I am surprised to see the rowhouses have gone, because they looked to be in reasonably good repair (no stucco, no paint, all trim matching). Then again, this stretch of Dundas is grim today, and I doubt it was any better in the 1980s-90s.

Though there may have been more "faint hope" investment in the 70s/80s, when it seemed like the Cabbagetown/Don Vale gentrification good vibe would spread to anything and everything E end bay'n'gable...

 

[UserNameToronto]

Though there may have been more "faint hope" investment in the 70s/80s, when it seemed like the Cabbagetown/Don Vale gentrification good vibe would spread to anything and everything E end bay'n'gable...

Fair point. I'm remonded of this semi-recent Globe & Mail article on Corktown (noting that these houses were on the fringe of the Cabbagetown/Corktown border): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/in-the-east-end-a-hot-pocket/article1198082/

"... In 1980 I bought a 19th century row house on Wascana Avenue, one block north of Queen, running west off River Street. The hope was that the area would soon follow in the path of Cabbagetown. My timing was about 30 years premature..."