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Humberline bridge...?

jamesbow said:
Good eye!

Have a look at Humberline just south of Finch West, and you can see the remains of pavement that's directly aligned with the bulk of Humberline's alignment, suggesting that the road used to go straight.
...James
Click to expand...

Here is a photo I took in 1987 showing Humberline south of Finch. It was a dirt road at that time and did peter out as it went south, although it went all the way into the valley. The curbs were new at the time as they were just starting the development south of Finch. At the time, I could not find evidence that it ever bridged the Humber River, however if you look on Google Maps you can clearly see the alignment straight through to the road that is the entrance to Woodbine Racetrack. The remaining visual evidence on Google Maps is wider than just a trail, so perhaps it did in fact at one time bridge the Humber. I would be interested in finding out, and plan a visit there soon to gather more evidence. If you follow that alignment, the bridge would have been in a direct line north of the Woodbine entrance north of existing condo building.

humberline_1987.jpg


Bridge would be at spot marked with white arrow:

humberlinebridge.jpg


...and as James pointed out interestingly enough, if you follow the exact alignment of the Woodbine entrance road across the racetrack it aligns perfectly with Carlingview Drive, which then aligns perfectly with Renforth Drive which DID have a straight alignment prior to the 427 interchange.
 
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OK, Here is a map from 1980 which shows Finch ending at Humberline and the two ends of Humberline with a gap across the Humber River:

york_sw_1980.jpg


A road map of 1910 shows the concession but likely concessions were shown more as road allowances I would guess, not that the map might accurately depict the roads. It is interesting to note that the branch of the Humber River does not appear on the map in the same place. Perhaps there were changes after 1910 that changed the path of that branch of the river, or it could just be an omission.

road1910.jpg
 
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I have found more maps that show 4th Concession aka Humberline Drive, and one clearly shows it with a bridge over the Humber River. The map book was purchased by me in 1977, but could be slightly older - it does not appear to have a date on it.

Humberline1977_800.jpg
 
Lack of photographic evidence certainly does not mean there was no bridge, since I have yet to find photographic evidence of either the pre-1954 Indian Line Bridge over the Humber, or it's post-Hurricane Hazel replacement Bailey Bridge, yet I personally traveled over the Bailey Bridge almost daily.

We can assume with a certain amount of confidence that based on the map evidence, there WAS once a Humberline/4th Concession bridge over the Humber. We can also assume it might have been a smaller structure, perhaps wooden, as the topography from Rexdale Blvd to the river is fairly steep.

We also know that Hurricane Hazel in 1954 destroyed several bridges that were likely of much more sturdy construction - ie: the Indian Line bridge.

Based on this, it seems that the most likely possibility is that a pre-1954 Humberline/4th Concession bridge may have been completely destroyed by Hurricane Hazel and never replaced, and that some maps may have included the bridge for a while after 1954.

I plan to continue to seek evidence of the bridge in the form of a field trip to the location, to look for photographic evidence and to try to find someone who has first-hand knowledge of the bridge.

The last option may be the best, as 55 years may not have left any physical evidence, and photographic evidence may also be non-existent.
 
Upuaut said:
I have found more maps that show 4th Concession aka Humberline Drive, and one clearly shows it with a bridge over the Humber River. The map book was purchased by me in 1977, but could be slightly older - it does not appear to have a date on it.

Humberline1977_800.jpg
Click to expand...

Weird map. It also shows the original planned 427-extension alignment and a sketched-out ghost of a future (4)27-Rexdale interchange (trust me; even if they anticipated the future Queen's Plate Drive, none of those "roads" existed as such in 1977).

Something seems *very* dicey about that Early-Perly-esque map's currency or accuracy at the time of publication--little wonder that the advent of MapArt came as such a breath of fresh air when it came to mapping accuracy, aesthetics, et al. (Anyone have access to early MapArt depictions of Toronto?)
 
The 'interchange' at Rexdale / 27 is not Queen's Plate Drive. It is a bit odd, and I don't honestly recall if that intersection ever had those ramps, but I don't recall them. I don't think the dotted line extension you see is a plan for 427 extension to 27. It does not really make sense as it goes diagonally directly into Humber College. It was more likely a proposed entrance road to the college that never came to be.
 
I think if any of that "interchange" actually saw fruition, it was the NE quadrant which lingered on a lot of maps for a while (and I *might* remember a ghost road along that alignment, before all the Woodbine Centre/Queens Plate Drive development took place). But if you look at how the upper part of said "interchange" inflects away from the existing 27, you can see how it was, indeed, meant to conform to a proto-427, so to speak.

And true, the dotted line makes no sense running straight into Humber College--but that's where my "wonky updating" theory kicks in. It seems to me like that particular sector was master-mapped out in the 50s or so, complete with proposed interchanges and alignments; and when Humber College was built in the late 60s, as you can see it was nothing more than a label on the map, here--but they didn't bother modifying some of the other detail, whether out of laziness or "nobody told them to", I don't know.

But pre-Humber College, back when 427 was just 27 sans collectors, that *was*, I believe, the proposed alignment for the northward continuation of the 27 "expressway", other vestiges being the Dixon cloverleaf, the service-road arrangements at Belfield, and the Woodbine ramp--with a Rexdale interchange occupying that depicted ROW to follow at some unspecified date.

As 27 was expanded into the present 427, however, it was decided to divert the northward alignment to the present Airport Expressway/Indian Line routing, instead. So the proposed alignment you see was already pretty much dead by the time Humber College came into gestation...

Edit: you'll notice here that the 1966 Official Plan still showed the original proposed alignment...
 
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Good points adma, and you are right about maps - often they do have things on them that should have been removed - whether old roads or proposed ones that never came to be. The old proposed '427' makes more sense in that light.

I am heading over to Rexdale Blvd tomorrow to see if I can find ANY physical evidence that Humberline / 4th Concession did bridge the Humber - realizing that after at least 55 years the chances are slim...
 
No bridge

The evidence strongly suggests there was no Humberline bridge. In fact, the road allowance on the north side of the river seems completely undeveloped south of about half-way between the river and where Finch is today. We all had speculation that some flimsy structure was carried away by Hurricane Hazel, so I checked out the 1950 and 1953 images of the area at the City Archives. No dice. See the pre-hurricane 1953 shot attached.

It's not impossible there was once some kind of bridge there, but given the scarcity of need, I'm strongly inclined to doubt it. In any case, the likelihood that any bridge has existed there in living memory is remote.

DSC00395 Copy.jpg
 

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Interesting nfitz. While I thought that concessions/lines were often just put on maps even if they were not continuous, the map you posted shows several with dotted lines, while the Humberline one is clearly continuous across the river. It really does not make much sense to me to have any road north of Rexdale Blvd at that point if it never crossed the river, nor to line up perfectly with the northern part south of Finch unless at some point it was a complete road. I'm inclined now based on the 1950's photos and this map to think that a road and river crossing there may have been much older - ie: from the 1800's up to say the 1920's or 1930's and perhaps the bridge fell down or was destroyed by some earlier flooding and never replaced. It is fascinating to think about, but not sure how easy it will be to get more information - perhaps tracing the original landowner name from the 1880's map?
 
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