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Miscellany Toronto Photographs: Then and Now

Nice pics. Thanks for posting. It's amazing to see how little the area has changed over the years. It still feels very much the same and I imagine that somebody returning here after being away for 50 years would still find it all quite familiar.
 
The B/W images ( Poor Cow, 1967, plays at the Capitol ) remind me of the city I knew when I arrived here. In fact, I worked as an usher at the Capitol Fine Arts in '72/'73 when I was an art student and my parents rented a bungalow ( now a monster home ) on Bedford Park Avenue, just north of Lawrence.
 
Urban Shocker said:
The B/W images ( Poor Cow, 1967, plays at the Capitol ) remind me of the city I knew when I arrived here. In fact, I worked as an usher at the Capitol Fine Arts in '72/'73 when I was an art student and my parents rented a bungalow ( now a monster home ) on Bedford Park Avenue, just north of Lawrence.
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I grew up on Albertus Ave, just a couple blocks north of the Capitol. I went to the Capitol often for the 35 cent matinees in the 60s - they played the 'Carry on' series. For lunch, did you ever go across the street to Maritime Fish and Chips? The Little Pie Shoppe? I live on Douglas Ave now, and my kids (grown now) attended John Wanless. Did you attend Wanless when you lived on Bedford Park?

Small world.:)
 
I had just turned 17 when we arrived in April 1970. Spent a year at York Mills C.I. and then off to OCA(D) in September 1971.

Oh, God, those dreadful films - Frankie Howerd in Up Pompeii and Up the Chastity Belt. But I did get to see 2001 over and over again.
 
Ah, the once-ubiquitous Public Optical signs. They used to be on commercial strips all around Toronto.

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In the evening, it flashed back and forth between tall diagonal neon lettering spelling GLASSES SAME DAY (which can be sensed in this shot)
 
And what else? The flashback to the gas-stations-on-practically-every-other-block era (including one with the "transitional" pre-Gulf BA logo of 1967-69); *two* old-school streetfront Loblaw groceterias (including the one with the Chug-A-Mug billboard on top)...wow. As a slide show, those vintage photos need a musical soundtrack like this, or something
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Even allowing for the difference in emphasis that B/W and colour images give, there's far more of a screaming match going on with the signage and advertising than there was 40 years ago. It isn't just the names of the stores above the entrances either - entire facades are involved. If the City set guidelines requiring businesses to dial it down a bit and I don't think it'd hurt. It would tilt the emphasis, city wide, back to the architecture - such as it is. Consumers would still be able to figure out what stores they were looking at.
 
Urban Shocker said:
Even allowing for the difference in emphasis that B/W and colour images give, there's far more of a screaming match going on with the signage and advertising than there was 40 years ago. It isn't just the names of the stores above the entrances either - entire facades are involved. If the City set guidelines requiring businesses to dial it down a bit and I don't think it'd hurt. It would tilt the emphasis, city wide, back to the architecture - such as it is. Consumers would still be able to figure out what stores they were looking at.
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Yeah. Yupscale lookitme yummy-mummy polychrome. It's like the streetfront aesthetic has been sucking a little too much on Erica Ehm's mams or something. (She's presently a North Torontonian AFAIK.)
 
adma, that pic you posted about the Public Optical sign, on that block is 'Harry's' an unremarkable burger joint. It's still there, owned by a Korean couple now.
 
Though interestingly, it was the "newest" thing illustrated in Eric Arthur's original "Toronto: No Mean City".

You could just as well blame the lack of a heritage registry and a bit of "if you've seen one temple front, you've seen 'em all" attitude out there...
 
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