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Miscellany Toronto Photographs: Then and Now

Goldie said:
"Out of place" indeed!

When I last visited my birthplace on Donlands Ave., I found an original satined-glass window still visible (from the outside), but much the worse-for-wear. I believed the house was built c.1930.
I was invited to tour the interior and was surprised to see that this window is now unseen behind a recent wall renovation. It was once a high-level living room window.

Donlandsstained-glasswindow_zpsfb577d13.jpg
Click to expand...

Goldie, many many houses built - up until the 1940s, I'm guessing - had this very type of window built into them. I see them in 1920s suburbs: North Toronto, Leaside, and like your old place, houses running up and down off the Danforth all the time. They were 'vestigial' by this time - built into the side of the house...
 
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A New York Then and Now:



Would-be passengers at New York’s Grand Central Terminal on May 23, 1946, where they were stranded by a rail strike



Today
 
Mustapha said:
Goldie, many many houses built - up until the 1940s, I'm guessing - had this very type of window built into them. I see them in 20s suburbs: North Toronto, Leaside, and like your old place, houses running up and down off the Danforth all the time. They were 'vestigial' by this time - built into the side of the house...
Click to expand...

I've heard them referred to as piano windows - because you could fit an upright piano under them.
Those houses are from the era when everyone had a piano because there was no TV.

But you're not supposed to put a piano on an outside wall.
 
thecharioteer said:
A New York Then and Now:



Would-be passengers at New York’s Grand Central Terminal on May 23, 1946, where they were stranded by a rail strike



Today
Click to expand...



thecharioteer,

Whether be by serendipity or planning this is much inspired. :) Perhaps others will find their old holiday or business trip pics and do the same. Here is my contribution.




Singapore. 1977. Clarke Quay on a (you can imagine, very polluted) Singapore River. This is basically what you would call downtown Singapore. Those boats are 'barge lighters' carrying whatever the city needed from the surrounding region. Hard to believe this was as late as 1977. These barges, as well as the poor state of sanitary sewers would soon move the civic authorities into a cleanup action that very year.

PA171237_zps1151ed43.jpg





Couple weeks ago. October 2014. I'm not sure I have the camera pointed at the exact scene as the Then, but you get the drift. Ha, get it?, barges,,, drift. :)

Clarke Quay is a tourist/night life area now.

PA171169_zpsb6039053.jpg
 
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Then. City Hall Cenotaph. November 17, 1929.

s0071_it7304_zps8b0a7e0c.jpg





Today.

PB111338_zpsb3150f15.jpg







The ceremony today was very well attended; many more spectators/people than I remember in the past.






The buildings in the Then picture [demolished for New City Hall of course] remind me of pictures I've seen of Piccadilly, London of the same era.


Picture taken at the change of command at HMCS York a couple months ago.

fc7da9ae-23b6-4d85-bcf7-7efd1f2f7b44_zpsad46b2c6.jpg
 
DSC said:
Actually a transom (or transom light) is the window above a door NOT a stand-alone window as shown above. (I just bought a new shower door and it has a 'moveable transom' above the door. )
Click to expand...

This is a transom:

Goofyandtransom_zpsb847d119.jpg
 
Mustapha said:
The buildings in the Then picture [demolished for New City Hall of course] remind me of pictures I've seen of Piccadilly, London of the same era.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's interesting: if it weren't for Torontonian reserve, Old City Hall's surrounds might as well have been the Yonge-Dundas Square of its time...
 
adma said:
Yeah, that's interesting: if it weren't for Torontonian reserve, Old City Hall's surrounds might as well have been the Yonge-Dundas Square of its time...
Click to expand...

Let's also remember the 1898 proposal for a new "Victoria Square" in front of the Old City Hall, which would have gone down to Richmond. That's the Temple Building on the left, and the fence to Knox Church on the right. Simpson's, of course, would not have extended to Bay if this proposal had ever been implemented.

 
Grand Central Terminal Then and Now...Shows what landmark status can do...

reetdoontoon said:
Track 29?..Pardon me boy..is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?
Click to expand...

RDT: Interesting thought - problem is GCT's trackage leads north and east to Upstate New York and
New England...

This photograph goes to show that giving GCT landmark status for the recently completed renovation
has kept things as they are and should remain remembering that it could have been lost in the 70s had
the Penn Central Railroad gotten its way - and sacrificing the original NY Penn Station had the benefit
of beginning the architectural preservation movement that has saved classic places like GCT...

The songwriters were referring to the Pennsylvania Railroad leaving New York Penn Station noting the
mention of Baltimore - I will add that Penn Station has only 21 tracks and that the writers should have
said "Track Number Nine" which was a track there that was used by PRR trains...

LI MIKE
 
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Anna said:
I've heard them referred to as piano windows - because you could fit an upright piano under them.
Those houses are from the era when everyone had a piano because there was no TV.

But you're not supposed to put a piano on an outside wall.
Click to expand...

That would have been more of an issue in the era of the piano window, when homes were draftier and less insulated, and the relative lack of circulation meant heat and moisture could get trapped between the piano and the wall, mostly if there was too little space between them.
 
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