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Street Signs

Another interesting oddity:

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EVCco said:
The acorn definitely is a Toronto icon - though strange considering they weren't unique to Toronto. I think pretty much all of the larger Canadian cities (Montreal, Vancouver, and Ottawa for sure) used them to some extent in the past. But for whatever reason Toronto took them most to heart.

It's been a few years since I took the Thornhill sign pic, but for some reason I want to say it was actually made of wood!
Is that possible? Any Thornhill residents who can verify?
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Same with the Toronto arc light and bracket - they were all over Ontario; you can still find a few around here and there. But most of the time, simple cobra-head sodium lights replaced older bulb-shaped heads that Toronto still has, but the distinctive bracket remains.

Peterborough had acorn-style street signs too - they were in many Ontario towns. Such as Elmvale.
 
I'm fond of Toronto's distinctive street light with the curved bracket. They're the ones that emit white light, but are limited to the old city of Toronto. Better design is possible and preferable in prominent places, but as a "generic" design to install on ordinary streets, it's quite elegant. In fact, these street lights have even been used in prominent streetscape overhauls like St. George Street through the U of T campus. They look fine, but I would still advocate for a more sophisticated design for such ambitious projects.

New LED lighting units have been installed on these distinctive brackets as an experiment on a few streets, but don't seem to suit the curved bracket design as well as the round metal halide unit presently used. It should be a round lighting unit. Windsor has the distinctive brackets as well, but they installed sodium-vapour lights on them. Like our experimental LED lights, they don't seem to compliment the curved look of the bracket very well.
 
junctionist said:
I'm fond of Toronto's distinctive street light with the curved bracket. They're the ones that emit white light, but are limited to the old city of Toronto. Better design is possible and preferable in prominent places, but as a "generic" design to install on ordinary streets, it's quite elegant. In fact, these street lights have even been used in prominent streetscape overhauls like St. George Street through the U of T campus. They look fine, but I would still advocate for a more sophisticated design for such ambitious projects.
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Sadly they went for those hideous grey things on St. Clair and are using them again down in the Don Lands.
 
AlbertHWagstaff said:
Sadly they went for those hideous grey things on St. Clair and are using them again down in the Don Lands.
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I don't mind the grey things that much (but why does Toronto always use grey street furniture, rather than black? Only a few BIAs like Downtown Yonge and the Junction figured that out.) but would have preferred the cantilevered lamps found elsewhere in the waterfront areas - on the plus side they do emit white light (metal halide) - they're the same as the lights that are on Spadina Avenue.
 
An "acorn" street sign in Westmount, a Montreal suburb. http://goo.gl/maps/xlk6U
Most street signs in Westmount are mounted at right angles on existing poles (e.g. traffic light supports, and without an "acorn"), but there are a few like the above. As they are replaced, usually the intersection street numbers are omitted from appearing right under the street name.
 
Does anyone know the story behind the acorn, and why it was so prevalent?
Were they some sort of federal government issue at some point, or something?
 
Im amazed at the street sign design variations. Im used the plain green or blue with white font. Or the "rare" black signs.
 
Toronto made their own signs on Eastern Avenue. I've been wanting to get some acorn signs made for private property. Does anyone have a list of small towns in Ontario that also had them? I thought I would contact them to see where they got their signs from.

Also, does anyone remember the different coloured acorn signs? The Town of Forest Hill had their acorn sign white on green. We had an old one for our street in our basement that was made sometime between the 20s and 50s that was white lettering on a light blue background. I have never seen photographs of a Toronto sign that colour.
 
gordon67 said:
Toronto made their own signs on Eastern Avenue. I've been wanting to get some acorn signs made for private property. Does anyone have a list of small towns in Ontario that also had them? I thought I would contact them to see where they got their signs from.

Also, does anyone remember the different coloured acorn signs? The Town of Forest Hill had their acorn sign white on green. We had an old one for our street in our basement that was made sometime between the 20s and 50s that was white lettering on a light blue background. I have never seen photographs of a Toronto sign that colour.
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What city was the white on blue sign made for? I believe there may have been some in the Ottawa area that were that colour. As for Forest Hill, the City of Toronto continued to replace signs inside the old Forest Hill boundaries with white on green signs after annexation in 1967. They could be told apart by their slightly lighter green colour. As well, the lettering was not raised, as on the original Forest Hill signs. After 1998, the amalgamated city made an effort to denote Forest Hill with white on light green colouring on the generic "large acorn" signs that were used prior to the adoptation of the present sign design.

There were other municipalities that used the acorn design in the Toronto area. These included the Township of York and at least some of the three Lakeshore municipalities at the bottom of Etobicoke (Mimico/New Toronto/Long Branch). These were all black on white, a la Toronto. These were all lost in 1967 during annexation, being replaced by generic white on blue rectangles.
 
can332 said:
What city was the white on blue sign made for? I believe there may have been some in the Ottawa area that were that colour. As for Forest Hill, the City of Toronto continued to replace signs inside the old Forest Hill boundaries with white on green signs after annexation in 1967. They could be told apart by their slightly lighter green colour. As well, the lettering was not raised, as on the original Forest Hill signs. After 1998, the amalgamated city made an effort to denote Forest Hill with white on light green colouring on the generic "large acorn" signs that were used prior to the adoptation of the present sign design.

There were other municipalities that used the acorn design in the Toronto area. These included the Township of York and at least some of the three Lakeshore municipalities at the bottom of Etobicoke (Mimico/New Toronto/Long Branch). These were all black on white, a la Toronto. These were all lost in 1967 during annexation, being replaced by generic white on blue rectangles.
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The white on light blue was a City of Toronto sign. The one we had was for Scarboro Beach Bl. I'm still kicking myself for letting my dad throw it out.

I was thinking of towns outside of what is now Toronto. I had thought I remembered seeing them in Mount Forest, but can't remember for certain. I know I'd seen them in at least a couple of other towns northwest of Toronto when I was a kid.

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Other signs I really miss were the ones with lights on the major streets that were put up around the centennial year.
 
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