androiduk
Senior Member
East side of Yonge @ Bloor.
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The Toronto Teaser!
- Thread starter JasonParis
- Start date
East side of Yonge @ Bloor.
Prometheus The Supremo
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wow! if the ones on eglinton are original, they should be protected like historical structures.
Mustapha
Senior Member
Sorry Supremo, a reply without an answer here: perhaps a trainspotter/TTC transit historicist type can chime in; those poles held up the power lines for trolleys which ran on various Toronto routes from - guessing here... late 40s through 1975 or so when diesel buses replaced trolleys.
Trolleys were sooo-oo quiet
just a hum. They didn't go very fast though; I think 30 miles an hour was pounding it for them. I miss 'em.
androiduk
Senior Member
This is from 1897. I think you might be able to go back another 5 or 10 years to when they were installed.
Prometheus The Supremo
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but could they be the original ones? maybe sometime in the past they were replaced by a similar design? it's hard to see street poles surviving that long.
androiduk
Senior Member
Good question, I was curious too.
The leaning pole of Little Italy
Posted: May 14, 2008, 5:39 PM by Rob Roberts
Kuitenbrouwer
A wood pole commands the northeast corner of College and Grace streets, a corner it shares with Grace Meat Market, Scotiabank, CIBC and the late Cucina Restaurant. The pole is a bit shorter than the strip’s three-storey buildings. It is remarkably bent, curving both south and west on its way up. Thousands of rusted staples of various calibers cover it, thick enough at eye level to create a second, scaly skin. Age has etched crevasses along the grain of the wood, and a thick, rusted plate screwed on the College side (perhaps to protect it from runaway cars) has a tear in its centre.
“The nails are from before they invented staplers,†marvels Vito Tucci, a local retiree who stopped to chat with me about the pole the other morning. “These nails are back from when they crucified Jesus Christ.â€
I’ve been admiring the leaning pole of Little Italy lately, as I pass after picking up my kids from daycare nearby. I am drawn to wooden poles, which in a manufactured, antiseptic world have a natural quality that is human. Workers replaced the wooden poles on my street with cement ones a few years ago, and I worry some crew will replace this one with something boring, modern and sterile.
I needn’t fret. The pole, a western red cedar from British Columbia installed in 1950, was inspected in 2006, treated, and approved until at least 2016, says Thor Hjartarson, manager of system reliability planning at Toronto Hydro. Wood poles are here to stay: Toronto Hydro has 96,000 of them, and installs new wooden ones every day.
Still, my torturous path to receive this information illustrates some of the challenges Toronto Hydro faces in maintaining the 210,000 poles it owns and shares with “tenants,†who drape them with signs, electric wires, phone lines, cables, streetcar wires, street lights and traffic lights.
First I had to learn who owns pole 210, labeled with three numerals in yellow plastic nailed about five metres up. It is a vital bit of our city, holding a walk/don’t walk sign, three suspension wires for the 506 streetcar, a guy wire for houselights running north on Grace, fibre optic cable, two “no left turn†signs, streetlighting wire, and a streetlight. If this post toppled, life here would halt.
For a day I called the TTC, several divisions of Toronto Hydro, City Hall, even the Toronto Archives. The pole, it turns out, is an orphan. Toronto Hydro Electric System, the power distribution company, owns pole 210, but does not use it. About 10 years ago the company buried the hydro lines on College between Euclid and Shaw streets, in the centre of Little Italy. (East and west of that section, electricity wires still run on the wooden cross arms of tall wooden poles). In central Little Italy, having buried its wires, Toronto Hydro sawed off the top third of the poles, and left them for other users.
“Even though it’s not serving our lines, it’s still in our maintenance program,†says Mr. Hjartarson. Ben Sheng, an engineer in system reliability planning, says that in 2006 Genics Inc., a contractor working for his group, dug down one metre to expose the base of pole 210, and installed a chemical wrap.
“The chemical material slowly migrates into the wood, and kills all the fungus and insects,†he explains. “It preserves the asset life.â€
The average wooden pole in Toronto is 30 or 40 years old. You’d think cement poles would last longer, but in fact the first cement poles lasted just 15 years, says Ivano Labricciosa, Toronto Hydro’s vice-president of asset management. The cement then flaked off. New cement poles are more durable.
So a long life to pole 210! Even Lenny Lombardi, who owns CHIN Radio and heads the thriving Little Italy Business Improvement Area, says, “If it were just to be replaced with another pole, leave the historic one until at least 2016.â€
Just one detail worries me: Mr. Labricciosa says crews normally “shank†(i.e. cut off the tops) of poles “teepee style†or “leanto style,†so that rain can run off. Workers cut the top off pole 210 flat. So in the end, rain and snow will penetrate, and some day will finish it off.
The leaning pole of Little Italy
Posted: May 14, 2008, 5:39 PM by Rob Roberts
Kuitenbrouwer
A wood pole commands the northeast corner of College and Grace streets, a corner it shares with Grace Meat Market, Scotiabank, CIBC and the late Cucina Restaurant. The pole is a bit shorter than the strip’s three-storey buildings. It is remarkably bent, curving both south and west on its way up. Thousands of rusted staples of various calibers cover it, thick enough at eye level to create a second, scaly skin. Age has etched crevasses along the grain of the wood, and a thick, rusted plate screwed on the College side (perhaps to protect it from runaway cars) has a tear in its centre.
“The nails are from before they invented staplers,†marvels Vito Tucci, a local retiree who stopped to chat with me about the pole the other morning. “These nails are back from when they crucified Jesus Christ.â€
I’ve been admiring the leaning pole of Little Italy lately, as I pass after picking up my kids from daycare nearby. I am drawn to wooden poles, which in a manufactured, antiseptic world have a natural quality that is human. Workers replaced the wooden poles on my street with cement ones a few years ago, and I worry some crew will replace this one with something boring, modern and sterile.
I needn’t fret. The pole, a western red cedar from British Columbia installed in 1950, was inspected in 2006, treated, and approved until at least 2016, says Thor Hjartarson, manager of system reliability planning at Toronto Hydro. Wood poles are here to stay: Toronto Hydro has 96,000 of them, and installs new wooden ones every day.
Still, my torturous path to receive this information illustrates some of the challenges Toronto Hydro faces in maintaining the 210,000 poles it owns and shares with “tenants,†who drape them with signs, electric wires, phone lines, cables, streetcar wires, street lights and traffic lights.
First I had to learn who owns pole 210, labeled with three numerals in yellow plastic nailed about five metres up. It is a vital bit of our city, holding a walk/don’t walk sign, three suspension wires for the 506 streetcar, a guy wire for houselights running north on Grace, fibre optic cable, two “no left turn†signs, streetlighting wire, and a streetlight. If this post toppled, life here would halt.
For a day I called the TTC, several divisions of Toronto Hydro, City Hall, even the Toronto Archives. The pole, it turns out, is an orphan. Toronto Hydro Electric System, the power distribution company, owns pole 210, but does not use it. About 10 years ago the company buried the hydro lines on College between Euclid and Shaw streets, in the centre of Little Italy. (East and west of that section, electricity wires still run on the wooden cross arms of tall wooden poles). In central Little Italy, having buried its wires, Toronto Hydro sawed off the top third of the poles, and left them for other users.
“Even though it’s not serving our lines, it’s still in our maintenance program,†says Mr. Hjartarson. Ben Sheng, an engineer in system reliability planning, says that in 2006 Genics Inc., a contractor working for his group, dug down one metre to expose the base of pole 210, and installed a chemical wrap.
“The chemical material slowly migrates into the wood, and kills all the fungus and insects,†he explains. “It preserves the asset life.â€
The average wooden pole in Toronto is 30 or 40 years old. You’d think cement poles would last longer, but in fact the first cement poles lasted just 15 years, says Ivano Labricciosa, Toronto Hydro’s vice-president of asset management. The cement then flaked off. New cement poles are more durable.
So a long life to pole 210! Even Lenny Lombardi, who owns CHIN Radio and heads the thriving Little Italy Business Improvement Area, says, “If it were just to be replaced with another pole, leave the historic one until at least 2016.â€
Just one detail worries me: Mr. Labricciosa says crews normally “shank†(i.e. cut off the tops) of poles “teepee style†or “leanto style,†so that rain can run off. Workers cut the top off pole 210 flat. So in the end, rain and snow will penetrate, and some day will finish it off.
Mustapha
Senior Member
Apologies, guys,... I was talking about THIS style of pole.
http://transit.toronto.on.ca/subway/5307.shtml
Scroll down to 2nd from last picture.
http://transit.toronto.on.ca/subway/5307.shtml
Scroll down to 2nd from last picture.
Prometheus The Supremo
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great article. so i guess if those poles on eglinton are cedar, they could be very very old.
believe it or not, it's little things like those poles that make toronto interesting. i cringe when they wanna replace things that have been a fixture to certain areas for a long time in the name of being modern. i hate it when they apply a one size fits all mentality to toronto neighborhoods, be it with street signs, firefighting equipment, utility poles, etc. leave some individuality for christ sake. you don't wanna turn this place into genericville.
androiduk
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Where am I?
DSC
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I think that you are at corner of SE Church and Richmond outside the Thai restaurant.
androiduk
Senior Member
And I think you're right. Great looking building isn't it?
jaborandi
Active Member
Is this the building which had radiation issues resulting from the past manufacture of glow in the dark time pieces?
TKTKTK
Senior Member
I *LOVE* that building.
And for something further along Richmond:
336-338 Richmond Street West, April 5, 1944
336-338 Richmond Street West, May 18, 1945
adma
Superstar
Is that where this was based? (I could be wrong.)
grey
Senior Member
Yup, that's the building from Lofters.