This has been an empty lot for so long...since I moved here to go to Ryerson. Bay Street had always seemed a 'back alley' to Yonge. I hope all these developments bring some much needed life to Bay above Dundas to Wellesley.
Funny thing about this intersection. Before the hippies hit Yorkville this was the hip neighbourhood downtown. Toronto's mini version of Greenwich Village.
http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/beatniks-the-hippie-forefathersThink "beatniks," and what comes to mind? Black berets. Jazz. Jarring jagged lines of poetic chaos. A delight in madness. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Jack Kerouac. Allen Ginsberg. William S. Burroughs. On the Road. Howl. Naked Lunch. In the 1950s and early '60s, Toronto has its own beatnik scene, centred on the two-block-long Gerrard Street Village. Here, the CBC films Canada's first "Happening" at the Bohemian Embassy, featuring beat poetry, jazz Hamlet and Dada-esque eruptions of art.
That little strip on the northwest corner is all that remains.
They sure did a number on the rest of this neighbourhood.