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This week in Then and Now—where we dig back deeper in time than in our Throwback Thursday articles—we go back to October, 1954 for a northwest-facing view across Bloor Street West at Jane Street in Toronto's West End. Shot in the wake of the wake of Hurricane Hazel which had devastated neighbourhoods along the Humber River earlier that month, the mud on the streets might be a remnant of the catastrophic flooding. What we are looking more closely at, however, is the change in the built form between the two photos. One notable building in this image, since lost to redevelopment, is a red-roofed Joy Gas Station. Joy operated several stations in Toronto with distinctive designs based on Canadian Château style architecture. Only one such station remains today, relocated across the street in Sir Casimir Gzowski Park from its original location at Lake Shore and Windemere. (The City of Toronto continues to look for a new use for the restored station.)
Virtually the same angle captured over 65 years later reveals a few big changes, and hints at more coming. Streetcar tracks along Bloor Street—now gone—served the neighbourhood until Jane Station opened on the Bloor-Danforth subway line in 1968. (The station entrance is between storefronts to the right of the image.) The distinctive Joy Gas Station was demolished and replaced by the five-storey Arbor Memorial office building, likely in the 1970s.
The next big change to come for this view is to the now shuttered Humber Cinema, formerly the Odeon in the 1954 image above. It now awaits redevelopment as a new condo project called Bijou on Bloor.
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