The City "Intends to Designate" King Street's Beautiful Victoria Row

Oh, well here's some promising news. The city "intends to designate" beautiful Victoria Row on King Street East, justjust west of Church. They've got a notice up on their website here. I stumbled across the news while I was actually looking for a page I could link to about how those buildings might be at risk. (Hopefully, all goes well — and they don't, say, mysteriously burn down like some of Toronto's other about-to-be-saved properties have had a habit of doing.)

The Row was originally designed all the way back in the 1840s by John Howard, one of Toronto's most important old-timey architects and amateur painters, who is also the guy who gave us High Park. It's been updated over the years. It played a vital role on King Street back in the days when it was our city's earliest main street. And it's still full of shops and restaurants and even the Albany Club (the secretive official Conservative Party hangout, which I wrote about here). This photo is from around 1890, when a statue of Queen Victoria was part of the facade.

Bloor & High Park Looked Like Countryside Back in 1914

Jesus. I mean, by now I should be used to seeing photos of places just outside the city core looking like the middle of the freaking countryside in the early 1900s, but it still gets me every time. This one is Bloor Street at High Park. (I think we're looking east? With the park on the right? That's what the internet faintly whispers, anyway.)

Hmm. I don't have much to say other than that. I can tell you that Bloor Street was named after Joseph Bloor, a brewer who founded the village of Yorkville. He was also one scary-looking motherfucker. And I can tell you that by this point, High Park had already been High Park for about 20 years. The land had belonged to a fellow by the name of John Howard. He's hailed as Toronto's first serious architect: he built the old "lunatic asylum" on Queen West, the old bank building at Yonge and Wellington (which is the Irish Embassy pub now), the row of buildings along King East just west of Church (Victoria Row, which includes the Albany Club, a Conservative Party hangout I'm working on a post about) and, of course, Colborne Lodge, which is where he and his family lived in High Park. As I mentioned in a previous post, he gave the land as a gift to the city in 1876 to be used as a public park on the condition that his family would still get to live there, that the city would keep the park's name, and that no one would ever be allowed to drink alcohol on the grounds. (Sorry dude.) He was also an amateur painter. You come across his artwork all the time when you're digging around into the early history of the city.

Alright! That's all I've got!

Photo: A Bison at the High Park Zoo in 1908

The High Park Zoo was founded in 1893, when they started keeping deer in pens along what is now, appropriately, called Deer Pen Road. High Park was then less than 30 years old. It had originally been owned by John Howard, an architect and amateur painter, who bought it to use as a sheep farm and gave it its name. He gave the land as a gift to the city in 1876, to be used as a public park on the condition that his family would still get to live there in the house they'd built, Colborne Lodge, that the city would keep the park's name, and that no one would ever be allowed to drink achohol on the grounds.

Well, um, two of three isn't that bad.

Gradually, those original deer were joined by other animals. Like the bison in this photograph, which they think was probably taken in 1908. Today, there are llamas and peacocks and cattle and stuff. Mostly they lead pretty peaceful lives, except that once in a while someone will try to let some of them out of their pens. And, bizzarely, in 1999 someone broke into the deer enclosure and attacked three animals, slashing two of them with a machete and killing a third, taking it away, apparently, to be eaten.