In June 2024 I joined the Royal Ontario Museum group to tour Yorkville in Toronto. Our tour began at the Yorkville Public Library (image on right).
As we walked through the streets of Yorkville we learned about the various architectural designs of the buildings and their history.
History of Yorkville:
Yorkville was funded in 1830 by the entrepreneur Joseph Bloore (after whom Bloor Street, one of Toronto's main thoroughfares, is named) and William Botsford Jarvis of Rosedale and began as a residential suburb. Bloore operated a brewery northeast of today's Bloor and Church Street intersection, and Jarvis was Sheriff of the Home District. The two purchased land in the Yorkville area and subdivided it into smaller lots on new side streets for those interested in living in the cleaner air outside of York.
The political centre of Yorkville was the Red Lion Hotel, an inn that was regularly used as the polling place for elections. It is there that William Lyon Mackenzie was voted back into the Legislature for 1832, and a huge procession took him down Yonge Street.
The community grew enough to be connected in 1849 by an omnibus service to Toronto. By 1853, the population of Yorkville had reached 1,000, the figure needed to be incorporated as a village, and the "Village of Yorkville" was incorporated. Development increased and by the 1870s, "Potter's Field," a cemetery stretching east of Yonge Street along the north side of Concession Road (today's Bloor Street) was closed, and the remains moved to the Toronto Necropolis and Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
In the 1880s, the cost of delivering services to the large population of Yorkville was beyond the Village's ability. It petitioned the Toronto Government to be annexed. Annexation came on February 1, 1883, and Yorkville's name changed officially from the "Village of Yorkville" to "St. Paul's Ward," and the former "Yorkville Town Hall" became "St. Paul's Hall."
The character of the suburb did not change and its Victorian-style homes, residential streets, and gardens survived into the 20th century. (see image above right). In 1923, Toronto Hebrew Maternity and Convalescent Hospital was opened at 100 Yorkville Avenue, and a year later, its name was changed to Mount Sinai Hospital. The facade of the building still stands today, and it houses the retailer Chanel. (See image on the left.)
In the 1960s, Yorkville flourished as Toronto's bohemian cultural centre. It was the breeding ground for some of Canada's most noted musical talents, including Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Gordon Lightfoot, as well as then-underground literary figures such as Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn MacEven and Dennis Lee. Yorkville was also known as the Canadian center of the hippie movement. In 1968, the nearby Rochdale College at the University of Toronto was opened on Bloor Street as an experiment in counterculture education.
Those influenced by their time in the 1960s-1970s Yorkville include the cyberpunk writer William Gibson. Its domination by hippies and young people led MPP Syl Apps to refer to it as "a festering sore in the middle of the city" and call for its "eradication." Joni Mitchell captured a colourful impression of the nightlife scene on Yorkville Avenue in her song "Night in the City." The hippie scene was also depicted in the National Film Board of Canada documentary Christopher's Movie Matinee in 1968.
After the construction of the Bloor-Danforth subway, the value of land nearby increased, as higher densities were allowed by the City's official plan. Along Bloor Street, office towers and The Bay and the Holt Renfrew department stores displaced the local retail. As real estate values increased, the residential homes north of Bloor along Yorkville were converted into high-end retail, including art galleries, fashion boutiques, antique stores, bars, cafes, and eateries along Cumberland Street and Yorkville Avenue. Many smaller buildings were demolished. In the 1970s offices and hotels were built with high-priced condominium developments being built in subsequent decades.
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