Behind the Photo: Hargrave Street then and now

 © 2020, Christian Cassidy

This is a photo of Hargrave Street from St. Mary Avenue in April 1958 and in 1919. The original photo is by John Warkentin from his collection at York University Library and the modern day one is from Google Street View in 2019.

These were the dying days of what was once a thriving residential neighbourhood in the downtown.

A growing number of street cars lines extended residential development further away from the core and the creation of suburbs after the First World War provided affordable alternatives for families and young couples. The downtown's fine, old homes were subdivided into rooming or boarding houses and the neat little terraces were left to run down.

Detailed view of Warkentin photo

The buildings in Warkentin's photo, with the exception of The T. Eaton mail order catalogue warehouse - now City Place, would have been demolished within 15 years of this photo being taken at most.

The city allowed the bulldozers in to raze entire blocks of homes, apartments, businesses, schools and playgrounds in the 1960s and early 1970s, with the hopes of attracting modern downtown development with cheap, vacant land. Out of that came some high rise apartments, the Holiday Plaza / Holiday Inn development, a new Convention Centre, a new central library, etc., though much of it remained remained undeveloped and are surface parking lots to this day.

This image from the T. Eaton Company's Contact magazine in 1905 shows across the street from Warkentin's image in 1905. The terraced housing in the foreground is identified as O'Brien's Terrace and is probably very similar to what the terrace captured by Warkentin looked like. I could not find a name for the terrace in his image.

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