Hot Off the Press- My new pix of Toronto

[ronald]

Thanks again TB for showing so many different sides of TO to us...
'T is a world city indeed!

[unusualer]

oh the good old TO! i miss u!!

[snoopy]

wow T'B... i love this thread so much. great pictures, and each page is really easy to load, so don't hold yourself back. POST MORE!!

[Filip]

OMG TB, You rock my socks!!

Sick gallery, great pics of the most "napicnuti" grad I've ever lived in

[mikep]

Incredible

[Taller, Better]

Thanks guys!!

[Taller, Better]

Before I dash off to work, here are some pics that didn't make the cut, but I liked for
whatever goofy reason. Starting with the 1840's House Of Industry which I like mostly
for its name!



Statue detail almost obliterated by weathering:



me in a purple haze:



A clever subway advertisment for the upcoming Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Makes me want to go and see some of the movies!!



a liquour store in Old Town



Our Flatiron Building:



A byzantine church on Bond Street:



an apartment building in my 'hood



City Hall during Tulip season:



a manhole cover installed in 1889 and still doing its job well today. Speaks volumes for
the quality of work then:



And finally, I don't know how I missed this little guy. He is a fierocious monster from
old China who guards the entrance to the Royal Ontario Museum. He looks pissed off!!



ok. I'm outta here. Dang.. just started to rain as I leave for work. Sheesh.

[Monty Burns]

There are parts of Toronto that I have still not seen, and this makes me
want to see them. Beautiful pictures, and please post more!

[Paulo2004]

Nice pics.

[Jackhammer]

The pics are great, however, it is the commentary that makes this thread special. Keep up the good work.

[Taller, Better]

Thanks guys! I like to chose pix that have a bit of a story attached to them! I was going to be lazy and not post pix from this past couple of weeks, but Hey! now I am here I may as well put some on. They are just all jumbled up and are from various areas downtown. Let's start on May 09 with a bicycle tour around Rosedale. Rosedale
was Toronto's first bedroom suburb, and took its name from an old 1821 farmhouse there called Rosedale Villa. It quickly became a leafy retreat for the elite of Toronto, and to this day is home to many of Toronto's older, monied elite families. There are neighbourhoods of bigger, flashier, newer homes... but none have more charm or cachet than these gracious residences. The first picture shows the relation of Rosedale to downtown Toronto:



















The day I rode my bike through, almost all of the houses had their gardeners out working to make the grounds ready for summer. This is not the type of neighbourhood
where the family has to get out and plant the pansies themselves... Even new homes in this neighbourhood make a supreme effort to fit in with the older ones:



































I can just see myself living here:







And cycling back downtown I noticed one of my favourite reno's of an old apartment
building to a very smart condo.









Beside the Rosedale Subway Station:



Ridpaths, an old Toronto furniture shop to the wealthy:



Now fast forward to today, where I rode my bike downtown. First stopped in at St Lawrence Market for my lunch. This market started over 200 years ago as a farmer's
market, and is still much loved by Torontonians. Wonderful meats, vegetables, cheeses, fish and just about anything else can be bought here:







Popping into St James Cathedral, where an organ recital was about to begin:





This window is called an Amity (friendship window) to display the connection at the time of King George V between England/Canada/South Africa/Australia, NZ, etc... the quality is high, and the window was made by Tiffanys. It felt surreal taking the pix as Sir Edgar Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance crashed away in the background from the organ recital:



One of the older gravestones from the church, laid in 1817:



One of the two oldest Post Office buildings standing in TO, and now headquarters for
the embattled Hollinger, Inc



Annesley Hall, part of the University of Toronto:





One night we went to a Brazilian restaurant, located up in the original Little Italy:









and in closing some pix I took last weekend in my neighbourhood, one some of the
streets I walk my dogs on. So, these are from the gay village, and nearby Cabbagetown:



























And a dear old lion having a snooze after protecting this tombstone for the past 150 years ( I'd want a nap, too)





Nothing is as pretty as dogwood in full bloom:



Hope you liked tonight's tour, and I am so exhausted I am going straight to bed!!!
Cheers!

[LordMandeep]

I been to the city a hundrend times and have not seen half these thigs.

Maybe i should get off young street more.

[Taller, Better]

Originally Posted by LordMandeep

I been to the city a hundrend times and have not seen half these thigs.

Maybe i should get off young street more.

I think you said you have kids, so you can make some cheap but fun family
outings for Sunday afternoons. Nothing more fun than taking the kids to the
petting zoo at Riverdale farm. Take your camera along and share it with us!
Pix from the last 18 hours... first coming home on my bike last night past the
rather grand entrance of the Princess Margaret Hospital with its superb broken pediment. If I had to take a broken arm anywhere, I would feel slightly better entering a grand portal like this!



Pix from walking the dogs.. just got back into my apartment.



Cawthra Park, where I walk the dogs every day:



If you go through the portal shown, you come across charming Victorian rowhouses... if you look on the RHS, this is the townhouse where a Toronto
barber and his wife had a baby in 1892 named Roy Herbert Thompson. I wonder if Roy, when playing on the steps of these townhouses, had any inkling that someday he would own a huge international fleet of newspapers including The Times of London. He was to become, of course, the famous
Lord Thompson of Fleet.



If you walk down my street, Church Street, be sure to look up at the rooflines of the old Victorian houses. There are some fanciful ones that I
love to gaze upon:



Around the corner, and the dogs lead me to a very English style garden of
Rhododendrons and Azaleas. I refuse to let them pee on one:



One of the hundreds of elegant old brownstone apartment blocks downtown, built to last in the 1800's. This whimsical old one always makes me smile! Plus
I love the late Victorian Art Moderne lettering they used for the rather grand-
sounding "St Charles Court"... the little white lions guarding the entrance look
far from ferocious and appear to be swatting flies.

[LordMandeep]

not really i am only 19, however i am planning to move downtown in a few years.

Its sad that when most people think of Toronto they think of the CBD and young street(even though are nice areas), but there is soooooooooooo much more.

[Taller, Better]

Ahh... I thought you were older! Well, the sooner you get downtown the better!!

[parisuite]

Rosedale looks like such a beautiful neighbourhood!

I haven't even seen half of the places you've posted either. I would love to though. I'm hoping to move downtown if I can get into U of T ;]

[Taller, Better]

Thanks parisuite! Rosedale is gorgeous, and would be my number one choice of neighbourhood to live in if I were filthy rich (which sadly I am not). Even if you
do not get into UofT, you should move downtown anyway!

[elliot]

Taller... the biggest compliment I can pay you sounds a little trite: "I like your attitude".


And your pictures (seen em all).


And your drugs since anyone this positive must be medicated.

Can I have some? preferrably generic (slow year).

[Taller, Better]

LOL! I'm not positive about everything... that's why I tend to be selective about what
I photograph! If I had one wish for our city it is that we had more and older historical buildings... but seeing as we don't I just enjoy what we have, to the max!
When I first moved to TO, I had just come out of University with a lot of Bauhausian training and had pretty much been taught to scorn Victorian architecture. Bit by bit
I overcame this predjudice, and the charm and romance of it all soon swept me up.
I guess in Toronto we are building our architectural heritage at the moment, as opposed to having it already here for the past 500 years.
As for medication, may I prescribe the odd cold Brahma to counteract negativity!!

[Wildchild]

Fantastic pictures, T,B.
Love the spring time pics. Toronto is sooooo beautiful.