New Toronto - Character

Character

This neighbourhood is centred around the intersection of Seventh Street/ Islington Avenue and Lake Shore Boulevard West with a commercial strip running east-west along the latter street. Residential streets generally run north-south from Lake Ontario north to Birmingham Street, except for the Lakeshore Grounds (formerly the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital) to the southwest which extends from Lake Shore Blvd. West south to the Lake. North of Birmingham Street has traditionally been a large industrial district, although a number of industries moved or closed in the period from 1987 to the early 1990s.

New Toronto is now a neighbourhood in transition, as the industrial corridor located at the north end of the community is being redeveloped after having been vacant and fallow for many years. Industry that gradually moved out of New Toronto over the years is now being re-established, in addition to institutional uses. New Toronto also has a high senior citizen population.

The area contains a large amount of government-assisted housing between 9th and 13th Streets, north of Lake Shore Blvd. West, built by The Daniels Corp. developers, on the former Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company site.

In September 2009, the new Toronto Police College training facility opened at 70 Birmingham St., and also houses a 22 Division Police Substation. This is the site of the former Continental Can Company of Canada Ltd. New Toronto Plant.

The Lakeshore Campus of Humber College is located on the former grounds of the Mimico Lunatic Asylum (later the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital), at the foot of Kipling Avenue.

New Toronto's high school, now called Lakeshore Collegiate Institute, was originally built and operated as New Toronto Secondary School with first classes beginning in 1950. It is located on the northwest corner of Kipling Avenue and Birmingham Street.

In 1890, new streets for New Toronto were laid out in several series, essentially without names by simply using ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.). When the streets were laid out along Lake Shore Road (now Lake Shore Blvd. West), they had a single new starting point. The second numbering system began with First Street being one half block west of Dwight Ave (the boundary street between Mimico and New Toronto) and continuing westward. Originally named Mimico Avenue, what is now Kipling Ave. would also be named 18th Street more than once. The number naming convention was later applied to streets further west of New Toronto in the Village of Long Branch when theirs were renamed in 1931, continuing up to Forty-Third Street today (the section of Forty-Third Street in what is now Marie Curtis Park, and Island Road, were washed out during Hurricane Hazel).

• Victorian Bay-and-gable house

• Victorian Bay-and-gable with a front porch

• Victorian house at New Toronto boundary with Long Branch

• Residential community the redeveloped Goodyear Canada site

• Former Bell Telephone Company of Canada New Toronto Telephone Exchange

• Ca. 1920 facade of the Reg. N. Boxer Wallpaper Company building on Birmingham Street