Queen Street East: from Baseball Place to the East Don Roadway, Riverside

Join us as we continue our visual tour of the history of the East End’s main drag from the Don to Victoria Park through Riverside, Leslieville, the Ashbridges neighbourhood, the Beach Triangle and the Beach. A nod of appreciation to the Riverdale Historical Society who has done amazing work to keep local history of Riverdale alive. To find out more about them and to join, go to: https://riverdalehistoricalsociety.com/

By Joanne Doucette. Joanne is a local historian, a past Chair of the Toronto Public Library, founding member of the Leslieville Historical Society, and co-founder of the DisAbled Women’s Network. She is retired and lives in the Coxwell-Gerrard neighbourhood. She is administrator for the Metis Minute Facebook Page and moderates the following Facebook groups: Midway, Toronto Beaches Historical Photos, and the Coxwell-Gerrard Facebook page.

View of Queen Street East, looking west to Don bridge – May 11, 1977

Queen Street East, south side, detail, from Goad’s Atlas, 1924

Queen St. E., looking e. from Baseball Place, 1954, by James Victor Salmon, TPL

Baseball Place, looking s. from Queen St. E., 1954 by James Victor Salmon, TPL

639-661 Queen Street East 1920 City Directory

This walk starts at Baseball Place and goes along the south side of Queen Street in Riverside. As well as photographs, newspaper articles will be posted to help us understand more about who lived and worked here.

for more about Sunlight Stadium, one of Toronto’s lost baseball fields go to: https://leslievillehistory.com/2018/02/01/smiths-grounds-a-lost-riverside-athletic-field/

Conboy Carriage fire, general view from Queen Street bridge – July 10, 1924 For a brief history of the Conboy Carriage Company go to: https://www.trha.ca/trha/the-history-of-the-conboy-carriage-company/

For more about Sunlight Soap and Lever Brothers go to: https://leslievillehistory.com/2018/05/13/sunlight-soap-works-new-plant-1901/

661 Queen St E Don Garage ad, Toronto Star, Feb. 3, 1920

657 Queen St Toronto Star, April 30, 1921

Parts Diagram for Willys Knight Model 20 1920

A history and description of billiards, its sanitary advantages, etc., with instructions how to play the game, 1860’s TPL

651 Queen St E Billiard license Globe, Jan. 31, 1906

The Smith Block is one of the treasures of Riverside. For more about it I recommend taking a look at this background paper from the City of Toronto:

Click to access backgroundfile-87816.pdf

The slideshow below uses images from that report.