Baldwin Village

The Baldwin Village was recognized by the City of Toronto as a distinct neighborhood in its 1972 South East Spadina, Part II Study. Baldwin Village is the commercial area of Baldwin Street between by McCaul and Beverly Streets. It is located about two kilometers from the shore of Lake Ontario in downtown Toronto. The buildings are mostly two-story row houses built on narrow lots with a storefront facing Baldwin or McCaul Street and residential quarters behind and upstairs of the storefront. To preserve the distinct character of the street the City requires that storefronts in the Baldwin Village have less than 7.5 meters of street frontage and have second-floor windows of a residential character.

The eastern end of Baldwin Street is located two blocks from the University of Toronto and three blocks from Queen’s Park, the capital of the Province of Ontario. In the early 19th century the lots along Baldwin Street was granted as homesteads to Irish and Scottish immigrants. They built cottages and planted orchards and market gardens. By the end of the 19th century Toronto was an industrial city and the area became a working class neighborhood. Row houses replaced the homesteads. After World War One Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe replaced the Irish and Baldwin Street became a commercial center for Toronto’s Jewish community. Although many of the fruit trees and some of the cottages were left in place, two-story row houses were built facing the street. Most of the row houses had a front porch and a small yard in the front of the house. In the mid-20th Century the row houses between #25 and #31 Baldwin on the south side of the street and between #22 and #26 on the north side of the street were torn down and replaced by two- or three-story structures with storefronts at street level and apartments above. Storefronts were added to many of the remaining row houses by removing the porch and building to the minimum setback. This left a small area of concrete between the storefront and the city sidewalk.

Until the early 20th Century, horse barns and stables faced the alley behind the houses. When the owners added storefronts to the existing buildings, some built warehouses where the horse stables had been. By 1968 only one stable remained in the alley behind Baldwin Street. There were about a dozen warehouses facing the alley. In later years some of the warehouses were used as living quarters although this was not legal. The Jewish community built a number of synagogues in the neighborhood but none were located in the Baldwin Village proper. Families continued to live behind and above the storefronts and the area never lost its residential character.

By 1968 the majority of the Jewish community had moved north to Danforth Avenue, leaving behind a few families headed by elderly men. Younger men, who lived elsewhere, managed businesses inherited from their fathers. The businesses included a bakery, butcher shops, a creamery, several tailors and a number of jobbers specializing in recycled clothing, glass bottles, burlap bags or barrels. The Chinese population had outgrown the traditional Chinatown enclave on Mott Street and was slowly moving to Dundas Street West, just two blocks south of Baldwin Street. By 1968 a few Chinese had purchased property on Baldwin Street but their businesses were elsewhere in Chinatown. With the exception of the dozen or so Jewish-owned businesses that were still in operation, most of the storefronts were being used as living quarters.

In August 1968 a group of Americans rented a house at 224 McCaul Street and opened a clothing store there. When they realized that the building was zoned for residential use only, they rented a storefront at 11 Baldwin Street and opened the Yellow Ford Truck store. The Yellow Ford Truck was a co-operative market for locally-made handicrafts. The spokesman for the group, Jimmy Wilson, actively encouraged other youth-oriented businesses to open on Baldwin Street. The Yellow Ford Truck was intended to be a model for and an incubator of small, hippie-run businesses. By the summer of 1969 three other businesses (a food store, a leather shop and a photo gallery) had opened on the block. The owners were associates, partners or friends of the Yellow Ford Truck commune. By the summer of 1970 two other businesses (a store selling Mexican clothing and a store selling surplus goods) opened. All of these businesses were joint efforts of intentional communities who were more interested in creating a community than in running a business. Much of each group’s energy was devoted to community projects, such as the Hall and their housing co-operatives, and only a few of the businesses were organized as traditional small businesses. The Baldwin Street hippie community became the focus of the American exile community in Toronto. The street’s increasing fame attracted large numbers of tourists and foot-traffic increased.

Baldwin Street continued to change throughout the decade of the 1970s and the size and importance of the hippies on the street declined. Chinatown continued to expand as large numbers of Chinese immigrated to Canada from the British colony at Hong Kong. The number of Chinese living in and doing business on Baldwin Street continued to grow. Chinese-owned businesses that catered almost exclusively to Chinese customers were opened. The remaining Jewish merchants and residents sold out and moved. After 1975 the increasing customer base and proximity of the street to University Avenue and the University of Toronto attracted English-speaking merchants who did not share the hippie’s ideals. These merchants opened high-end clothing stores and restaurants.

Beginning in 1970 a “back-to-the-land movement” among the hippie community removed some of its most active participants from the area. None of the hippie businesses owned the buildings they occupied and rents increased annually at a rate that exceeded inflation. The storefronts that had been boarded up and used as living quarters in 1968 were converted business use as demand for commercial space on the street grew. After 1977 no new hippie-owned businesses were opened in the Baldwin Street Village.

By 1980 the street had a large number of food establishments that catered to people working in the financial, hospital, university and government districts just a few blocks to the east and north. There were also a number of specialty retail establishments that attracted large numbers of shoppers during and after normal business hours. In 1986 less than a half dozen of the hippie-run businesses were still open. In 1995 most of the businesses in the Baldwin Village were restaurants or high-end clothing stores. Typically, the entire ground floor and the open area between the storefront and the sidewalk are occupied by the restaurant and its dining area. The upper floor is often still used as residential quarters. Some of the buildings west of Henry Street have been demolished and replaced with new construction but most of the street looks as it did in 1968.

What follows are walking-tours of the storefronts on Baldwin Street at different times, beginning in 1968 and ending in 2005. The even-numbered addresses are on the north side of the street and the odd-numbered addresses are on the south side of the street. The numbering begins at McCaul Street and increases to the west. The tours begin at McCaul Street and then continue west on Baldwin Street, passing the intersection with Henry Street (between #26 and #30 Baldwin) and ending at Beverly Street. The alley between D’Arcy Street and Baldwin Street joins Baldwin Street between #51 Baldwin and the Chinese Presbyterian Church at the corner of Baldwin and Beverly Streets.

Baldwin Village

Contents

Summer 1968

Summer 1969

January 1971

Fall 1971

Summer 1975

Late 1970s

Fall 1985

2005

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