adma
Superstar
Another onetime cheese-gratered front: the old furniture place on the N side of Dundas a little E of Keele...
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- Thread starter LowPolygon
- Start date
LowPolygon
Senior Member
it was a funny device--a quickie way to 'modernize' an 'old fashioned' building. sort of EIFS in reverse. it also seems that it didn't do as much damage to the underlying structure as the dreaded fake stucco does now. anyway, i am pretty sure there are still odd extant examples out there--i believe there are a few remaining metal coverups on streets like Mt. Pleasant, Eglinton west....
androiduk
Senior Member
There's a modern version of this on the Panasonic Theatre at Yonge & St. Mary. At least you can see the original building underneath and I'm sure that was their intention.
http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=43.667957,-79.386028&spn=0,0.001359&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=43.667957,-79.386028&panoid=H7bgxtf1ETID1qDPs48_Fg&cbp=12,75.16,,0,-2.2
http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=43.667957,-79.386028&spn=0,0.001359&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=43.667957,-79.386028&panoid=H7bgxtf1ETID1qDPs48_Fg&cbp=12,75.16,,0,-2.2
dt_toronto_geek
Superstar
Back when it was called "The Astor", also known as "The Showcase", "The New Yorker", "Festival Cinema" & there are one or two other names over the years
adma
Superstar
Hmmm...the best skinny lettering to grace that frontage until "The Vagina Monologues" arrived in 2000...
LowPolygon
Senior Member
Back when it was called "The Astor", also known as "The Showcase", "The New Yorker", "Festival Cinema" & there are one or two other names over the years
I saw the Ramones at the New Yorker in September 1976. It was the bands first gig outside of New York City, and it was the event that kick started the punk movement in Toronto. I always thought it was funny that the Ramones were so Manhattan-centric that they chose a venue called The New Yorker for their first outside gig! You can’t really see it, but the bass player Dee Dee Ramone (far left) is wearing a New Yorker Theatre t-shirt that the promoters had printed up, on the cover of their second album “Leave Home”.
The New Yorker was operated by “The Garys” (Gary Topp and Gary Cormier) and was one of those seminal 70’s pop culture scenes in Toronto. It was mainly a cinema, and showed cult films like Pink Flamingos and Rocky Horror; Hollywood classics; high art European art films; surrealist classics like L’age Dor; exploitation films like Reefer Madness and Russ Meyer films etc; and then once in a while they would have these fantastic concerts. Besides the Ramones, ”The Garys” also premiered Talking Heads, Tom Waits, The Cramps, Ali Akbar Khan, Cecil Taylor, John Cale and Lightning Hopkins at the theatre.
Great bit on the New Yorker. I met and worked with the Gary's a few years later.
F
Finn
Guest
Here's a link for a piece on Yonge Street in the Torontoist:
http://torontoist.com/2010/08/historicst_making_yonge_street_more_of_a_fun_street.php
http://torontoist.com/2010/08/historicst_making_yonge_street_more_of_a_fun_street.php
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
I saw a Lewis Furey and Carole Laure concert there, also around 1976.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JryEuQwWSw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXi79ur4BH0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vGlFRQoCCA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JryEuQwWSw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXi79ur4BH0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vGlFRQoCCA
thecharioteer
Senior Member
Back when it was called "The Astor", also known as "The Showcase", "The New Yorker", "Festival Cinema" & there are one or two other names over the years
Here's a shot from the Ontario Archives of its 1937 incarnation as the Embassy Theatre:
LowPolygon
Senior Member
adma
Superstar
Here's a shot from the Ontario Archives of its 1937 incarnation as the Embassy Theatre:
Interesting how by the time it became the Astor, the Victorian lower-facade details had been pallidly stuccoed over.
And speaking of Victorian--what I find puzzling is how the "official" history of the Panasonic (presumably using dodgy and rudimentary inherited data from the early THB inventories) starts with "Originally a private residence, built in 1911, it became a theatre - a cinema, called "The Victory" - in 1919." But--look at that building. It's pure Second Empire retail/commercial frontage: it'd be at least 1870s, or at latest 1880s. That in the course of its history and most recent facadectomy, that nobody'd have clued into the fact is preposterous...
wwwebster
Active Member
There are actually two addresses involved here, 651 and 653. The building doesn’t appear on the 1884 Goad’s but is there for the 1890 version. The current numbering scheme remains as it was in 1890. The 1892 directory lists Singer Bros. dry goods at 651-653, with Schomberg Furniture at 649. By 1901 Schomberg Furniture had moved in to 651-653 and was still there in 1912. Curiously, the 1913 directory has no listing for 651 or 653, not even “vacant.†By 1914 we have Aaron Warshavsky, ladies tailor, at 651, The Victoria Theatre at 651-1/2, and D’Esterre Ltd., real estate, at 653.
thecharioteer
Senior Member
Good research (as always) wwwebster! Here are the two Goad maps of Yonge Street you mentioned that make it obvious that this was a commercial building from the start (note the other older residential properties up and down the street at that point that are usually set back; even semis and rowhouses on Church had to be set back because of exterior staircases).
1884:
1890:
