The Annex is one of Toronto’s best-known and most-sought-after neighbourhoods – at least among those who prefer central-city living. Over 16,000 Annegonians occupy its approximately one-half square mile that runs from Avenue Road on the east to Bathurst Street on the west, and from Bloor Street north to the CPR railway lines. Simeon Janes, who developed most of the central Annex in 1886, referred to the area as the Toronto Annex, hence the unimaginative name. We can divide its past into three periods – up to 1913, to 1950, and since then.

Period 1: The formative era

The 1793 rural survey of York Township defined the future shape of the Annex. With Queen Street as the base line and Yonge Street as the north-south dividing line, Bloor northward to St Clair Avenue, one mile and a quarter, became the Second Concession from the lake. The first sideroad west from Yonge, also a mile and a quarter, became Bathurst Street. Within the Yonge-Bloor-Bathurst-St Clair block were five long, north-south, 200-acre farm lots, only a quarter-mile in width. The Annex covers much of the southern half of the block.

Within this rural template, beginning in 1857, speculators laid out their subdivisions. Most of the subdividing happened in the economically ebullient mid-1880s. In a few areas, subsequent subdivisions altered the original plans. Following the long, narrow farm lots, the subdividers created long north-south streets; however, not all east-west streets met one another, although most of the long, north-south blocks, are divided into three. The chief exception to the usual pattern is the strip east of Bedford Road, where the streets are oriented east-west, the result of the first subdivision. In 1883 that strip became part of the City of Toronto when the City annexed the Village of Yorkville. The City took over the remainder of the Annex in 1886 and 1887, providing it with public services such as water, fire protection, sewers, and pavements, the latter two paid in part through local improvement taxes. Building followed, but erratically and patchily.

As was the case everywhere in North American urban places, speculators laid out their plans, often well in advance of building. These “premature subdivisions” (as early 20th-century planners labeled them) usually preceded the buildings by one business cycle – in the Annex seventeen years, on average. Speculators sold piecemeal – to brokers who then sold to others, to individuals, and mainly to small-scale speculative builders who put up few houses at a time. The result was first a patchy pattern of houses, then in the next cycle, general infilling. In the Annex the process of building took over a third of a century – from the 1870s in the Yorkville strip to 1913 on the west side of the district.

Janes intended the central Annex, especially St George Street, to be upper income, as did the Baldwins, who initially laid out the curved stretch of Walmer Road. Both succeeded in persuading the rich to build villas, mostly in the late 1880s and into the early 1890s. Some of these successful businessmen also contributed large amounts for new churches in the neighbourhood, most of which still stand. Here and there on some other streets, upper-middle-class houses went up, but there were few lower-middle/working-class, bay-n-gable-style houses, so common south of Bloor. Janes and others also made it clear that commercial activity would be restricted to Bloor Street and other peripheral roads. After the depressed 1890s, building picked up again, but these later houses, while still substantial, were, owing to rising material and labour costs, largely a cut below the late-1880s style. A majority were semi-detached (which according to Patricia McHugh is the “Annex house”). Upper-middle-class Annegonians dominated the neighbourhood. Home ownership ran to 80 percent. Most tenants lived in the few low-rise apartments and industries were mostly located next to the railway tracks.

Period 2: Decline

From the 1920s to the 1950s, the social composition shifted. Although “invasion-succession” was much less pronounced than in, say, Chicago, larger houses gradually became rooming houses after the children of the affluent moved to Forest Hill and North Rosedale. Many households boarded University of Toronto students and single professionals and clerks. During the Great Depression and World War II, these trends intensified. Many homes were put to institutional uses, for example, as national head-offices such as the Ecumenical Institute on Madison Avenue. In the 1920s neither the first zoning controls nor the Annex Ratepayers Association (ARA) could stem the tide of change. By 1945, the population had risen to over 16,000 from 12,000 in 1923.

Period 3: Post-war rebuilding and stabilization

Other than some late 1930s infilling with mock-Tudor two-storey houses, little building had occurred since 1913. From the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, high-rise apartment structures replaced many of the elegant houses on large lots. The 1954 zoning system and the 1958 neighbourhood plan (the first in Toronto) had allowed the change. The Ontario Housing Corporation built the largest apartment block. Rooming houses continued to exist, and multiple occupancy of many houses lifted the population. The ARA revived to limit change and had its finest hour when the Province shelved the Spadina Expressway, which would have split the district down Spadina Road.

Since 1972, when a reform-minded City Council reduced development possibilities and the economy weakened, changes have been relatively minor. The city built three small social-housing projects. Conversions to single family residences gained ground, although many of the conversions house tenants. Many rooming houses became bachelorettes. Thirteen houses became group homes. Several condominium-tenure apartment blocks went up on the margins of the district. Parking has become more difficult and many residents have to buy street parking permits. An aura of stability seems to reign but, underneath, the residents are deeply concerned about the Province’s reduction of public services and weakening of protection for the tenant majority.

Jim Lemon