will you recognize me
Mar. 27th, 2026 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanYou get two posts in two days because I am procrastinating.
So the neighourhood where I live used to be a village called Brockton which was swallowed up by Toronto as the city expanded west. (This is where Lord Brock got his name, btw.) The plumber's supply shop at the corner was once the town City Hall and there are old goal cells in the basement.
The main employer at the time was a rope factory. Most of the streets at the time were little short things with lots of bends but there are two very long streets north-south streets near me that had no intersections that were used to twist the ropes. Even now the only cross-streets are the major thoroughfares the city built when they expanded out this way.
The factory owners, along with all the other wealthy people, lived south of the railroad tracks and down towards the lake. Big three-story houses with lots of windows and wide front yards and two staircases - one for servants. In the 50s the city built a highway along the lake and all the rich people moved out, a lot of those big houses were turned into apartments and boarding houses
The houses on my street were specifically built to home the factory workers and they are all row-houses on lots 15-feet wide or smaller. Most didn't have basements. They all had the same "summer kitchen" setup that I had to tear out. The insulation, where it existed, consisted of torn up newspaper.
My house is at the end of a row of three and was built in 1913. There are still sections on streets all over the area that were built at the same time, and also lots that were cleared and used to build more recently.
There are creek beds that were funneled into pipes and ravines that were filled in while they were building. There is a creek running under the next street over, you can hear the rushing water through the access covers every day of the year. Some of the houses we looked at when we were buying are settling into the old ravines, if you drop a marble it rolls the full length of the house and out the door. (Yes I did this once. The realtor tried to explain it away and I have no idea what he came up with because I could not stop laughing.)
There are history walks in the area all the time. I find this stuff fascinating.
So the neighourhood where I live used to be a village called Brockton which was swallowed up by Toronto as the city expanded west. (This is where Lord Brock got his name, btw.) The plumber's supply shop at the corner was once the town City Hall and there are old goal cells in the basement.
The main employer at the time was a rope factory. Most of the streets at the time were little short things with lots of bends but there are two very long streets north-south streets near me that had no intersections that were used to twist the ropes. Even now the only cross-streets are the major thoroughfares the city built when they expanded out this way.
The factory owners, along with all the other wealthy people, lived south of the railroad tracks and down towards the lake. Big three-story houses with lots of windows and wide front yards and two staircases - one for servants. In the 50s the city built a highway along the lake and all the rich people moved out, a lot of those big houses were turned into apartments and boarding houses
The houses on my street were specifically built to home the factory workers and they are all row-houses on lots 15-feet wide or smaller. Most didn't have basements. They all had the same "summer kitchen" setup that I had to tear out. The insulation, where it existed, consisted of torn up newspaper.
My house is at the end of a row of three and was built in 1913. There are still sections on streets all over the area that were built at the same time, and also lots that were cleared and used to build more recently.
There are creek beds that were funneled into pipes and ravines that were filled in while they were building. There is a creek running under the next street over, you can hear the rushing water through the access covers every day of the year. Some of the houses we looked at when we were buying are settling into the old ravines, if you drop a marble it rolls the full length of the house and out the door. (Yes I did this once. The realtor tried to explain it away and I have no idea what he came up with because I could not stop laughing.)
There are history walks in the area all the time. I find this stuff fascinating.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-03-28 03:59 am (UTC)