page_title: Queen Street (Toronto)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Queen Street (Toronto) / History
caption_attribution_description: Queen Street West, looking west at Yonge Street (Toronto, Canada)
context_page_description: Queen Street is a major east-west thoroughfare in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It extends from Roncesvalles Avenue and King Street in the west to Victoria Park Avenue in the east. Queen Street was the cartographic baseline for the original east-west avenues of Toronto's and York County's grid pattern of major roads. The western section of Queen is a centre for Canadian broadcasting, music, fashion, performance, and the visual arts. Over the past twenty-five years, Queen West has become an international arts centre and a tourist attraction in Toronto.
context_section_description: Since the original survey in 1793 by Sir Alexander Aitkin, commissioned by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, Queen Street has had many names. For its first sixty years, many sections were referred to as Lot Street, section west of Spadina was named Egremont Street until about 1837. East of the Don River to near Coxwell Avenue it was part of  Kingston Road (and resuming as Queen Street thereafter), and was the westernmost section of that historic route to Kingston, Ontario, whose western terminus today is just east of Coxwell. The first park lots laid out in the new city of York (which would be renamed Toronto in 1834) were given to loyal officials who were willing to give up the amenities of modern cities such as Kingston to take up residence in the forests north of Lot Street. These 40 hectares (99 acres) lots were placed along the south side of the first east–west road laid in York, Lot Street. In 1837 Lot Street was renamed in honour of Queen Victoria.
  "Queen West" is local vernacular which generally refers to the collection of neighbourhoods that have developed along and around the thoroughfare. Many of these were originally ethnically-based neighbourhoods. The earliest example from the mid-19th century was Claretown, an Irish immigrant enclave in the area of Queen Street West and Bathurst Street. From the 1890s to the 1930s, Jewish immigrants coalesced in the neighbourhood known as "the Ward", for which Queen Street between Yonge and University served as the southern boundary. The intersection of Queen and Bay Streets also served as the southern end of a thriving Chinatown in the 1930s. From the 1920s to the 1950s, the area was also the heart of Toronto's Polish and Ukrainian communities. From the 1950s through the 1970s, many immigrants from Portugal settled in the area. Gentrification over the past twenty years has caused most recent immigrants to gradually move to more affordable areas of the city as desirability of the area drives up prices.
  Like other gentrified areas of Toronto, the original "Queen West" —the stretch between University Avenue and Spadina Avenue — is now lined with upscale boutiques, chain stores, restaurants, tattoo parlours and hair salons. Perhaps the best-known landmark on this section of Queen West is the broadcast hub at 299 Queen Street West, formerly the headquarters of Citytv and MuchMusic and earlier the site of the Ryerson Press, now housing the broadcast operations of a number of television outlets owned by Bell Media. Queen Street East, though not as famous as Queen Street West, is known for its shopping, especially in nearby neighbourhoods.
  Until the 1940s and 50's Queen Street extended west (in several sections) along what is today The Queensway, with the name changed through the westernmost segment though the former Etobicoke in 1947 to avoid confusion due to the break. The other sections were a stub of the street continuing west of Roncesvalles and ending at Colborne Lodge Drive by High Park, and a short side street in Swansea running west from Ellis Avenue. When The Queensway was extended east in the 1950s, the latter two section where absorbed into it, rather than having the name "Queen Street" restored to the now-continuous street, likely due to the Borough of Etobicoke desiring a counterpart to another street called The Kingsway.
caption: Looking west along Queen Street from Yonge Street, c. 1885
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