Streetcar Suburb

Photo by the City of Toronto - Posted September, 2011

Photo and transcription by contributor Wayne Adam - Posted September, 2011

Attached to this eastbound St. Clair Avenue West transit shelter at Arlington Avenue is this City of Toronto plaque. Here's what it says:

Plaque coordinates: 43.681173 -79.428182

On ribbons of steel and a streak of chained lightning, Toronto's transportation destiny arrived with its first electric streetcars in 1892. "Riding the witch's broom," it was called. And just as the newfangled elevator made the city grow skyward, the streetcar made it grow outward, far beyond the limits of the quaint horse-drawn streetcars of old.
As those streetcars reached out of the old city, a new one was born. Where once there were fields and farmhouses, new neighbourhoods arose, replete with houses, stores, office, theatres and parks. Streetcar suburbs, they were called.
In 1913, the streetcars of the publicly-owned Toronto Civic Railways bestowed their spark of life on this one: St. Clair West. Today, both the streetcars and the neighbourhood they created remain vibrant, inviting and intertwined. If there be a greater tribute to the city building powers of the streetcar than St. Clair West, history does not record it.

Related Toronto plaque
The Kingston Road Radial

Related Ontario plaque
Toronto's Radial Railways

More
Transportation

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