Parkdale, Toronto
Parkdale is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The Village of Parkdale was annexed by the City of Toronto in 1889. It was once an elite residential suburb, home to large Victorian mansions and views of Lake Ontario. Good examples of Victorian housing can be found on Cowan Avenue and Dunn Street, south of King Street. Victorian rowhomes with original gaslights can also be seen on Melbourne Place. However in modern days it is sometimes nicknamed Crackdale, or Crookdale because of the relatively high rates of poverty, crime and mental illness in the neighbourhood.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Parkdale's desirability stemmed from its proximity to Sunnyside Beach, a favourite day vacation for Torontonians. Cottage industries sprung up in the neighbourhood, creating a vital economic region. Theatres such as the Brighton, and hotels like the Edgewater flourished.
The Palais Royale, at the eastern edge of Sunnyside Beach, was used for social gatherings. Many important big bands played there in the 1930s and the 1940s, and this attracted a large youth patronage. Many war generation Torontonians courted their future partners in this building. The Palais Royale is still standing and is a favourite venue for The Rolling Stones, who have played there to welcoming crowds during rehearsals for their recent (21st century) world tours.
In 1955, the city began work on the Gardiner Expressway, a limited access highway that separated Parkdale from Lake Ontario and Sunnyside Beach. The expressway effectively halved the amount of usable lakeside parkland. A reorganization of the area's residential streets and the demolition of a local amusement park were also necessary. Patronage of the beach declined rapidly.
As property values plummeted, swaths of land were expropriated to erect social housing. Other areas, such as the northeast corner of blocks around Roncesvalles and Queen, saw large numbers of mansions and other large houses become makeshift low-rise apartment buildings. In addition, new low-rise, low-rent buildings were constructed throughout the neighborhood. Parkdale's businesses and wealthy residents subsequently vacated the area within years.
Parkdale Village, the area of Parkdale closest to the beach, became one of the poorest areas in Toronto. It is bounded on the west by the intersection of King Street, Roncesvalles Avenue, and Queen Street West, on the north by Queen Street West, on the east by Dufferin Street, and on the south by the Gardiner Expressway, roughly half a square kilometre in area.
In the mid 1980s, the Ontario provincial government decided to release many long-term care mental illness patients from its Queen Street and Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital facilities as a cost-cutting measure. The old Victorian mansions of Parkdale had long been converted to boarding houses, and were only a short distance away from both hospitals. The inexpensive rental stock of Parkdale soon became home to many of the released patients. While this migration did not create any real problems, the news drew greater negative attention to the area. By the late 1980s, "Parkdale" became synonymous with poverty, crime, drugs, homelessness, and large numbers of people living with mental illness. Parkdale Village is still home to some soup kitchens and day centres for the homeless. A pilot programme for a needle exchange is new to the area.
Parkdale is one of the most diverse areas of the city, with many new immigrants finding their first homes here, due to the lower rents. The presence of a large immigrant community has done much to create the vibrancy that Parkdale is known for. This might be a fact of the streetscape in Parkdale, but it remains an area rife with substandard rental apartment buildings (a large percentage of Parkdale residents are renters) run by landlords coined slumlords by many area residents. Perceived inaction by different levels of government have prevented the situation from getting any better, in fact worse as each year passes and the buildings get older. Unlike Regent Park just east of downtown, there is no urban renewal project in the works for Parkdale.
However, Parkdale is seeing increasing signs of gentrification, as Queen Street West's sphere of influence extends further westward. This include new hipster cafes, lounges, restaurants, condos, lofts, shops and art galleries cropping up rapidly, and former old dive hotels The Drake and The Gladstone being recently bought out and renovated to become very trendy and chic. Local taverns have begun receiving new patronage from artists and urbanites seeking refuge from the fashion boutiques further east on Queen Street. The area is also becoming a new Gay Neighborhood. The gentrification is in part fuelled by local area gay couples coming into the neighborhood-buying and renovating the properties. The area has the nickname of Queer West Village. [1]
Real estate prices in Parkdale are booming and the area is one of the hottest markets in the downtown core, buyers attracted by the "can't be beat" location, proximity to Lake Ontario, the Gardiner Expressway, the downtown core, as well as Queen West, Liberty Village and parks. Parkdale is a great part of Toronto, full of history and changing rapidly.
The area that extends northward along Roncesvalles Avenue, on the other hand, saw new life when a wave of Polish immigrants settled in the area in the mid 1960's. Delis and restaurants are still the majority of storefronts that line the thoroughfare from Queen Street West to Howard Park Avenue. In recent years, young professionals have gentrified this section and have raised property values there as well. Many of the old Polish shops have been closed and new restaurants, bars and shops have opened.
See also
External links
- Parkdale Liberty Economic Development Corporation
- Roncesvalles MacDonnell Residents Association
- Parkdale Residents Association
- Parkdale history
- Parkdale Collegiate Institute
- West Lodge Parkdale Tenants Association
- The Former Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital Project
- Parkdalian
- Toronto's Housing Projects (including pictures of Parkdale)