A fire-insurance map from 1924 shows what the Annex, Harbord Village and Palmerston neighbourhoods looked like a decade after city bylaws banned apartment buildings in many parts of the city. Single-family homes still dominate much of these neighbourhoods today.One hundred years ago, Toronto was in the midst of an acute housing shortage.
While it’s certainly not the only factor that has led to Toronto’s dearth of low-rise, affordable rental properties – indeed, many buildings were erected despite the law – experts say the city is still grappling with the bylaw’s effects on its urban fabric and zoning, not to mention the NIMBYism toward multi-unit housing generally.
The Roslyn Apartments at Glen Road, north from Howard Street, in 1913 and 2022. The first tenants of the three-storey red brick buildings included realtors, merchants and manufacturers. Residents of the city’s first apartment buildings – the St. George Mansions, completed in 1904 near the current site of Robarts Library – included professors, barristers and two bank managers, according to Richard Dennis, a University College London geographer considered the authority on Toronto’s early apartment history.
St. George Mansions on Harbord Street, photographed in 1944 and shown in its architectural drawings, was Toronto’s first apartment building. After it was finished in 1904, the six-storey complex had 34 apartments and about 99 occupants.The Spruce Court Apartments in Cabbagetown were built from 1913 to 1925 for working-class residents. But with rents of $25 a month – half of an ordinary worker's monthly wages – it wasn't quite as affordable as advertised.
According to Richard White, an author and Toronto historian, public response was favourable. Nonetheless, there were dissenters. As a result, several hundred apartment buildings were constructed in areas where they had initially been banned. Dr. White said that of the 12 applications for exemptions in the Beaches neighbourhood, all were approved.