Landmarks 6: Gladstone Hotel to The Edgewater Hotel Via Gutta Percha

The Toronto History Walks Yearly Pass is available. Get it now for $125.00 for 1 year of unlimited tours, email torontohistorywalks@gmail.com for more information or for signing up!

** Please note: Please e-transfer the ticket amount when booking your space for this tour! You can e-transfer to the following email at: torontohistorywalks@gmail.com

Toronto is a city that hides its history in plain sight. Beneath the glass towers are layers of stories — grand hotels that vanished overnight, political scandals whispered through stone corridors, theatres that once glittered under gaslight, and laneways where the city first learned how to become a metropolis.

This new Toronto History Walks tour invites the walker to slow down, and see the city differently.

Let's return to a bygone era: late 1930s. Parkdale would already have had a long fascinating history behind it, but you would also be looking at a neighbourhood that was changing with the times. One of the most interesting examples was the Edgewater Hotel, built in 1939 at 14 Roncesvalles Avenue, at The Queensway.

It was built by Fred Hammer and became part of a very busy transportation hub, sitting beside the Sunnyside Bus Terminal. The building has survived, although the Edgewater name eventually disappeared and the hotel went through several incarnations. It is a wonderful reminder that Parkdale's history isn't just Victorian, there is twentieth-century history here as well.

And then we come to the Gladstone Hotel, which is one of those buildings that almost seem to have been watching the neighbourhood change. The hotel we see today dates from 1889 and was designed by Toronto architect George Martell Miller in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. Its location was absolutely perfect for business: it stood across from the Parkdale railway station, and was close to the Exhibition grounds. Travelling salesmen, railway workers, visitors to the CNE and commercial travellers could all find shelter here.

The original owner was Susanna Robinson, who was left a widow with thirteen children before construction of the hotel was completed. The Gladstone tells us something important about Parkdale itself. For decades it was a working-class gathering place, and as the factories and industries changed, so did the fortunes of the hotel. The great tower once had a cupola that could be seen from a distance, but that disappeared in the 1940s. By the later twentieth century the hotel had fallen on hard times and had developed a much different reputation. Yet it never completely lost its role as a community gathering place.

Eventually it was restored and reinvented, becoming part of the artistic and cultural life of Queen Street West.

And finally, we get to one of the great industrial stories of old Parkdale — the Gutta Percha & Rubber Manufacturing Company. Established here in 1883 on West Lodge Avenue, the factory became one of the largest employers in the neighbourhood and, at its height, the largest rubber manufacturer in Canada. They made all sorts of rubber products — hose, belting, boots, footwear, mats and eventually products connected with the rapidly growing automobile industry.

The factory operated until 1960, when changing technology, synthetic rubber and competition finally brought its long Parkdale story to an end. Three places — the Edgewater, the Gladstone and Gutta Percha — give us three very different Parkdales: the Parkdale of travel and transportation, the Parkdale of hotels and community life, and the Parkdale of factories and working people. Put them together and you begin to see just how fascinating this neighbourhood really is.

This walking tour begins at The Gladstone Hotel at the northeast corner of Queen Street West and Gladstone Avenue, one block east of Dufferin Street. We end at the corner of Queen Street West and Roncesvalles Avenue.

This walking tour is for all walking levels. Please dress for the season, and hope to see you there.

This tour has a ticket…