Historic built-up areas of Canadian cities

[niwell]

Ok, so we have a historic map thread somewhere, but one thing old street maps are terrible at showing is the actual built-up areas of cities. The theoretical street grid often extended well beyond the urban area and wasn't representative of what you would experience on the ground. Development patterns were also very different at that point with haphazard development occurring over relatively large areas as opposed to the tract development we see today.

An example of a small rowhouse in Toronto's Junction triangle area in the middle of nowhere (1899):

City of Toronto archives http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/co...0071d60f89RCRD



In that vein post any historical maps, images, aerials etc showing the built-up area of your city and/or the progression of urban growth. A good source for information is usually fire insurance maps or aerial surveys. I'm focussing on pre-WWII stuff as this is hardest to get solid information on but anything would be interesting really.

I'll start (obviously).

This map is part of a 1915 series commissioned by the City of Toronto to accurately map the city, commuting patterns, and density. What makes it unique is that it is based on observable land use which was rare at the time. They had workers walking blocks and observing what was actually on every given property, both within and outside of city limits:


University of Toronto library.


For a full-size image to see more detailed land uses go here: http://maps.library.utoronto.ca/data..._V2/img010.jpg



Another interesting site is something that I recently saw linked at Urbantoronto. Using City of Toronto property data, it plots out the age of the primary building on every property in the city. This gives a decent approximation of the progression of built properties, however is not 100% accurate for a number of reasons. Firstly the data isn't fully correct. Secondly this represents the age of the current building stock, and doesn't count institutional and government many government properties. Hence the big white hole downtown and the sparse nature of the early maps. Areas with a lot of infill will appear newer than they are. Similarly some large parcels with one building on them (farms in Rouge Valley) look like they have been built up since the early 1900s which isn't accurate. As such I'm only posting the 1921 - 1951 images. Also note that the images use a cutoff date in GIS and as such the scales in the lower right are a bit misleading.

For the rest of the pictures the site is: http://www.torontotransforms.com/map...onto-feb-2014/


Toronto in 1921:



1931:



1941:



1951:




Another excellent resource is the Toronto historic map viewer which shows built-areas within the city from 1818 up to the present day using whatever is available. You can see fire insurance maps from 1842 to 1924, an aerial survey of the city in 1946 and current aerial photography. Site can be found here: http://peoplemaps.esri.com/toronto/

Examples of screenshots of my neighbourhood from 1884 to 1924 (it hasn't changed a whole lot since then):


1848:



1899:



1903:



1913 (more or less built up at this point and the city extended well to the west and north and would be similar to first image posted):



1924 (note the main difference at this point was the filling in of College St with major warehouse structures):

[hipster duck]

Wow, I'd kill to have a resource like that for Vancouver.

We do have this, though. It's a map showing the age of every property in the City of Vancouver presently.

It's not the same as a time-series map showing the footprint and location of every property over 100 years, and it only extends as far out as Vancouver's (much smaller) city boundaries, but you get the idea.

[SignalHillHiker]

Awesome, niwell.

For St. John's, basically everything within Empire Avenue (which was, formerly, the railway line around the city) is urban by our standards. It's rowhouses, at minimum.

It's basically a brick wall that separates Old Town from post-Confederation town.



So, with some exceptions on both sides of this border, this is the area of St. John's that is historic and built-up. The area to the right of the blue line is old, outside of it is the WORST of suburbia:

[niwell]

I know some universities and municipal archives host fire insurance plans. They are often very user unfriendly and just a dump of scanned images however.

I found this resource showing (some) historic aerials of Calgary: http://library.ucalgary.ca/node/2142 Again it is EXTREMELY user unfriendly but you can get some cool images if you dig enough. I posted a few aerials from the 50s in another thread but too lazy to search down the links at this point!

That Vancouver link is very interesting, however suffers the same shortfalls that the Toronto images I posted do. When you have a ton of infill (like both cities) it get's harder to tell the real growth pattern. Still gives an good feel for it - I wouldn't have thought growth to be directed so far to the southwest that early on.

I think I've learned more about Empire Avenue on SSP than I ever thought! It's cool to have a dividing line like that though - in Toronto (and most other cities) you filter through areas that were built up over decades and there is rarely a hard line.

[lrt's friend]

In the first Toronto photo, is that a toll gate rather than a railway gate? I think Ontario got rid of toll gates around 1920. I live on a former toll road and I know where all the toll gates were located in our area. How the world has changed in the last 100 years.

[SignalHillHiker]

As for pictures...

A HUGE panorama of St. John's from 1922. This was, more or less, the full extent of the urban portion of the city. Now, you can't see it, but behind that first hill of the downtown is another. So everything you see here, double that, on the other side of the hill, was just as dense and nice. Empire Avenue is at the bottom of the valley between the first and second hills of St. John's. I'm explaining this to death because it's so hard to see. Where the buildings end, it looks like that's just where they stop going up a hillside. That's actually a horizon, a hilltop. That same density extends an equal distance down the back, not visible side of the hill. It's still nothing, a very small area. But it is double what you see in this panorama.

In a spoiler because it's SO WIDE:

Early 1900s. St. John's is a thriving national capital. The period from 1907-1914, especially, is considered a golden age of the city's history.



1960... you can see clear the divide between pre-Confederation St. John's and post-Confederation St. John's. The tall building under construction in the distance is Confederation Building, our provincial legislature (our former Parliament downtown was considered too small).



You could take basically the same picture today - there's just more new out around the edges.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

In the first Toronto photo, is that a toll gate rather than a railway gate? I think Ontario got rid of toll gates around 1920. I live on a former toll road and I know where all the toll gates were located in our area. How the world has changed in the last 100 years.

I believe it's a railway gate - I think Toronto got rid of all of its toll gates by that time. Location of picture is here: http://goo.gl/maps/Aixnf If you zoom out it would be the furthest east railway track, now the West Toronto Railpath.

[Bcasey25raptor]

My apartment was built in the early 1900s

[MonkeyRonin]

I had that first map in mind as soon as I saw the thread title. Also this one from a year earlier showing the density of each of those developed blocks:





It seems that the most densely populated neighbourhood was the Ward (a slum in the area where City Hall & environs now stands). Its odd to see the area that is now the Entertainment District being so dense though - I would have thought it had become mostly industrial & commercial by that time. All's I know is that its population had dwindled to a few hundred by the early 90s.


I had also made this map a while ago attempting to show the approximate extent of the city's built form by era, but a lot of it was guesswork based on survey maps and probably inaccurate. Doesn't take into account the various "holes" in the urban area that were filled in later, either.

[niwell]

^I love that density map as well! Contemplated including it but didn't have it on hand. I believe it's actually from the same study too (note the page numbers). They have those two and a few others in the Historical Atlas of Toronto which I highly recommend. What's crazy about the density one is that it was completely hand drawn. Every block in the city. Also the density spikes near the edge of the city in some areas. Overcrowding? Or new apartments outside city limits?

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Its odd to see the area that is now the Entertainment District being so dense though

No, wait, I'm reading that wrong - it's north of Queen, so that's the Chinatown/Baldwin Village/Alexandra Park/Kensington area over to Trinity Bellwoods, which is no surprise.

[le calmar]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Interesting map. I would love to do the same with Montreal but that would be complicated since many old towns (certain almost as old as Montreal in Lachine, Verdun, Pointe aux Trembles and Riviere des Prairies) have been absorbed by the city over the time. Toronto seems to originate mainly from one single node.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Awesome, niwell.

For St. John's, basically everything within Empire Avenue (which was, formerly, the railway line around the city) is urban by our standards. It's rowhouses, at minimum.

It's basically a brick wall that separates Old Town from post-Confederation town.

So, with some exceptions on both sides of this border, this is the area of St. John's that is historic and built-up. The area to the right of the blue line is old, outside of it is the WORST of suburbia:
]

Cool stuff but empire is a poor divider.

Much of downtown has now become just a slightly less well designed suburb, especial the west end portions you shwon.