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Local Landmarks & Heritage

  • Baldwin Street
  • Mandel's Creamery site (29 Baldwin St.)
  • Kensington Market (adjacent)

Neighborhood History

Baldwin Village is a single downtown Toronto block — Baldwin Street between Beverley and McCaul — named for Dr. William Warren Baldwin, the physician, lawyer and politician who once owned much of the surrounding land. Through the early twentieth century the street was an extension of the neighbouring Kensington Market Jewish community, lined with Jewish-owned shops and restaurants.

Mandel's Creamery ran at 29 Baldwin Street for ninety years, from 1895 to 1995. As Toronto's Jewish population moved north, the block's closeness to Chinatown drew a growing Chinese-Canadian presence, and by the late 1960s it had become a countercultural hub where American Vietnam-era draft dodgers opened shops in its houses. The first café arrived in 1978, and the street still hosts summer Pedestrian Sundays alongside Kensington Market.

The Baldwin Village tee is for everyone who has eaten, shopped or lingered here — a short street that holds three generations of Toronto.

MY-NHD

Baldwin Village - Central Toronto - Unisex Cotton Tee

Baldwin Village - Central Toronto - Unisex Cotton Tee

Regular price $29.95 CAD
Regular price Sale price $29.95 CAD
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Baldwin Village packs more than a century of Toronto change into one short downtown street between Beverley and McCaul. Jewish merchants from neighbouring Kensington Market were the first to open businesses here, followed by Chinese-Canadian families and, in the late 1960s, young Americans who had come north to avoid the Vietnam draft.

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