Local Landmarks & Heritage
Local Landmarks & Heritage
- Chinese Archway (paifang)
- Riverdale Public Library
- Sun Yat-sen monument (Riverdale Park)
- Gerrard Street East & Broadview Avenue
Neighborhood History
Neighborhood History
East Chinatown is an east-end Toronto neighbourhood centred on Gerrard Street East and Broadview Avenue in Riverdale. It took shape around 1971, when Charlie Cheung moved from the city's first Chinatown and opened Charlie's Meat, a Chinese butcher shop, at 383 Broadview Avenue. Through the 1970s other Chinese families followed, priced out of downtown by the expropriation of the original Chinatown and rising rents around Spadina Avenue, and drawn by cheaper housing, transit and parks.
The Riverdale branch of the Toronto Public Library, at the northwest corner of Broadview and Gerrard, serves the community in Chinese and English, and a monument to Sun Yat-sen stands in Riverdale Park just to the north. In 2009 the neighbourhood opened Toronto's only Chinese archway, or paifang.
The East Chinatown tee is for the families who built a second Chinatown across the Don — and for everyone who shops, eats and gathers there today.
MY-NHD
East Chinatown - East End Toronto - Unisex Cotton Tee
East Chinatown - East End Toronto - Unisex Cotton Tee
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East Chinatown grew up in Riverdale in the early 1970s, as Chinese families moved east in search of more affordable homes. Its bilingual library branch and 2009 paifang archway mark it as a distinct east-end community.
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