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Local Landmarks & Heritage

  • Harbord Street
  • First Narayever Congregation
  • Brunswick Avenue
  • Harbord Village Heritage Conservation District

Neighborhood History

Harbord Village is a downtown Toronto neighbourhood bounded by Bloor Street, Spadina Avenue, College Street and Bathurst Street, on park lots first granted after 1793. The estates were subdivided from the early 1850s, and Harbord Street appeared on city maps in 1854 — likely named, local historians suggest, for Edward Harbord, 3rd Baron Suffield, an anti-slavery campaigner in the British Parliament. Most of its bay-and-gable houses went up between the 1860s and the 1920s.

The neighbourhood became home to a large Jewish community in the early 20th century, and the First Narayever Congregation, founded in 1914, still worships here. In the 1960s residents organized against plans for high-rise redevelopment and the Spadina Expressway, which was cancelled in 1971, and the heart of the area was designated a Heritage Conservation District in 2005, with a second phase in 2009.

The Harbord Village tee is for the neighbours who saved these streets from the expressway — and still sit on the porches they fought for.

MY-NHD

Harbord Village - Central Toronto - Unisex Cotton Tee

Harbord Village - Central Toronto - Unisex Cotton Tee

Regular price $29.95 CAD
Regular price Sale price $29.95 CAD
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Harbord Village fills the blocks between Bloor and College streets, west of Spadina Avenue, with rows of Victorian bay-and-gable houses. Its residents' fight against high-rise redevelopment and the Spadina Expressway helped preserve it as a Heritage Conservation District.

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