Downtown’s historic Draper Street just lost its ‘gatekeeper.’ But his legacy lives on

Draper St. is nothing short of a time-capsuled gem from the Victorian-era.

The 28 historic row houses that stand amid a condo boom near Spadina Ave. and Front St. back on to a giant hole where The Well, a retail, office and residential complex, is in the midst of springing up.

The little street has stood the test of time in part thanks to Bill Brokenshire, who cherished his vast collection of local and historic artifacts, staging a good street party and putting up a fight to preserve the quaintness of his neighbourhood.

Draper St.’s Dizzy the Cat gets a promenade dedicated to him

Toronto’s first cat-themed park will open in the neighbourhood in 2019.

It is Dizzy’s world and we just live in it.

For years, the plump 13-year-old orange and white cat has been a popular fixture on Draper St. in downtown Toronto.

Now, the friendly feline’s legacy is secure, as he is the inspiration for Toronto’s first cat-themed park, a pedestrian promenade that will be built in the neighbourhood and opened in 2019.

Historic Draper Street retains its neighbourhood charm amid surrounding waves of redevelopment

Draper, with its second-empire Victorian cottages built between 1881 and 1889, has withstood more than a century of industry on all sides and somehow survived with its charm and heart intact.

But the historic street is facing a new round of challenges. Within the next two years, a consortium led by developer Diamondcorp is expected to break ground on The Well, a three-hectare (7.7-acre) project adjacent to homes on the east side of Draper extending east to Spadina Ave. and running from Front Street north to Wellington Street

Toronto’s storied, charming Draper St. laden with memories

This little strip of just 28 Victorian houses near Bathurst and Front St. could well be the city’s most closely-knit micro-community — precisely because it’s endured so many surrounding upheavals (the arrival of factories back when; towering condominiums now) without ever losing its core, its heart.

So unique and relatively unchanged are the Victorian houses on Draper, despite decades of development around them, that in the late 1990s residents managed to get the entire street designated under the Ontario Heritage Act, which means pages and pages of guidelines of what can and cannot be done to properties so steeped in history.

Now and Then: The Stories of Draper Street

A corner of Toronto that is the birthplace to a Black political icon

The future site of Draper Street, which runs one way from Front Street West to Wellington Street West, first appears on a map in 1833. It didn’t yet have a name or building lots, but it was the start of what has become a carefully preserved district to reflect what Toronto looked like in the late 19th century.

Historic homes on Draper Street

attractive homes are located on Draper Street, which was named after William Henry Draper (1801-1877), a jurist and politician, as well as the Chief Justice of Upper Canada from 1863 to 1869. His portrait in oils hangs outside the library of Osgoode Hall. The land occupied by Draper Street, once a part of the military reserve attached to Fort York, was annexed to the city in the 1830s. It appears on the city’s maps in the year 1857, though the exact year it was cut through the woods is unknown. In the 1880s, when houses were constructed, it became a working man’s community, unlike Wellington Place at its north end.

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