The St Lawrence neighbourhood is getting a 'Residential Rebirth' as per Toronto Waterfront Magazine, and that means excavators will soon be cracking through the asphalt and digging deep holes down through the history of the city to make the necessary underground parking garages. And that gets Dumpdiggers excited. When historic property changes hands, City administrators often hire professional archeologists to poke about and recover artifacts in the hopes of making a 'Toronto Museum' someday. Below is a picture I snapped on 16 Jan 2017 of the archeological dig happening on the site of the St Lawrence Market's north building. For years this was the site of a vegetable produce market on Saturdays, and I believe there was an antiques market on Sundays. Or was it the other way around? I forget exactly, but I do know that I shopped for antique bottles in this building, and there's a blog post about visiting the spot with Abel DaSilva somewhere in the archives here on Dumpdiggers. You can see in the photo above I've deliberately shown the portable toilet solution on site today as I enjoy the juxtaposition of seeing space age privies on a property which more than likely once boasted the crudest of latrines. That's where the best stuff is buried... but the book schooled archeologists are instead combing the foundations for clues to culturally relevant stories, and various historical mysteries and they're not 'relic hunting' for collectibles as we would do, although they have found some bottles and coins as per a January 7th 2017 Toronto Star article about the archeological dig at St Lawrence Market by John Lorinc

This dig is happening before construction starts on a mega mall vendor complex which some experts, John Lorinc included, have pegged at costing just over ninety million dollars. That seems cheap - look at this thing! The picture to the right shows John Graves Simcoe's famous 1797 sketch of the Settlement of York with the present location of Time and Space condos clearly marked. You can see it's located right on the shoreline of the original grid. This graphic is borrowed courtesy of the Time and Space condos website's Time Traveler story from which I've re-purposed some other images and observations for this blog. I'm writing this post on Dumpdiggers as a community alert for shovel ready relic hunters and more refined collectors who prefer to deal directly with backhoe operators and excavation company owners (to buy dug bottles and bits at best prices). Lastly this is a story about the evolution of Front St E and what amazing things might be lurking under ten feet of top soil, buried a few  hundred years under the rest of Toronto's history. Anyone comparing the two map excerpts will notice that Front St E was originally called 'Palace St' and was a waterfront expressway toward the site of the first Upper Canada Parliament Buildings. It was called 'Palace St' because it was the way toward the 'Palace of Government'. You can see the sudden 'dip' downwards in this image below that I snapped on 16 Jan 2017 of the south west corner of Front and Sherbourne as it appears today. There was an Acura car dealership and Sobey's grocer store here not too long ago. See that smoke stack? Keep an eye on it. Go back forty years...  Newsome and Gilbert Ltd. printing plant was located at 177 Front St E in 1972. The old smoke stack is visible back then, but does not appear to be connected to the building. Newsome and Gilbert made high quality legal stationary for law firms across Canada and this facility probably employed a hundred people in the area. It was a modern printing plant and didn't use steam power but rather it required hydro electric power as evidenced by the many spars on the pole outside the building and only three spars on the pole at the corner in the foreground.
Go back farther - here is a sketch from 1893. Here's what's coming to the site in 2017. Time and Space Condos at 177 Front St E. The St Lawrence Condos at 158 Front St E has an advanced design with a  ‘staggered blocks’ style appearance that's certain to turn heads. This is what the future looks like today. Roy F. Day was a locksmith - The B/A sign is the mark of the British American Petroleum company. PDF - There's a report done by Archeological Services Inc on behalf of the city of Toronto for 154 Front St. E and the information inside is solid gold. The document recalls the original Toronto Purchase and lists the payment terms and treaty irregularities. It lists the population of the city at various ties throughout the 1800s and also there's a complete list of owners for 154 Front St E from 1833 - present day.

Ten years later, in the middle 1850s, Boyd and Armstrong started a hotel at what is now 154 Front St E and called it the Grand Trunk Hotel which I suspect rented rooms on long term basis as the census records are thick with occupants' names from this point forward. The residents are middle aged blacksmiths, flour dealers, and pork packers who probably worked across the street at Wlliam Davies pork packing plant on Frederick St - that building still stands today too.

The Grand Trunk Hotel is called Ontario House in early 1870s and then becomes William Lennox's Hotel in 1875. Where there was a lodging house there usually a deep privy and so I've no doubt the property is loaded with little pockets of antique glass bottles today.

In 1895 we see the first mention of  William S. Mahaffy as a blacksmith. A few years later he's listed as 'carriage manufacturer'. Same as H.A. Wickett Co. Ltd., general contractors in 1930. Wicket specialized in demolition afterwards - the Wicket Demotion company appears after 1940, along with Roy F. Day, locksmith.

And we all know what's coming. In the summer of 2017 I will be there interviewing excavators, taking pictures, and maybe even buying bottles and relics from the excavators at the gate.
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