Doors Open 2024 – Stories of St. Lawrence

As the city’s oldest neighbourhood, St. Lawrence’s buildings and landscapes are a connection to Toronto’s past, chronicling in built form the evolution of our city. But the stories they tell are not always obvious. Hidden in the street patterns and building facades, public art pieces and names, is the messy, multi-layered story of how our city’s current built environment came to be.

Join the Toronto Society of Architects on this tour as we uncover the stories hidden in this neighbourhood’s built form: from art pieces that speak to a forgotten shoreline to housing projects that capture the debates in the 1970s and 80s on how tall is too tall. Along the way we’ll talk about the birth of the city’s heritage conservation movement, the role new development can play in safeguarding our city’s history, and why heritage is not always as straightforward as it seems.

Above image by Scott Norsworthy.