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Alexandra Park, Toronto

AC with 0 elementsBlack Canadian culture in TorontoBlack Canadian settlementsNeighbourhoods in TorontoPublic housing in Canada
Urban decay in Canada
Alexandra Park Toronto
Alexandra Park Toronto

Alexandra Park is a neighbourhood located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Alexandra Park is bounded by Dundas Street West on the north, Spadina Avenue on the east, Queen Street West on the south, and Bathurst Street on the west. Alexandra Park consists of private and public housing, with at grade retail along Queen Street West and Spadina Avenue, some institutional, and several commercial buildings scattered through the neighborhood. The neighborhood takes its name from Alexandra Park, a municipal park at the south-east corner of Dundas Street West and Bathurst Street. The park is named for Queen Alexandra, wife of King Edward VII, the first future monarch to visit Toronto.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Alexandra Park, Toronto (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Alexandra Park, Toronto
Augusta Square, Toronto

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Wikipedia: Alexandra Park, TorontoContinue reading on Wikipedia

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Latitude Longitude
N 43.65 ° E -79.4 °
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Augusta Square 73
M5T 2V5 Toronto
Ontario, Canada
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Alexandra Park Toronto
Alexandra Park Toronto
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Secret Swing
Secret Swing

Swingsite was an art installation that consisted of a playground swing hanging in the narrow space between two buildings in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The swing was accessed by way of the alley behind Queen Street West, which is known as one of Toronto's best graffiti galleries. Toronto artist Corwyn Lund erected the swing in September 2003 as part of a group show called 'Psychotopes' at YYZ Artists Outlet. As part of that show, Lund made and displayed a video about the installation.Nicknamed the Secret Swing, its location became more widely known when Toronto bloggers began posting pictures of it online and a number of articles appeared in local newspapers. It has since become a cult icon among street artists and the youth of Toronto. It was located in the alley behind the store fronts on the south side of Queen Street, about a block west of Spadina Avenue. In November 2005, the swing's seat and two feet of the swing's chains were removed. This was supposedly the work of vandals. Two people named Vince and Kai replaced it on December 13 of the same year. The new swing seat bore a date, signatures, and has writing on it: “The Secret Swing belongs to the people of Toronto.”The swing installation came to an end in March 2006 when both the swing and the bar holding it up were removed and a fence installed to block the entrance to the space where the swing was installed. This may have been done to thwart any future attempts to replace the swing, as well as deter homeless people from sleeping in the space between buildings.

Standard Theatre (Toronto)
Standard Theatre (Toronto)

The Standard Theatre is an inactive theatre in Toronto that originated as the city's main venue for Yiddish theatre, and later became the Victory Burlesque, which would be the last traditional burlesque theatre in Toronto when it closed in 1975. It is located at 285 Spadina Ave. the corner of Spadina Avenue and Dundas Street. The building was erected in 1921 as the Standard Theatre, a venue for live action Yiddish theatre, and was described as the only building in North America built for the purpose of being a Yiddish theatre. It was designed by Benjamin Brown, one of the city's first Jewish architects, and financed by selling shares to members of the large Jewish community of Kensington Market. The theatre was home to a large number of productions of classic Yiddish works, comedy, and translations such as Shakespeare in Yiddish. It was also a centre of Jewish left-wing political activism. The centre for the activities of the Progressive Arts Club. In 1929 an event commemorating the death of Vladimir Lenin was raided by police. In December 1933, the agitprop play Eight Men Speak about the imprisonment of Canadian Communist leader Tim Buck premiered. The police ordered the play closed and threatened to revoke the theatre's licence if the play was performed again. The theatre remained a centre of Toronto's Jewish community until the building was converted into a mainstream movie cinema known as The Strand, which opened in October 1934. In 1941, it became the Victory, a cinema in the Twentieth Century Theatres chain. The theatre consisted of a single stadium seating screen and concession area selling snacks. Stairs from the street level on Spadina took moviegoers to the screen. In 1961 it became the Victory Burlesque, joining the Lux (which had opened in 1959) and the Casino (which has existed since the 1930s) as one of three burlesques in Toronto but by the mid-1960s, the Victory was the sole traditional burlesque in the city. It became an iconic destination, especially for students from the nearby University of Toronto. In its last years, it also featured musical acts such as the New York Dolls, Kiss, Iggy Pop and Rush. Facing competition from adult theaters and modern strip clubs it closed in 1975. The Jewish community had left the area, and Dundas and Spadina was now the centre of Toronto's Chinatown. The Victory was thus sold and subdivided in 1975 into shops on the main floor and a Chinese language cinema upstairs, first named the Golden Harvest under ownership by the iconic Hong Kong cinema and then the Mandarin. This cinema closed in 1994, and the building was renovated and is home to a number of retail stores. An independent theatre, Acacia Centre for the Performing Arts, opened in 2010, but it is no longer active. The former ticket office is gone and the newer staircase to the upper levels is now a retail area.