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First Toronto Post Office

Buildings and structures completed in 1833City of Toronto Heritage PropertiesFormer post office buildingsMuseums in TorontoNational Historic Sites in Ontario
Philatelic museumsPhilately of CanadaPost office buildings in CanadaPostal history of Canada
First Toronto Post Office
First Toronto Post Office

Toronto's First Post Office (also known as the Fourth York Post Office National Historic Site of Canada) is a historic post office in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the oldest purpose-built post office in Canada that functioned as a department of the British Royal Mail, and the only surviving example. After its initial use as a post office, it became part of a Roman Catholic boys' school (De La Salle College) and later a cold storage building. Located at 260 Adelaide Street East in downtown Toronto, the building now houses a museum and a full-service post office, run by the Town of York Historical Society.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article First Toronto Post Office (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

First Toronto Post Office
Adelaide Street East, Toronto

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Latitude Longitude
N 43.651847222222 ° E -79.37065 °
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De La Salle Institute

Adelaide Street East
M5A 1N7 Toronto
Ontario, Canada
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First Toronto Post Office
First Toronto Post Office
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Daniel Brooke Building
Daniel Brooke Building

Daniel Brooke Building is a 19th-century Georgian building in Toronto, Ontario, Canada located on the northeast corner of Jarvis Street and King Street. The building is one of the last remaining buildings of the old Town of York. Built in 1833 for owners Daniel Brooke and John Murchison, it was rebuilt before 1849 and damaged by the Toronto Fire of 1849.The building has been home to a number of commercial enterprises. In 1843, James Austin and Patrick Foy opened a retail and wholesale grocery business in the building. This was Austin's first venture in what would eventually make him one of Canada's most prominent 19th-century business leaders. The grocery operated at the location until 1859. After the 1849 fire, the building housed The Patriot newspaper, whose offices on the south-east corner had been destroyed. From the 1930s, the lower level housed the Sportsman's Shop, a Toronto icon that mostly sold army/navy surplus. The upper levels were mostly abandoned.On June 20, 1973, the City of Toronto government listed the property on the City of Toronto Heritage Property Inventory. and designated it as being of cultural heritage value or interest, under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act by City of Toronto By-law No.793-85 on October 23, 1985. In the 1980s, the property came under the ownership of King George Properties, which rehabilitated the building in 1988 and adjoining heritage properties 61–63 Jarvis Street (1860) and 172 King Street East (1907). In 1998, the block was integrated into a condominium project known as King George Square, with a new tower in behind.

Types Riot

The Types Riot was the destruction of William Lyon Mackenzie's printing press and movable type by members of the Family Compact on June 8, 1826, in York, Upper Canada (now known as Toronto). The Family Compact was the ruling elite of Upper Canada who appointed themselves to positions of power within the Upper Canadian government. Mackenzie created the Colonial Advocate newspaper and published editorials in the paper that accused the Family Compact of incompetence and profiteering on corrupt practices, offending the rioters. It is not known who planned the riot, although Samuel Jarvis, a government official, later claimed he organized the event. On the evening of June 8, 9–15 rioters forced their way into the newspaper offices and destroyed property. During the event, Mackenzie's employees tried to get passersby to help stop the rioters. Bystanders refused to help when they saw government officials like William Allan and Stephen Heward were watching the spectacle. When the rioters finished destroying the office, they took cases of type with them and threw them into the nearby bay. Mackenzie sued the rioters for the damage to his property and lost business opportunities. The civil trial attracted substantial media attention, with several newspapers denouncing the government officials who failed to stop the riot. A jury awarded Mackenzie £625 to be paid by the defendants, a particularly harsh settlement. He used the event to highlight abuses of the Upper Canada government during his first campaign for election to the Parliament of Upper Canada, for which he was ultimately successful. Reformers viewed Mackenzie as a martyr because of the destruction of his property and he remained popular for several years. Historians identify the event as a sign of weakening Tory influence in Upper Canada politics.

Paul Bishop's House
Paul Bishop's House

The Paul Bishop's House is actually a pair of historic townhouses located at 363-365 Adelaide Street East in the St. Lawrence neighborhood downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The houses, constructed in 1848 by Paul Bishop, sit upon the foundations laid by William Jarvis for his home in 1798. Jarvis was a member of the Queen's Rifles and Provincial Secretary and Registrar of Upper Canada. He selected a site at what is now the southeast corner of Sherbourne and Adelaide Streets and constructed a 30 by 41 foot building of squared logs that he covered with clapboards which he named Jarvis House. After William's death in 1817, his son Samuel divided the two acres of land on which the house sat into smaller parcels and sold them. The house went through a series of owners and was expanded in the early 1820s. During the Cholera epidemics in the 1830s, several people who lived in a rooming house now occupying Jarvis House died. To prevent the disease from spreading, owner James Kidd sealed several of their rooms. After the deaths in the house it gained a reputation in the city as being haunted. During Mr. Kidd's occupancy of the home it was said that on several occasions unearthly noises were heard in the room Secretary Jarvis used as an office. This drove Mr. Kidd out of the house and it remained vacant for a few years.In 1841, James Kidd sold the house to Paul Bishop, a blacksmith who worked in an adjacent building. In his workshop in 1837, Bishop created Toronto's first horse-drawn cab based on a design presented to him by Thornton Blackburn. Blackburn operated his taxi business until 1860 and left a considerable fortune upon his death in 1890. His cabs were painted yellow and red, the colors now used by the Toronto Transit Commission.In 1848, Bishop demolished the old house and built the current structure. They consist of two-storey brick houses in the Georgian style with a stone-clad cellar partially above ground. The north facade of each house contained three symmetrical bays with stone lintels and sills framing the windows The houses survived the Great Fire of Toronto of 1849 and in 1860, came under the ownership of Thomas Dennie Harris. Harris died in 1872 and the property again underwent a series of changes. Nearby trees were removed and the small yard around the house was torn-up. The interior was gutted and during the next hundred years, the building served as a machine shop, garage and rooming house at various times. Windows were closed and new doors cut through the exterior walls.According to John Ross Robertson's Landmarks of Toronto (Volume I, 130–132), blacksmith Paul Bishop acquired the property on the corner of Duke (Adelaide) and Caroline (Sherbourne) Streets formerly belonging to Sheriff Jarvis where he erected the subject buildings in 1848. However, historical records indicate that Bishop actually acquired the subject property in 1841, with the house form buildings in place the following year. An 1842 Map of Toronto, which shows the site as developed, also supports this date. Robertson describes Bishop as a French Canadian blacksmith and wheelwright who "was the principal workman in his trade in the town, but eventually he failed in business and left Toronto". Initially renting the property, Bishop resided on-site in 1843. The next year, he sold the property to Malachy O'Donohue, a local landowner. O'Donohue retained the site until 1846.