The five earliest photos of Craven Road in the
City of Toronto Archives were taken on June 16, 1916, after the city decided to
buy up a slice of Ashdale Avenue's backyards in order to widen the narrow, one-sided laneway then called Erie Terrace.
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| Erie Terrace, looking south, 1916 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 1231, Item 2243) |
Ironically, these images show Erie Terrace's dirt road and wood-plank sidewalk, but reveal very little of its houses. The photos look south and a little west, focusing on the Ashdale side of the street, since they were taken to record the backyard property being expropriated to widen the street.
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| Erie Terrace, looking south, 1916 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 3, Item 205) |
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| Erie Terrace, looking west, 1916 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 3, Item 207) |
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| Erie Terrace, looking south, 1916 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 3, Item 208) |
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| Erie Terrace, looking south, 1916 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 3, Item 209) |
Why was the city so keen to get this little dirt road widened? Until it was a proper width,
it couldn't be paved like Ashdale, Rhodes and the rest of the streets in the area. This photo of Ashdale from six years earlier gives a sense of why paving might be a good idea:
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| Coal wagon stalled on muddy Ashdale Avenue, 1908 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 24) |
There are also some earlier images taken in the Ashdale Ave. area on September 20, 1910, when the City was trying to decide whether to run an underpass (called a "subway") under the railroad tracks at Ashdale or Coxwell Avenue. If you look in the background of the east-facing photos, you can catch glimpses of Erie Terrace between the houses fronting on Ashdale.
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| Ashdale Avenue, east side, 1910 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 84, Item 80) |
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| Ashdale Avenue, east side, 1910 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 84, Item 81) |
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| Ashdale Avenue, east side, 1910 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 84, Item 82) |
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| Ashdale Avenue, east side, 1910 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 84, Item 83) |
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| Ashdale Avenue, looking north from Fairford, 1910 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 84, Item 84) |
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| Ashdale Avenue, looking south from Fairford, 1910 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 84, Item 85) |
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| Ashdale Avenue, east side 1910 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 84, Item 79) |
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| Ashdale Avenue, west side, corner of Fairford, 1910 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 84, Item 86) |
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| Ashdale Avenue, west side, 1910 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 84, Item 87) |
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| Ashdale Avenue, looking northeast from north of Fairford Avenue, 1910 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 84, Item 84) |
The eventual winner in the battle for the railroad underpass, of course, was not Ashdale but Coxwell Avenue. Here's the view from the tracks, south along Coxwell in 1910:
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| Coxwell Avenue south from railway, April 29, 1912 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 1231, Item 2122) |
And here's the finished Coxwell underpass in 1913:
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| Coxwell Avenue looking north at Grand Trunk Railway underpass, Dec. 30, 1913 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 1231, Item 1332) |
The only other photos of Craven Road in the archives are these two from 1949, looking south from Danforth Avenue, documenting damage to the pavement by a tractor:
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| Craven Road pavement damage May 10, 1949 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 58, Item 1933) |
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| Craven Road pavement damage May 10, 1949 (Toronto Archives, Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 58, Item 1933) |
