A Century-Composite Map

Following yesterday's post of maps from the early days of the Craven Road area, here's a fun bonus: 

(Click above for larger image)
Combined 2009 and 1913 maps

Below is a 2009 City of Toronto traffic control map. Below that is a swatch of the 1913 Goad's Atlas of the City of Toronto that corresponds to the exact same area. And at the top of this post is an image that superimposes the modern streets on their counterparts a hundred-odd years earlier...

Early Maps of the Area

The earliest maps of the Craven Road area offer a fascinating journey. They don't always necessarily agree with each other, but each one gives some quirky little spark of discovery that can fire your imagination.

Let's start in one of the earliest years the neighbourhood appears on a map, at least in any recognizable detail. This image, courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives via Nathan Ng's fabulous website Historical Maps of Toronto, is from an 1851 map of the Township of York.

The road across the top will become Danforth Avenue, and the one marked "Kingston Road" will become Queen Street East up to the point where it veers off diagonally at the point marked "Tavern" and "Steam SM" (the location of a steam-powered sawmill – see page 6 of The Beach in Pictures). The map shows a few buildings, the numbers dividing the concession into 100-acre lots, some marshy area around Ashbridges Bay, and... not much else:

(Click here to access the full map)
1851 Map of the Township of York in the County of York Upper Canada, by J.O. Browne

McGill University's Canadian County Atlas Digital Project includes a map from 1878 which shows Greenwood Avenue on the left-most side, with various "Heirs of Jesse Ashbridge" listed as owners of strips of land moving eastward till a "J. Platt" appears, then two blank lots (which are probably on either side of what will eventually become Coxwell Avenue), followed by a "Sam Hill". The road on the right-hand side is Woodbine Avenue: