Why

Anyone who lives, drives or walks along Toronto's Craven Road eventually has two questions:

1. Why the tiny houses?
2. Why the huge fence?

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To find out, read on!

Here's a list of all posts to date, in order of publication:

• Origin Stories (2013-8-7)
  

• Fun with Math (2013-8-8)
  

• The Media Discover "Tiny Town" (2013-8-9)
  

• On the Fence (2013-8-23)
  

• Craven Road in Archive Photos  (2013-8-24)
  

• Early Maps of the Area (2013-9-14)
  

• A Century-Composite Map (2013-9-15) 
  

• Map Art (2013-10-20)
  

• Once Upon a Time in Shacktown (2013-12-28)
  

• Build-It-Yourself (2013-12-30)
  

• Weird Street (2014-2-20)
  

• "For" vs "By": Affordable Housing Back in the Day (2014-03-18)
  

• Both Edgy and Homey (2014-09-18)
  

• Craven Railroad? (2015-02-26)
  

• Aw, Shucks (2015-11-22)
  

• Duggan Develops a "Shacktown" (2016-02-11)
  

• Take a Jane's Walk along a 100-Year Fence (2016-04-11)
  

• Joanne's Talk, Jane's Walk (2016-05-08)
  

• Craven Road by the Numbers (2016-05-09)
  

• Rumble on Craven Row (2024-09-21)
  

• How About a Craven Row Challenge? (2024-09-21)
  

• Thoroughly Modern Through-Lots (2024-09-27)
  

• In Yer Face (2025-02-24)
  

• Under the Fence (2025-07-18)

Posting is sporadic, but comments are always welcome: oncravenroad [at] gmail [dot] com.

Under the Fence

In 2024, an Ashdale Avenue resident submitted a planning application to the City to build a back deck. The documents include a site plan that mentions a "BOARD FENCE", which anyone who's walked along Craven below the train tracks will recognize as a hallmark of the street.

The site plan also refers to the "WIDENING" of the road in 1913 (when Craven was called Erie Terrace) and a "1 FOOT RESERVE" on which the board fence stands: 

This blog hasn't looked at that one-foot reserve before, but we can follow these clues down the rabbit hole under Craven Road's famous wooden fence. 

Let's start with this note mentioning By-law No 6633, Instrument No. OR50531:

A search for PIN (Property Information Number) 21034-0498 on Teranet Express turns up this "best copy" (!) of By-law 6633, passed on September 15, 1913: 

"To acquire lands for the widening of Erie Terrace… to 33 feet from Queen Street to the right of way of the Grand Trunk Railway Company."

The closing paragraph of the by-law says, "The westerly one foot of the said lands shall not be used for the purpose of said highway, and no building intended for human habitation shall be erected on the west side of Erie Terrace as hereby widened."

This reflects the definition of a one-foot reserve as "a strip of land, owned by a municipality, preventing legal access from a private parcel to a public highway."

If you haven't read the 2013 post "On the Fence," it explains in detail how the mile-and-a-half-long fence on the west side of Craven was created when the City of Toronto decided to widen the road over a century ago, and why that one-foot reserve was established to make sure the fence was kept inviolate. 

Read on for a summary:

Part 4: In Yer Face

This is Part 4 in a series. If you haven't already, you can check out Part 1 in "Rumble on Craven Row," Part 2 in "How About a Craven Row Challenge?", and Part 3 in "Thoroughly Modern Through-Lots."

I've approached a few architecture profs and departments with the idea of a Craven Row Challenge, but haven't had a bite yet. 

In the meantime, the video below highlights a fascinating initiative in Vancouver called Decoding Density, an "international contest [that] addresses two of the most existential problems today: climate change and housing affordability."

Click to jump to an argument that "one key rule that we should modify" relates to setbacks:

This is a very cool thought experiment. 

For the sake of fairness, here's another. 

Imagine Parkmount Road if its front-yard setback rules changed to match those currently governing the west side of Craven Road. This is 331 Coxwell Ave, which was "a shoe repair shop in the 1970s, and a tattoo parlour in the 1980s": 

The rules for garden suites and laneway suites both assume that the new suites are back to back with their neighbours, which is why the distance to the side and rear lot lines can be so small:

By contrast, the front side of houses are normally given more space to breathe, with decent setbacks from the street and sidewalk:

Now, it's understandable that Parkmount's residents think of their gardens as normal back yards...

...and often treat Craven as a back alley or laneway.

However, a structure built at the back of a Parkmount through-lot is a structure fronting on a city street. 

As garden suite homes begin to be built fronting the west side of Craven Road, ideally the same setback rules should be applied to them as to homes on the east side of both Craven and Parkmount.