History
Lawrence Avenue was named for Jacob Lawrence, a tanner and farmer in the area of Yonge Street and Lawrence Avenue. Originally Lawrence Avenue only ran east of Yonge Street, with the road heading west to Weston being named McDougall Avenue
During Hurricane Hazel in 1954, the Lawrence Avenue bridge over the Humber River was washed out when the river's water levels rose heavily as a result of the rainfall. When the Don Valley Parkway was constructed in the 1960s, Lawrence was rebuilt between the Woodbine Avenue allowance, and Victoria Park Avenue, as a "jog eliminator" between the former concession roads of North York and Scarborough Townships. This portion to Kingston Road (former Highway 2), is a minimum of six lanes wide. Lawrence Avenue served as the "Base Line" for the Scarborough Township Survey in the 1800s, and remains a key road in that area.
Lawrence Avenue east of Meadowvale Road in Scarborough was part of Colonel Danforth Trail until the early 1970s.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
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—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)