Spadina Avenue - History

History

Spadina Avenue is commonly pronounced with the i as /aɪ/ as in mine; the Spadina House museum on Spadina Road is always pronounced with the i as in /iː/ as in ski. Historically, the latter pronunciation was used, with the former a colloquialism that has developed over the years.

The name originates from the Ojibwa word ishpadinaa meaning "be a high hill or sudden rise in the land." The Ishpatina Ridge, a hill in Northern Ontario, which is the highest elevation in the province of Ontario, derives its name from the same word.

Spadina was the original name of the street from Bloor Street to Queen Street West, built by Dr. William Baldwin from 1815 onwards. The southern portion was named Brock Street and remained so until 1884. Baldwin designed the street, choosing its extra large width and placing the circle that is today 1 Spadina Crescent. He named the connecting Baldwin Street after himself, and Phoebe Street to the south was named after his wife Phoebe Baldwin.

For a number of decades, Spadina Avenue and nearby Kensington Market were the centre of Jewish life in Toronto with the area around Spadina being the home of the garment district—where many Jews worked—as well as numerous Jewish delis, tailors, bookstores, cinemas, Yiddish theatres, synagogues and other political, social and cultural institutions. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Jewish community moved north along Bathurst Street, but signs of Spadina's Jewish history can still be found in many locations. The city's Chinatown moved west along Dundas onto Spadina when much of the original Chinatown was expropriated to build Toronto's new City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square.