Cabbagetown

Cabbagetown grew from the wave of Irish immigration following the Great Famine of the 1840s. Newcomers settled in what had been farmland in an area then called Don Vale, building small cottages on narrow lots — and the neighbourhood's name is traditionally linked to residents growing cabbages in their front yards.

A working-class Victorian neighbourhood

Through the 1870s to 1890s, as Toronto grew, cottages were replaced or supplemented by semi-detached and row houses in Victorian styles — Gothic Revival, bay-and-gable, Second Empire — built for factory and railway workers, tradespeople and clerks.

Slum to protected heritage district

By the Depression, much of Cabbagetown had fallen into disrepair; novelist Hugh Garner, who grew up there, described it in his 1950 novel Cabbagetown in terms evoking one of the poorest districts in North America. Decades of low investment left the original Victorian houses standing, however. From the 1970s, buyers drawn by cheap, structurally sound old housing began restoring the rowhouses street by street, and community activism blocked demolition plans. The result is frequently described as the largest continuous stretch of Victorian residential architecture in North America, now protected by several City of Toronto Heritage Conservation Districts, with the Cabbagetown Preservation Association — founded in 1987 — continuing to advocate for the district.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Cabbagetown
• City of Toronto — Cabbagetown Southwest Heritage Conservation District Plan
• Cabbagetown Preservation Association — About Cabbagetown