Kew Gardens (Toronto)

Concert pavilion in the park

Map of The Beaches district

Kew Gardens is a park in The Beaches neighborhood on Lake Ontario east of Old Toronto . The parks stretch from Queen Street East to the lakefront of Kew Beach .

history

Joseph Williams' eight-acre farm originally stood on this site in the 1850s. As more and more visitors from the city began to use the lake as a local recreation and excursion destination, he turned his property into a tourist attraction. He laid out a large park and from 1879 built various leisure facilities on the site. He chose the name The Canadian Kew Gardens based on Kew Gardens in south-west London .

The farmer built a stately house for himself on the site, which is now used as the park ranger's apartment. On the lakeshore he put up boat moorings and a lido. Inland there were areas suitable for picnics , tennis courts, walking paths and lawns. A permanent clubhouse and rentable guest houses were built. There was deliberately no alcohol served there, Williams wanted a family-friendly “place of innocent pleasures”. It quickly became a popular destination as it was easily accessible via Queen Streetcar trams for people from the city of Toronto.

In 1907, the amusement park was acquired by the Toronto City Council for $ 43,700 and converted into a public city park. Over the following years, the swampy land in the south was filled in and the beach and shore zone redesigned. Most of the early buildings were removed as the commercial amusement park moved to the more extensive Scarboro Beach Amusement Park nearby.

present

At present, the park is one of the most popular public hangouts in The Beaches. There is a tennis club court, a baseball field , a (marathon) running club, a demarcated dog free-running zone, a pond and every winter an ice rink for ice skaters and those who want to learn it. Of the historic buildings, only Williams' house, the concert pavilion and the Leuty Lifeguard Station of the lido remain. In the northeast corner of the park is the historic Beaches branch of the Toronto Public Library . A number of monuments are also located on the site, including the Dr. William D. Young Memorial . This is also where the main stages of the Beaches International Jazz Festival are located every year in July , a non-profit event that attracts tens of thousands of people over four days. In September there is the Beach Celtic Festival.

Leuty Lifeguard Station Toronto The Beaches
Boardwalk The Beaches Toronto
William D. Young Memorial Monument

literature

Tom Cruikshank: Old Toronto Houses , photographs by John de Visser, Firefly Books, Toronto 2003, ISBN 9781552977316 , OCLC 51922677 .
Glenn Cochrane, Jean Cochrane: The Beach: an illustrated history from the lake to Kingston Road . ECW Press, Toronto 2009, ISBN 9781550228717 , OCLC 300582517 .