Interested in when your house was built? Curious about
who owned your home before you, or what was on the land a century ago? The City of Toronto Archives contains many sources that can help you answer these questions. This guide explains the best sources for such research, how you use them, and what kind of information you can expect to find.
Researching a property can be like assembling a jigsaw puzzle-one with missing pieces, as well as pieces that belong to another puzzle! Be patient. Assemble information before you come to any conclusions. Cross-reference information from a variety of sources. Be aware that not all sources are 100% accurate! When recording information, always write down the source, title, page number, microfilm reel number, or any other available references that will allow you to find the information again, if necessary.
If you have any questions or difficulties finding information, please feel free to ask the Reference Desk staff for help.
Records from former municipalities
are currently being processed and included in our database. To see a complete list of our government records click here..
Getting started:
Street name and number changes
The address you live at now may not be
the address your house had in the past. The first thing to do when researching a property is
to determine whether and when your street name and address number changed. Be sure to
keep in mind the changes and when they occurred when looking up names and dates in the
archival sources listed in this guide.
To check whether and when your
street name has changed, look up your street name
in the "street names" binder for your municipality. (For the former City of Toronto
only, there is also a "street renumbering guide" binder.)
The fire insurance plans
are also useful in determining previous street
names and numbers, so we recommend you start your research by looking at them.
Researching Your House is also available in a PDF format in the following lanuages (PDF 600KB):
English
French
Italian
Chinese
You'll need the free Adobe Acrobat reader version 4 to view the pdf files.
