The Textures of a Lost Toronto

The Textures of a Lost Toronto

Between the 1830s and the 1880s, architect, surveyor, and engineer John George Howard produced watercolours, plans, and maps. Many depicted Toronto in general, others captured the details of structures he designed.

JOHN HOWARD, 1848; TORONTO, 1854

Today, these documents serve as evocative links to Toronto’s 19th-century environment, particularly during the heyday of Howard’s creativity in the 1830s-50s before railways and industrialization changed the face of the city. Beyond their intrinsic merit in documenting early Toronto, Howard’s images encourage us to consider larger stories in the life of the community during the 1800s.

We invite you to explore this selection from John Howard’s voluminous work and reflect on the textures and characteristics of a largely lost Toronto that Howard both depicted and helped to build.

Institutional Toronto

Urban Toronto had its birth in 1793 when a threatened American invasion led British officials in Upper Canada to establish a naval arsenal by ...

Commercial and Industrial Toronto

By 1832, a year before Howard moved to York, the town had displaced Kingston as Upper Canada's leading urban centre, with an economy ...

Residential Toronto

While Howard designed modest homes and utilized the popular Neoclassical architecture of the Georgian era, he introduced the Picturesque ...

Spiritual Toronto

Toronto in the 19th century was a religiously diverse community, although the majority of people were Protestants, embracing, for instance ...

Recreational and Cultural Toronto

Recreational and cultural opportunities in John Howard's Toronto were typical of provincial societies at the time. Outdoor sports and past ...