Toronto: Exactly as I Remember It

Following the sun 😌✨

Queen Street, EH2

The old Christ Church vicarage building on Queen Street was situated next door to the Grundy Art Gallery until it was demolished in 1960 to make way for another car park.

On July 15th 1889 The Scottish National Portrait Gallery opened.

If you remember I featured my own pics of the SNPG A just over a year ago. These pics are from the 19th century, but what makes them different from my own pics? 

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery is home to Scotland’s national collection of portraits and currently also houses the National Photography Collection. Its origins can be traced to one enthusiastic collector, the mildly eccentric David, 11th Earl of Buchan. His collection of portraits of famous Scots, assembled in the late eighteenth century, formed the foundation of the national portrait collection in its first conception.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the idea of a National Portrait Gallery for Scotland was championed by many, including the historian Thomas Carlyle. A believer in heroes, Carlyle wrote that ”Historical Portrait Galleries far transcend in worth all other kinds of National Collections of Pictures whatever”. Despite widespread enthusiasm, however, the government of the day was reluctant to commit funds to the project. Instead, it was the philanthropy of a local newspaper owner that allowed the present Gallery to open its doors to the public in 1889.

John Ritchie Findlay, the chief proprietor of The Scotsman, not only paid for the construction and an endowment, but he also masterminded the building that was to house the collection. He employed the architect Sir Robert Rowand Anderson, who had previously won the competition for designing the Edinburgh Medical Schools and who later earned a wide reputation for the restoration of ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland. Rowand Anderson created a modern purpose-designed art gallery to rival the most advanced at the time in Europe and America. At the same time, he wanted his building to be a shrine for Scotland’s heroes. The extensive decoration scheme, both external and internal, was designed with this idea in mind and is now an essential part of the visitor’s experience.

To this day, the Gallery continues to collect works that are portraits of Scots, though not necessarily made by Scots. It aims to add portraits of those missing in the collection, as well as to bring the collection up to date. Since 1982 there has been a policy of commissioning portraits of living Scots by contemporary artists.

To me the murals inside the gallery are a joy to see, created by Edinburgh-based artist William Hole, who specialised in history painting and etching. Around 1895 he volunteered to decorate the chancel of St James’ Church on Inverleith Row with large-scale murals. In 1897 the still unfinished work came to the attention of Findlay, during several years, Hole designed and painted a processional frieze of Scottish worthies and completed a series of large murals that illustrate events in Scottish history.

My favourite painting in the gallery is  the grand full length portrait of Mary Queen of Scots.

Much needed on a hot day 🍨

Old Toronto: A great Victorian city is mostly glass & steel today

Looking northeast, Church and Queen #toronto #churchstreet #queenstreet #queenstreeteast #intersection #churchandqueen #queenandchurch #condos #construction #abandoned

Queen Street Grocery, 1998.

For how shitty Toronto can be, it is a pretty cool place sometimes

THE  STREETS  OF  MELBOURNE - From Early Photographs

Sixteenth photo from book QUEEN STREET  1859

Looking down Queen Street across the Hobson’s Bay Railway Line to the distant suburb of Emerald Hill, now South Melbourne.The grand building in the foreground is the Oriental Bank, built in 1857.The Oriental was established in Melbourne in 1854 and was a London Bank that boasted agencies in Bombay, Ceylon, China, Mauritius and Singapore.It was the first bank in Australia to pay interest on deposits.In those days banks often “went broke” and the Oriental was one of them, closing it’s doors on the public and it’s customers in 1884.It’s Australian depositors were eventually paid in full when a new banking corporation took over it’s business.The building was demolished before the turn of the century.Behind the roof of The Oriental are the masts of a sailing ship docked at the Queen Street wharves.T. Curran’s Woolpack Hotel on the Flinders Lane corner offers “good stabling” for horses.Under the licensing laws a hotel had to provide accommodation for both man and horse.Photography Design, Joe MurrayText, Peter McIntosh

Lionel Lindsay (1874 – 1961) - Fruit Market, Queen Street, Melbourne, 1917, etching; Old Queen's Theatre, Queen Street, Melbourne, 1917, etching and plate tone

Looking North up Dickson Road in 1949 at the junction with Queen Street.