Sherbourne Street is a roadway in
Downtown Toronto
Downtown Toronto is the main central business district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located entirely within the district of Old Toronto, it is approximately 16.6 square kilometres in area, bounded by Bloor Street to the northeast and Dupont Str ...
.
[
]
It is one of the original streets in the old city of
York, Upper Canada
York was a town and second capital of the colony of Upper Canada. It is the predecessor to the old city of Toronto (1834–1998). It was established in 1793 by Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe as a "temporary" location for the capital of ...
. It starts at
Queen's quay, and heads north to South Drive. Its 2 lanes for the entire length, though the part south of
Bloor has bike lanes.
It was named by
Samuel Smith Ridout (son of
Thomas Ridout) in 1845 after the town in
Dorset, England; the Ridout family emigrated from
Sherborne
Sherborne is a market town and civil parish in north west Dorset, in South West England. It is sited on the River Yeo, on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, east of Yeovil. The parish includes the hamlets of Nether Coombe and Lower Clatcombe. ...
to
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean t ...
in 1774. Before 1845 the short stretch from Palace Street (now Front Street East) to Duchess Street (now Richmond Street) was called Caroline Street.
History
In 1838, following the
Upper Canada Rebellion
The Upper Canada Rebellion was an insurrection against the oligarchic government of the British colony of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) in December 1837. While public grievances had existed for years, it was the rebellion in Lower Canada (p ...
, seven blockhouses were built, guarding the approaches to Toronto, including the
Sherbourne Blockhouse
Following the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada Sir George Arthur directed the construction of a Sherbourne Blockhouse, and a ring of six other blockhouses -- to guard the approaches to Toronto in case there was ...
, built at the current intersection of Sherbourne and
Bloor.
In the 19th Century Sherbourne was lined with the stately homes of many of Toronto's most prominent families, but by the 20th Century the remaining stately houses, like 230 Sherbourne Street, had been converted to rooming houses.
Streetcars ran down Sherbourne from 1874 (as horsecar service until electrified in 1891, then as Belt Line to 1923 and finally as Sherbourne streetcar line) to 1942.
[
] Buses did not begin on Sherbourne until 1947 and is now signed as 75 Sherbourne since 1957.
In the early 2000s City Council chose Sherbourne as one of the first streets in Toronto to be retrofitted with dedicated bike lanes.
In 2012 Sherbourne's bike lanes were improved, changing them from lanes separated from cars and trucks solely by painted lines to lanes with a pavement change that would warn motorists when they had strayed out of their lanes.
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]
Landmarks
References
External links
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{{Streets in Toronto
Roads in Toronto