Garment District In the first half of the 20th century, the original name of the neighbourhood was the Garment District and it was almost wholly industrial. The
Canadian National Railway controlled a huge amount of land along the
Lake Ontario waterfront, and to the north many firms took advantage of the easy access to rail and the
harbour. The most important industry was textiles and fashion, and the area had few residents. Much of the area was built after the
1904 fire, which forced many businesses to move west of the Bay Street and Front area. (left) during the
Toronto International Film Festival. Opened in 1907, the theatre is the oldest continuously operating theatre in North America. Among the industry, the area was home to the
Royal Alexandra Theatre whose construction and launch were financed by four Toronto business leaders—Cawthra Mulock, Robert Alexander Smith, Stephen Haas, and
Lol Solman. Opened in 1907, the
Beaux-Arts styled proscenium-stage theatre is the oldest continuously operating legitimate theatre in North America. Following the death of the last individual from its original ownership group, the theatre began to be run by the trustees of the Cawthra Mulock estate (another one of the original owners). By then, the neighbourhood had almost fully transformed into an industrial district with additional manufacturing facilities appearing throughout. Structures such as the Gelber Building (built in 1912 by Jewish immigrants from the town of
Berezhany within the
Austro-Hungarian Empire's
poorest province of
Galicia, Louis and Moses Gelber, to house their Gelber Bros Limited wool garment manufacturing business before adding a warehouse next door in 1932) and ACME Carbon and Ribbon building (built in the 1930s for the
World War I veteran James Alexander Campbell's printing and publishing business), located on adjacent corners of the intersection of Richmond West and Duncan, were among the many examples of the
manufacturing industry taking over the area. By the mid-1950s, Royal Alex turned into a money-losing operation, and was in 1962 sold for $200,000 to the forty-eight-year-old businessman
Ed Mirvish, owner of the
Honest Ed's discount department store. Initially unsure about what he wanted to do with the newly acquired property—and facing the drawback of being in an increasingly neglected industrial area of town, across the street from the
CP Rail Yards—the businessman eventually decided to invest in an extensive renovation of the theatre. Originally meant to recreate the atmosphere of Boston's
Durgin-Park—a restaurant Mirvish reportedly enjoyed—with communal seating at long tables and sawdust floors, Mirvish ultimately decided to go in a different direction with Ed's Warehouse, loading it with cheap eccentric decor. Offering simple food and
Barnum & Bailey-like ambience amid garishly set interior featuring oversized
oriental vases, red-flocked wallpaper,
Tiffany lamps, bronze and marble statues,
stained-glass windows, and lamps with naked women on their bases, the restaurant acted as a complementary offering to the theatre in hopes of increasing revenues for Mirvish via catering to patrons who may want to have dinner before taking in the show next door. Modeled after
New York City's famous
Paradise Garage club, the Twilight Zone quickly became popular with the Toronto youth, showcasing an adventurous mix of musical styles including underground
disco,
house,
hip-hop, and
techno thus giving the city its first taste of the kind of underground clubbing experience that had already been popular in New York City for years. Though located in a raw, gritty, and frugal space of a mostly unfurnished former industrial warehouse, the Twilight Zone still featured an extravagantly designed US$100,000 state-of-the-art
sound system courtesy of New York City
sound engineer Richard Long. In addition to attracting diverse general crowds, the club also became frequented by touring performers showing up unannounced just to hang out and party such as Detroit DJs
Derrick May and Alton Miller who got brought into the DJ booth for impromptu performances. Its young owner quickly managed to monetize it by attracting affluent Toronto crowds, a business success that would in a few years bring many new nightclubs to the area. (a warehouse down the street from Stilife) that would soon become a catalyst for the early Toronto rave scene, •
Klub Max, a huge venue launched in 1990 by Nick DiDonato and Angelo Belluz in a heritage building on Peter Street just south of King Street West that previously housed DiDonato's P.M. Toronto sports bar and restaurant, and •
LimeLight, a stylish club opened in 1993 by businessman Zisi Konstantinou at 250 Adelaide Street West near the corner with Duncan Street. This trend continued at such a rate that, by mid-1990s, the area became home to one of the largest concentrations of nightclubs in North America. Along with the nightclubs, many bars and restaurants opened to serve these crowds. Given the success of the long-running Royal Alexandra Theatre, in 1993, the Mirvish family built the new 2,000-seat
Princess of Wales Theatre a block over. Alternative theatres—such as
Theatre Passe Muraille (in a former warehouse) and
Factory Theatre (in a former manse), in the adjacent neighbourhoods of
Alexandra Park and
Fashion District, respectively—were also already in existence in the general vicinity: leading to Toronto emerging as the world's third-largest centre for English-language theatre, behind only
London (
West End theatre) and
New York (
Broadway theatre)."
Canada's Walk of Fame got established in 1998, right in front of the two Mirvish-owned theaters on King St. West between Simcoe and
John streets, acknowledging the achievements of
successful Canadians. In 1999, Festival Hall opened at the southwest corner of Richmond West & John, containing the flagship Paramount Theatre Toronto that has since been re-branded as
Scotiabank Theatre Toronto.
2000s: Condo boom and population spike is a cultural centre, condominium, and headquarters for the Toronto International Film Festival. The building was one of several condos built in the area during Toronto's 2000s condo boom. In 2001, twenty-one-year-old local hospitality entrepreneur and former minor league hockey player Travis Agresti opened
Inside at 218 Richmond Street West, a three-level nightclub that would become notable due to its association with the Raptors' basketball superstar
Vince Carter who within two years decided to invest in the huge venue, becoming its co-owner. The two had reportedly met during late 1990s at nearby Fluid nightclub where Agresti worked as venue manager before deciding to launch his own nightlife venture down the street. Carter reportedly came to Inside's opening night and, liking what he saw, eventually decided to invest in the club. Though not involved in day-to-day running of the venue, Carter's high media profile nevertheless attracted a long list of visiting athletes, musicians, and entertainers to Inside throughout early-to-mid-2000s, such as
Jason Kidd,
Antawn Jamison,
Barry Bonds,
Prince,
Nelly Furtado,
NSYNC,
Kanye West,
Paris Hilton,
Chris Rock,
Jessica Alba,
Elisha Cuthbert, etc. Even with Carter getting traded from the Raptors in late 2004, the club continued to thrive as a partnership between him and Agresti, expanding and opening additional lounges within the complex. However, the operation soured in the late 2000s due to the
2008 financial crisis and suddenly folded. By 2010, the space got turned into
day care for the kids of employees working in the nearby
Financial District. Simultaneously, all throughout the early 2000s, the Toronto condo boom began to transform the area. The abandoned warehouses began being turned into lofts, or demolished to make way for condominium towers. The core of the Entertainment District had only 750 residents in 1996, but this had gone up to 7,500 by 2005. The crowds, noise, and occasional crime especially associated with the clubs caused conflict with the new homeowners. The trend of the area being turned into a residential neighbourhood continued even more rapidly in the second half of the decade. Nightclubs still opened, including the
CiRCA superclub launching in October 2007 on John St. between Richmond West and Adelaide West inside the RioCan Hall (formerly Festival Hall), perhaps the most ambitious club ever in Toronto due to its sheer size of and the money spent before opening. Further adding to its mystique was that the man behind it was
Peter Gatien, legendary former
New York City nightclub czar who had owned 1980s and 1990s hotspots such as
The Limelight and
Tunnel before being deported back to Canada. However, CiRCA's financial implosion less than 3 years after opening only served to underscore the neighbourhood's shift and was seen by many as the definitive symbol of the death of Toronto's clubland. Greater restrictions on venues in the area resulted in loss of jobs ; by 2011, the number of clubs had decreased substantially, from 60 to 100 in the period between 2000 and 2006 to 30 in 2013. On May 10, 2016, Toronto City Council voted unanimously in favour of naming a public laneway in honour of the Twilight Zone nightclub, after a successful online petition. The Twilight Zone club is notable as one of Toronto's first nightclubs to bring House music to a wider audience and on a more commercial level; taking an area that was once abandoned warehouses and transforming it into a hop spot in the city. == References ==