Dundas Street
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Dundas Street, also known as Highway 5, passes through Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a major arterial street in Toronto, and forms a major Toronto intersection with Yonge, at which Dundas Square and the Eaton Centre are found.
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Downtown centre
Dundas Street is centrally located in downtown Toronto, approximately midway between Queen Street and Bloor Street. The introduction of Dundas Square has also caused the migration of some of the arts and culture that were traditionally on Queen Street West and on Bloor Street to a point midway between them, namely to Dundas.
Art on Dundas Street
Dundas Street is the address of the Art Gallery of Ontario, which takes a full city block on the south side of the street west of University Avenue. The street is also home to many other art galleries, including Bau Xi Gallery.
Highway 5
While this route alignment in Toronto was along Danforth Avenue and Bloor Street, Dundas Street became the former Ontario Provincial Highway 5 in Etobicoke, west of the former village of Islington, at Kipling Avenue, known as the Six Points. Westward this route passed through Missisauga, Oakville, Burlington, and eventually becomes Highway 5 extending across Ontario through St. George, Ontario, and ending in Paris, Ontario, with the Junction of the former Ontario Provincial Highway 2, that proceeds west through Woodstock, and London, Ontario.
In Toronto, Dundas Street is divided between Dundas Street East and Dundas Street West by Yonge Street, the east/west dividing line for all Toronto streets. Hurontario Street (formerly Ontario provincial highway 10) in Mississauga, Trafalgar Road in Oakville, and Guelph Line in Burlington.
History
Dundas Street is named after its onetime destination, the town of Dundas, Ontario. The town itself was named for Henry Dundas - Viscount Melville, British Secretary of State for the Home Department from 1791 to 1801. In the early 19th century when Toronto's oldest streets were first named, Dundas was an important settlement in its own right, rather than simply a suburb of Hamilton, as it has since become. In the 20th century, for purposes of efficiency, Highway 5 was redirected, just west of the former village of Waterdown, Ontario and no longer passes through the town of Dundas, which was also located on the lower side of the Niagara Escarpment.
Parts of the current day Dundas Street had different names (Arthur, Agnes, St Patrick, Crookshank, Wilton, and Beech), but they were amalgamted in the early 20th Century to form the current road.
Dundas Street's route through the city of Toronto is irregular, ignoring the general east-west axis of the city's streets once it is west of Dufferin Street. It meanders northwards towards Bloor Street, crossing it at Roncesvalles Avenue, heading north through The Junction neighbourhood until it reaches High Park Avenue, where it once again turns south to meet Bloor Street again at Kipling Avenue. However, this route allows the street to traverse the west end of the city while avoiding obstacles that would have been expensive to cross in the 18th century, such as Grenadier Pond in what is now High Park, and the highest point of the Humber River valley (Bloor Street requires a high bridge to cross the river at that point).
The Dundas Street streetcar
Streetcars run along Dundas Street, on two parallel pairs of tracks, one pair of tracks on each side of the road. Two 600 volt direct current overhead cables supply the electrical power to the streetcars. The 505 Dundas streetcar line runs from Dundas West Subway Stn in the West, along Dundas Street, and north on Broadview Avenue, ending at Broadview (TTC)Subway Station in the East.
See Also
Reference
- Dundas Street and Dundas, Ontario (http://collections.ic.gc.ca/wentworth/twps.html)
- Queen Street (http://www.rbebout.com/queen/2pline.htm)
