Walking east along Liberty St. to the corner of Fraser Ave. & Liberty St.
Southwest Corner
147 Liberty St.
Built in 1906 by the SF Bowser Company, this factory manufactured oil storage containers. Today, it’s an interesting model of office rental referred to as “plug and play” or “executive” space. They are affordable spaces for business start-ups to get established.
Short-term (six months) or long-term (one year) leases are available. They also rent out furnished office cubicles or private rooms on a short-term basis. The lease includes services like a receptionist, mail delivery and package reception, boardroom space, Internet and phone.
Southeast Corner
"The Castle" 135 Liberty St
Referred to as "The Castle," because of the castle-like roof line, it was built in 1912 by the E.W. Gillett Company to copy the Medieval Revival design of Casa Loma, for the production of Magic Baking Powder, Royal Yeast Cakes and perfumed lye.
Northwest Corner
School Bakery & Café
SCHOOL is the former machinery repair garage for the Barrymore Carpet Factory complex. The original garage door is still used, opening to the restaurant-side patio space.
Northeast Corner
Lamport Stadium
This is the former site of the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women, which was in reality, Canada’s first prison for women. "Fallen Women" completed sentences for such crimes as "sexual precociousness" and "incorrigibility, " such as inter-racial marriages, giving birth out of wedlock and vagrancy.
The "Fallen Women" were believed reformable through learning womanly skills like baking and cleaning. It became a controversial institution with reports that the inmates were used for medical experimentation. The Mercer Reformatory was condemned in 1969 and torn down.
The City bought the land from the province (for $1,430,001) with the condition that the site be used solely for parks and recreation use. Lamport Stadium was built in 1974 / 75. It is named for a former Mayor of Toronto, Allan Lamport.
Coincidentally there were two prisons in the area. The other prison was the Central Prison for Men. It was set back from Strachan Ave. where East Liberty connects now. It was often called the "Strachan Avenue Prison."
Central Prison was built by the province in the 1870s and closed in 1911. Inmates were put to work in the area —partly why plants were located here— because of an available cheap labour source and because the rail tracks brought in supplies and coal.
The prison's two-storey chapel is located at East Liberty and Pirandello Street and is being renovated now to become a fine dining restaurant by the owners of the Miller Pub on Yonge St. It's the only surviving building from the prison complex.
Interesting Historic Happening
Until 1858 and before it was the Central Prison, that land parcel at Strachan Ave. was the site of Toronto's Industrial Exhibition, which later moved south and renamed as the Canadian National Exhibition.
Liberty St. at Pardee Ave.
JAZZ.FM91, Toronto's only 24-hour jazz radio station moved here after broadcasting from Ryerson University for more than 50 years. The station has 21 full-time employees and 320,000 listeners. It also boasts 10,000 members who have paid from $60 to $1,000 to be a part of the community.
