Area Description

New Toronto is a neighbourhood and former municipality in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located in the south-west of Toronto, along Lake Ontario. The former town of New Toronto was established in 1890, and was designed and planned as an industrial suburb by a group of industrialists from Toronto who had visited Rochester, New York. New Toronto was originally a part of the Township of Etobicoke. It was an independent municipality from 1913 to 1967, one of the former 'Lakeshore Municipalities' amalgamated into the Borough of Etobicoke, and eventually amalgamated into Toronto.

New Toronto is bounded by Lake Ontario to the south, with a western boundary of Twenty-Third Street (south of Lake Shore Blvd. West) and the midpoint between Twenty-Second and Twenty-Fourth Streets (north of Lake Shore Blvd. West), the Canadian National Railway mainline to the north, and Dwight Avenue to the east. To the east is the neighbourhood of Mimico and the neighbourhood of Long Branch is to the west.

New Toronto is centred around the intersection of Seventh Street/ Islington Avenue and Lake Shore Boulevard West with a commercial strip running east-west along the latter street. Residential streets generally run north-south from Lake Ontario north to Birmingham Street, except for the Lakeshore Grounds (formerly the Mimico Lunatic Asylum / Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital) to the southwest which extends from Lake Shore Blvd. West south to the Lake. North of Birmingham Street has historically been a large industrial district, although a number of industries moved or closed in the period from 1987 to the early 1990s.

New Toronto is now a neighbourhood in transition, as the industrial corridor located at the north end of the community is being redeveloped after having been vacant and fallow for many years. Industry that gradually moved out of New Toronto over the years is now being re-established, in addition to institutional uses.

The area contains a large amount of government-assisted housing between 9th and 13th Streets, north of Lake Shore Boulevard. West, built by The Daniels Corp. developers, on the former Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company site.

In September 2009, the new Toronto Police College training facility opened at 70 Birmingham St., and also houses a 22 Division Police Substation. This is the site of the former Continental Can Company of Canada Ltd. New Toronto Plant.

The Lakeshore Campus of Humber College is located on the former grounds of the Mimico Lunatic Asylum (later the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital), at the foot of Kipling Avenue.

New Toronto's high school, now called Lakeshore Collegiate Institute, was originally built and operated as New Toronto Secondary School with first classes beginning in 1950. It is located on the northwest corner of Kipling Avenue and Birmingham Street.

In 1890, new streets for New Toronto were laid out in several series, essentially without names by simply using ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.). When the streets were laid out along Lake Shore Road (now Lake Shore Blvd. West), they had a single new starting point. The second numbering system began with First Street being one half block west of Dwight Ave (the boundary street between Mimico and New Toronto) and continuing westward. Originally named Mimico Avenue, and for most of the 20th Century as Eighteenth Street, is now Kipling Ave. The number naming convention was later applied to streets further west of New Toronto in the Village of Long Branch when theirs were renamed in 1931.