Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Toronto Public Library: St. James Town




St. James Town Branch
495 Sherbourne Street

This was actually the closest branch to where I was staying in Toronto, but I walked passed it multiple times before I even realized it was a library. No doubt at least in part because the entrance way was away from the road I walked on, and inside past people playing table tennis. Though, while you can't really see it in this photo, it does say "library" in a large font behind those windows, so maybe I'm just dumb.

When I realized it was a library I heard a bunch of kids up high somewhere, and I had high hopes that I'd be able to get up onto the roof easily. Alas, it turned out to just be a daycare that had roof access.

So in my last post I said that Toronto had 98 branches (!!!), this is because in 1998 Toronto amalgamated with a bunch of other cities. This meant that the library systems were also combined, and seven different systems (Etobicoke, North York, York, East York, Scarborough, Metro Toronto, and Toronto) became one. These systems had between one and thirty three branches and I can't imagine the nightmare that must have resulted in trying to combine all of their systems.

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