Looking southeast towards the corner of King St E and Parliament St in the Old Town, St Lawrence neighbourhood of Toronto.
The archive photo shows the buildings that once stood at the corner. The two-storey building located directly at the corner dates back to around 1850, when it was William Wright’s Welcome Home Inn. By the 1860s, Mr. Wright, in addition to being an innkeeper, was also selling groceries, meats, and provisions from the building. By 1880, it had become known as the William Wright Saloon, and later the Wright Hotel, which the Wright family operated until the early 1910s.
Between 1903 and 1913, a 3½-storey building, visible on the right side of the vintage photo, was added to the hotel. In approximately 1913, the property was renamed the Oriental Hotel and continued under that name until the early 1930s. It then reverted to the Welcome Home Hotel from 1934 to 1939, and in 1940, it was renamed the Hotel Derby, or Derby Hotel. In the archive photo, notice that the hotel’s tavern had a separate Ladies & Escorts entrance off Parliament St. In 1985, rooms in the old 17-room hotel were priced at $42 a week. The Derby Hotel last appears in the 1985/86 Toronto City Directory.
While the hotel was replaced by a mixed-use condo completed in 1989, the buildings shown on the far left of both photos, located at 399-403 King St E, remain standing. These combined commercial and residential buildings were constructed in the mid-1800s and were listed on the city’s heritage register in 1986.
Then and Now
SOURCE
- City of Toronto Heritage Register
- Heritage Toronto
- Ontario Heritage Trust
- Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada
- The Globe and Mail Newspaper Archives: Apr 11, 1985, pg L1
- The Toronto Star Newspaper Archives: Aug 19, 1989, pg G3
- Photo: Denise Marie for TorontoJourney416
- Vintage Photo: City of Toronto Archives
- City of Toronto: Maps
- Toronto City Directory courtesy of Toronto Public Library
