Introduction
The demise of the vintage motels and “motor courts” lining both sides of Kingston Road in Scarborough has been well documented. Prior to the construction of Highway 401 and the Don Valley Parkway, Kingston Road was a major route into Toronto as part of Highway 2, connecting eastern Ontario with the city. Historically, they are located within the boundaries of Scarborough’s trio of the old streetcar suburbs—Birchcliff, Cliffside, and West Hill.
In the golden age of the automobile, the motels offered affordable accommodation to visitors and tourists during a period when road trips and family vacations were becoming commonplace. During the annual Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), finding a vacancy was difficult. Many of the motels were equipped with suites, televisions sets, telephones, and pools. Others, like the slightly more upscale Andrews Motel, offered on-site dining options in its restaurant. At the height of their popularity, there were thirty-two motels on Kingston Road between Danforth Avenue and Highway 2A.
An interactive map, illustrated with vintage postcards and photographs, outlines the history of each establishment on the strip.
The motels began to decline in the 1970s as the new urban highways diverted the traffic away from Kingston Road. Today, only a handful remain and since the 1980s, most operate as shelters housing vulnerable populations. The motels are the late twentieth-century equivalent of the illegal rooming houses that were once prevalent in the old inner-city neighbourhoods like the Annex and Parkdale.
It is difficult to reconcile the Kodachrome colours of the vintage postcards with the bleakness of the strip. The rise and the unfortunate demise of the motels are equally representative of the misplaced optimism of the car-oriented 1950s, the misguided planning that allowed the need for personal freedom to dictate the shape of the built environment in Toronto’s east end, and the city’s decades-old lack of political will to address the housing crisis.
Gallery
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The strip’s colourful history was a subject of an art exhibition entitled No Vacancy curated in 2017 by Alyssa Fearon at the Scarborough Arts’ Bluffs Gallery. An interview with the curator conducted by Muriel Draaisma from CBC News prior to its opening night. Columnist Edward Keenan reviewed the exhibition in an article for the Toronto Star.
The writers from Now connected with the residents of the motels in 2015 and compassionately profiled their stories in an article, contextualizing their lives within the developemnt of the street as a major urban thoroughfare. It is illustrated with vintage postcards of the Avon and Paragon Motels. Mike Adler documented the living conditions of the residents of the East Side Motel for the Scarborough Mirror.
Dave LeBlanc examined the architectual details of the motels in an article published in The Globe and Mail, “It’s Check-out Time for Scarborough’s Storied Motel Strip.” Derek Flack explored the history of the motels in two articles for blogTO, “The Lost Motels of Toronto” and “What Motels Used to Look Like in Toronto.”
Historian Bruce Forsyth contributed a detailed article on the history of the motel strip, “The Rise and Fall of Scarborough’s Kingston Road Motels,” contextualizing the fate of the establishments within the broader social history of Toronto.
Photographer Patrick Cummins captured the abandoned Andrews Motel and Drive-In Restaurant in 2014 (formerly located at 2245 Kingston Road) in an album entitled “No Room at the Inn.”
Another photographer, Chris Davy, documented the motel strip as it appeared in January 2006 in “Vacancies.” Some of the establishments have been demolished since then, including the Montoro and East End Motels (formerly the Paragon). Ontario Photo Connections has a number of photographs in their album “Neighbourhoods,” including the Manor Motel and the Andrews Motel and Restaurant (4434 Kingston Road, demolished in 2014).
Vanessa M. Parlette explored the conversion of the motels into housing for refugees and homeless families in a doctoral thesis, “On the Margins of Gentrification: The Production and Governance of Suburban ‘Decline’ in Toronto’s Inner Suburbs.”
References
Byers, Jim. “Motel Strips Not Endangered Species.” Toronto Star, 25 Sept. 1984.
Daly, Rita. “A Slow Revival on Motel Row.” Toronto Star, 8 Feb. 1983.
“Growth Permanent on Kingston Road: Development of New Highway and Its Environs Continuous, Summer Resort Possible.” The Globe and Mail, 16 July. 1924, p. 13.
Jukes, Mary. “Once Over Lightly.” The Globe and Mail, 9 Jan. 1956, p. 13.
Keenan, Edward. “Kingston Road, Canada’s Gateway.” Toronto Star, 11 Mar. 2017.
Leblanc, Dave. “It’s Check-out Time for Scarborough’s Storied Motel Strip.” The Globe and Mail, 10 Sept. 2009, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/its-check-out-time-for-scarboroughs-storied-motel-strip/article789909/. Accessed 11 Apr. 2021.
“Motels Mushroom Through Ontario.” The Globe and Mail, 26 July 1955, p. 15.
Phillips, Adrian. “Corridor Intensification in the Inner Suburbs: Lessons from Cliffside Village, Toronto.” eScholarship@McGill, https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/papers/8c97kq63g?locale=en. Accessed 11 Apr. 2021.
“Scarborough Has Seen It All Before.” The Scarborough Mirror, 30 Apr. 2009, p. 1.