Sherbourne Street is a roadway in

Downtown Toronto Downtown Toronto is the main city centre of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located entirely within the district of Old Toronto, it is approximately 16.6 square kilometres in area, bounded by Bloor Street to the northeast and Dupont Street to the nor ...

. It is one of the original streets in the old city of

York, Upper Canada York was a town and the second capital of the colony of Upper Canada. It is the predecessor to the Old Toronto, old city of Toronto (1834–1998). It was established in 1793 by Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe as a "temporary" location fo ...

. It starts at Queen's quay, and heads north to South Drive. It is two lanes for its entire length, though the part south of Bloor has bike lanes. It was named by Samuel Smith Ridout (son of Thomas Ridout) in 1845 after the town in Dorset, England; the Ridout family emigrated from

Sherborne Sherborne is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in north west Dorset, in South West England. It is sited on the River Yeo (South Somerset), River Yeo, on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, east of Yeovil. The parish include ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

in 1774. Before 1845 the short stretch from Palace Street (now Front Street East) to Duchess Street (now Richmond Street) was called Caroline Street.

History

In 1838, following the

Upper Canada Rebellion The Upper Canada Rebellion was an insurrection against the Oligarchy, oligarchic government of the British colony of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) in December 1837. While public grievances had existed for years, it was the Lower Canada Rebe ...

, seven blockhouses were built, guarding the approaches to Toronto, including the Sherbourne Blockhouse, built at the current intersection of Sherbourne and Bloor. In the 19th Century Sherbourne was lined with the stately homes of many of Toronto's most prominent families, but by the 20th Century the remaining stately houses, like 230 Sherbourne Street, had been converted to rooming houses. Streetcars ran down Sherbourne from 1874 (as horsecar service until electrified in 1891, then as Belt Line to 1923 and finally as Sherbourne streetcar line) to 1942. Buses did not begin on Sherbourne until 1947 and is now signed as 75 Sherbourne since 1957. In the early 2000s City Council chose Sherbourne as one of the first streets in Toronto to be retrofitted with dedicated bike lanes. In 2012 Sherbourne's bike lanes were improved, changing them from lanes separated from cars and trucks solely by painted lines to lanes with a pavement change that would warn motorists when they had strayed out of their lanes.

Landmarks

References

External links

* {{Streets in Toronto Roads in Toronto