Rich in culture and history, Cabbagetown is a neighbourhood located on the east side of downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It comprises "the largest continuous area of preserved Victorian housing in North America", according to the Cabbagetown Preservation Association.
Cabbagetown's name derives from the Irish immigrants who moved to
the neighbourhood beginning in the late 1840s, said to have been so
poor that they grew cabbage in their front yards. Canadian writer Hugh Garner's most famous novel, Cabbagetown, depicted life in the neighbourhood during the Great Depression. Garner called Cabbagetown "the largest Anglo-Saxon slum in North America".
Much of the original Cabbagetown was razed in the late 1940s to make room for the Regent Park
housing project. The Cabbagetown name came to be applied to the
Victorian neighbourhood a few blocks to the north, previously known as
Don Vale. Corktown, to the south of Regent Park, dates to the 1820's and now includes some of the original Cabbagetown.
Cabbagetown's current boundaries may be broadly defined as:
- Gerrard Street to the south (east of Parliament)
- Shuter Street to the south (between Sherbourne St. and Parliament St.)
- St. James Cemetery to the north (east of Parliament St.)
- Wellesley Street East to the north (between Sherbourne St. and Parliament St.)
- Sherbourne Street to the west
- the Don River to the east.
The inclusion of the area west of Parliament Street is disputed by
some. Area south of Gerard Street and west of Parliament is considered
to be Old Cabbagetown, Toronto.
Source: Wikipedia
