Little Italy, sometimes called College Street West, is a district in Toronto, Canada. It is known for its Italian Canadian restaurants and businesses. There is also a significant Latin-Canadian and Portuguese-Canadian community in the area. The district is centered on a restaurant/bar/shopping strip along College Street, centered on College Street, imprecisely between Harbord Street and Dundas Street, and spreading east and west between Bathurst Street and Ossington Avenue. It is contained within the larger city-recognized neighborhood of Palmerston-Little, Italy.
History
College Street was entirely laid out in the area by 1900 and filled with buildings from the early 1900s. College Street is fronted by two- and three-story buildings, with commercial uses on the ground floor and residential or storage uses on the upper floors.
Italians arrived in Toronto in large numbers during the early 20th century. Italians first settled in an area known as The Ward, centered on University Avenue and College Street. Approximately 40,000 Italians came to Canada during the interwar period of 1914 to 1918, predominantly from Southern Italy, where an economic depression and overpopulation had left many families in poverty. Son to Italian immigrants, Johnny Lombardi, was born in The Ward in 1915. He founded one of the first multilingual radio stations in Canada, CHIN, in 1966, in Palmerston–Little Italy. By the 1920s, most Italians had moved west of Bathurst Street, and the College-Clinton area had emerged as central Little Italy. They mainly immigrated to Toronto—increasing from 4,900 Italians in 1911 to 9,000 in 1921, constituting almost two percent of Toronto’s population.
A tourist attraction of the area is the Italian Walk of Fame. Granite and brass stars line the sidewalk with the names of noteworthy Italian Canadians. At Clinton Street, on the north side, is the Royal Cinema, which was recently renovated and had an upgraded projection system as it is used for movie editing during the day and repertory cinema in the evenings. While cafes and restaurants dominate the commercial units, numerous other small businesses serve the neighborhood.
The side streets are mainly detached or semi-detached single-family homes dating to the early-1900s Edwardian period, with front porches and smaller lots, as was the custom at the time. Bed Bug Exterminator Toronto
As early as 1961, new immigrants had already started changing Little Italy. That year, 15,000 Italians, 12,000 immigrants, lived in Little Italy (35 percent of the population), declining to 8,000 in 1971 and 3,600 in 1991 (13 percent of the population). Since the 1970s, Italian immigrants from Little Italy moved northward to Corso Italia on St. Clair Avenue West. Much of the Italian population subsequently moved to the suburbs northwest of Toronto, CA, particularly Vaughan, King, and Caledon. Although the neighborhood’s character still has several Italian restaurants and bakeries, the demographics of this neighborhood have changed drastically, with a smaller Italian population than originally.
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