Downtown Yonge East

Okuda San Miguel 'Equilibrium' Mural
111 Carlton Street
This 23-storey landmark work of art by internationally celebrated street artist Okuda, from Spain, emphasizes the natural, physical and human diversity of the surrounding area through its colour palette and form.

Troy Brooks and Christiano de Araujo Mural
418 Church Street
Painted by artist Christiano de Araujo as part of the Church Street Mural Project in 2014, this mural commemorates the infamous Bathhouse Raids, which occurred in February 1981. Police officers raided 4 different bathhouses in Toronto and arrested close to 300 men. The event galvanized the LGBTQ2S+ community, and the next night 3000 angry people marched to Queen's Park to protest the arrests. These protests helped lead to Toronto's first Pride Parade that spring.

Yonge Street Music Mural (North and South)
423 Yonge Street
There are two 22-storey murals painted by Adrian Hayles on two sides of 423 Yonge Street celebrating the rich musical history of the area. The North Mural pays homage to the musicians that played on Yonge Street during the 50's and 60s, including Ronnie Hawkins, Glenn Gould, Diane Brooks, Jackie Shane, Muddy Waters, Shirley Matthews, B.B. King, Gordon Lightfoot and Oscar Peterson. The South Mural features musicians that played Yonge Street during the late 60's, 70's and early 80's, including The Band, David Clayton Thomas, Lonnie Johnson, Jay Douglas, GODDO, Salome Bey, RUSH, Dizzy Gillespie, Kim Mitchell, Carol Pope, Cathy Young, Jon and Lee from the Checkmates and Mandala.

Covenant House Toronto
20 Gerrard Street East
This heritage-designated building was originally known as Willard Hall, with its eastern portion first constructed in 1911-12, with an extension added about 10 years later. It was intended to be used as a residence to house women from outside the city. It was considered taboo for women to live outside the home at this time, and prevailing attitudes cultivated the belief that women's only residences could help save them from the temptations of the city. It was also the meeting place for the Women's Christian Temperance Union, an organization founded to advocate for the prohibition of alcohol, which they viewed as the cause of many social problems. In 1994, the building was purchased and renovated by Covenant House Toronto, a social services agency that aims to help vulnerable youth. Covenant House Toronto has helped over 100,000 youth since its inception in 1982, and continues to occupy the building to this day.

Little Canada
10 Dundas Street East (Basement Level)
One of Toronto's newest and most exciting attractions, Little Canada displays the entire country in miniature, featuring some of its most famous natural and man-made landscapes. It was created largely thanks to the efforts of Jean-Louis Brenninkmeijer, an immigrant from the Netherlands who was inspired by visiting Miniatur Wonderland in Hamburg, Germany, which houses the largest model railway system in the world. Brenninkmeijer worked with Dave MacLean, a president of the Model Railroad Club of Toronto, and a team of artists to create a vast and detailed recreation of Canada in a 45,000 square foot space that used to house a gym. Some of the more notable displays include recreations of Niagara Falls, downtown Toronto, Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and the ski hills of Mont-Sainte-Anne in Quebec. The attraction also offers a 'littlization station' that allows visitors to create miniature 3D versions of themselves that can be taken home and also placed in one of the exhibits.

Mackenzie House
82 Bond Street
Mackenzie House was the last home of Toronto's first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, and is located downtown just steps from theatres, the Eaton Centre and Yonge-Dundas Square. The museum interprets urban Victorian life of the 1860s and the evolution of democratic institutions through the lens of Mackenzie as a writer, publisher, politician and rebel.

Massey Hall
178 Victoria Street
Massey Hall was built by industrialist Hart Massey as a tribute to his late son Charles Albert Massey, opening in 1894. It was the only building in Canada intended exclusively for musical performances when it first opened. Noted for its excellent acoustics, it is Canada's oldest and most celebrated concert hall and is a heritage designated building. Notable events which have taken place at Massey Hall include the wedding of distance runner Tom Longboat in 1908, a legendary jazz concert in 1953 featuring the only time that Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach ever performed together, and a Neil Young solo acoustic performance in 1971 that was later released as a live album in 2007, among many others. The building recently underwent an extensive revitalization that included the addition of a new seven-story tower and two new smaller concert rooms.

Elgin & Winter Garden Theatres
189 Yonge Street
Designed by architect Thomas Lamb, the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres opened as a vaudeville performance space in 1913. The Winter Garden Theatre was unique in that it was painted with many murals of plants, trellises and lampposts, while the ceiling was covered with real dried leaves. The Elgin Theatre was converted into a cinema in the 1920s, which it remained until the building was purchased by the Ontario Heritage Trust in 1981. A $29 million renovation was completed, and it reopened again as a working theatre on December 15, 1989, exactly 76 years to the day it originally opened. The theatres are now considered to be the last surviving Edwardian stacked theatres in the world.

Confederation Life Building & Former Saphire Tavern
20 Richmond Street East
This spectacular heritage-designated building dominates this section of Yonge Street with its distinctive Romanesque and French Gothic architectural features. It was opened in 1892 as the headquarters for the Confederation Life Association, an insurance company. Also located in the building was the legendary Saphire Tavern, a music club that first opened in October 1947. Perhaps the most notable artist who performed at the Saphire was Jackie Shane, a Black transgender soul singer originally from Nashville, Tennessee. At the time, many of the music clubs in the area excluded Black people except as performers and homophobia was rampant. Shane performed at a regular weekly show at the Saphire, and recorded the live album 'Jackie Shane Live' here that included the song 'Any Other Way', a huge hit that stayed at number 2 on the local charts for 9 weeks.

Katharine Harvey 'Shea's Victoria'
25 Richmond Street East
The artist's designs recall the elaborately decorated Beaux-Arts interior of Shea's Victoria Theatre, which stood on this site from 1910 to 1956. Internationally renowned glass studio Mayer of Munich fabricated the 420 square feet of hand-painted float glass in three different areas on the property. A feat of engineering, the complex framing systems hold three layers of float glass arranged 4 inches apart in depth, the first of their kind constructed on this scale. Great Gulf commissioned this series of public art features for their new condominium development.

Alexa Hatanaka & Patrick Thompson 'Piliriqatigiingniq' Mural
76 Church Street
This mural by Alexa Hatanaka and Patrick Thompson, known as 'Piliriqatigiingniq' (meaning 'to work together towards a common goal' in Inuktitut) portrays an elderly man carrying the weight of the world on a broken snowmobile, and reflects Canada's Inuit peoples and diverse northern cultures.

Former Letros Tavern
50 King Street East
This heritage-designated building was first opened in 1887 for the Quebec Bank of Montreal, which opened a number of branches in Ontario at the time. Sir Henry Mill Pellatt - best known for building Casa Loma - owned the building from 1911 to 1921. The Letros Tavern opened here in the 1940s and was Toronto's first exclusively gay and lesbian bar. The bar became legendary for its drag shows - particularly on Halloween - and was home to some of Toronto's first drag queens. The Letros closed its doors for good in 1972, with the famous drag shows moving instead to the St. Charles Tavern further to the north on Yonge Street.

St. James Cathedral & St. James Park
106 King Street East & 120 King Street East
A heritage designated building, St. James Cathedral is home to the oldest congregation in Toronto, which dates back to the 1790s. The current building was constructed in the early 1850s in Gothic Revival style after several previous iterations of the church burned down. A tower was added to the church in the 1870s, making it the tallest building in Canada at the time. The most prominent church for Anglicans in the city, the church was a focal point for the social life of Toronto in the late 1800s. The church has hosted numerous dignitaries over the years, including members of the British royal family, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, among others. Located next to the cathedral is St. James Park, which now features a market-themed playground, inspired by its close proximity to St. Lawrence Market.

St. Lawrence Hall & Mary Ann Shadd Cary Plaque
157 King Street East & 143 King Street East
A heritage designated building, St. Lawrence Hall was constructed in 1850. Built to serve city debutantes and the elite for social gatherings, rallies and recitals, St. Lawrence Hall was and continues to be recognized as a premiere nineteenth century building. The building served as a key venue for the abolitionist movement in the 1850s. Hundreds met here in September of 1851 for the North American Convention of Colored Freedmen, which focused on the fight against slavery in the United States, and how to assist Black people attempting to seek refuge in Ontario (then known as Canada West). Historical plaques can be found in the main floor lobby (open to the public) on the eastern wall. Just down the street at 145 King Street East is a plaque commemorating Mary Ann Shad Cary, a prominent African American abolitionist and pioneering newspaper editor and publisher, who fled to Canada after escaping slavery in the United States. From 1854 to 1855, she published the Freeman, a newspaper devoted to anti-slavery, temperance, and general literature, at this site.

Berczy Park & Gooderham Flatiron Building
35 Wellington Street East & 49 Wellington Street East
Berczy Park is a 3,606 square metre public park located in the triangle of land between Wellington, Front and Scott Streets, across from the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts. The space has been a public park since 1980, before which it sat vacant or served as a parking lot. Berczy Park is named after William Berczy, a German-born architect, surveyor, and writer often considered a co-founder of modern Toronto with John Graves Simcoe. Berczy was also a painter, most famous for his portrait of Mohawk chief Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant). The park underwent a revitalization starting in 2015 which included replacing the park's historic centrepiece, a large fountain, with a new two-tiered fountain with a unique and whimsical theme. With its opening in spring 2017, 27 dog sculptures plus a cat and a bird are situated around, in, and on the fountain, each spraying water from its mouth. A golden bone sits atop the fountain. The Gooderham Flatiron Building can be seen at the eastern boundary of the park. A heritage designated building, it was constructed in Romanesque and Gothic Revival styles in the 1880s as the offices for the Gooderham & Worts Distillery Company. Today it is arguably one of the most photographed buildings in Toronto.