Plan of the City of Toronto, 1862

Spread across this aged sheet is a hand-drawn map of Toronto as it looked in 1862, when the city was still young and finding its shape. The streets run in neat grids, broken up by patches of green where parks and open land once sat. Names of the old city wards stretch across the surface in faded lettering: Saint Patrick's, Saint Andrew's, Saint George's, Saint James, and others that recall the British and religious roots of the early settlement. Down in the corner sits the title block, painted in red and gold, announcing the plan and its connection to the government survey.

What makes this piece special is not just the geography but the wear it carries. The paper is stained, cracked, and torn at the edges, with brown blotches that speak to more than a century of handling and storage. Maps like this were working documents, used to plan growth and settle property lines, not meant to be framed as art. Yet seen today, it becomes a window into a Toronto that was mostly farmland and scattered blocks, long before the skyscrapers arrived. The careful penmanship and soft watercolor tints remind us that someone sat down to record this city by hand, one street at a time.