Our reproduction service lets you order prints of historical images of Toronto and beyond — all from Toronto Public Library’s collections. Many of these images can be explored on our Digital Archive. Our Digital Archive has over 160,000 digitized items. These include historical maps, photos, paintings, posters, drawings and ephemera (items not intended to last […]
In 2015, to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the new Toronto City Hall, Toronto Public Library's (TPL) Special Collections and Preservation & Digitization departments created a website to explore the many architectural contributions to this international design competition. Eero Saarinen and Ernesto Rogers, judges for the City Hall and Square Competition, Toronto, 1958. The […]
A lot has been happening in 2018 with the Digital Archive and we wanted to provide an update. The Digital Archive features items from TPL's Special Collections and content from it may be downloaded, shared and reproduced in print or electronic format for personal, educational, and research use. Not only have we been adding a lot […]
2021 update: Sidewalk Labs has stopped supporting OldTO and the map is unavailable. Try our interactive map of Toronto neighbourhoods to explore digitized items from TPL. Close to 4,000 images from the Toronto Public Library's Digital Archive have been added to the #OldTO website at https://oldto.sidewalklabs.com/. OldTO Website Earlier this year, Sidewalk Labs collaborated with the City […]
**The Game Jam has been postponed until early Fall 2018. Please check back for the most up-to-date information and thank you for your interest!** Do you like board games? Do you like video games? Do you enjoy Canadian trivia? Have you ever wanted to help make a game but didn't know where to start? […]
In 2017, the Preservation & Digitization Department at the Toronto Reference Library has been busy digitizing more content for the public to research, view, download and enjoy. Items include maps, ephemera, photographs and full books. In terms of just page numbers alone, staff have digitized well over 215,000 pages! We wanted to share with you […]
Toronto’s first peek at the $100,000 sculpture was obtained when Star photographer Boris Spremo sprawled at Nathan Phillips Square and stuck his camera inside the protective case, 1966 Boris Spremo was a news photographer, born on October 20, 1935, in Susak, Yugoslavia and died yesterday in Toronto, Ontario, at the age of 81. Spremo graduated […]
The Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), Canada's largest fair was originally known as the Toronto Industrial Exhibition. Its name was changed to the Canadian National Exhibition in 1912. At that time, the hope was to better reflect the scope of this always diverse fair. Since its inception, the CNE has featured exhibits on technological advances in […]
Sam the Record Man. Photo by Eric. Student Learning Centre. Photo by Eric. Can you believe it's already been 10 years since the closure of Sam the Record Man's flagship store on Yonge Street? The iconic building with its rotating neon record platters was eventually replaced by Ryerson University's Student Learning Centre. Launched by Sam […]
Canada’s sesquicentennial celebrations are in full swing. If you're feeling nostalgic about this great city we live in and you've already made it to Harbourfront to check out the giant rubber ducky this weekend, here are some interesting stories about Toronto that you may not know about. Did you know Tim Horton's restaurants started […]