Maude Townsend stands on the front porch of 933 E Allowance Avenue with her two young children, Edith and Arthur, in about 1913.--Image courtesy Esplanade
Some of the most sought-after documents in the Archives are historic photographs of homes, often requested by current owners who want a record of what their house once looked like. People did not often intentionally photograph their abodes although they were where families made their memories. If residences do appear, it is often only a small piece; it is a backdrop for a photo of people or an angled glimpse portion of a streetscape, captured because of activity being recorded on the roadway.
The photographs in the Archives come from the community. These visual documents continue to make their way to the Archives, sometimes more than a century after the camera was pointed at its subject.
Photographic treasures are often offered to us by a person who values the image. Sometimes they feel personal connection because of the people in the photo as well as the place itself.
A couple of weeks ago, a man donated a small set of family photographs. Amongst them we discovered a photo of the donor’s aunt as a small child, with her brother and mother. They are standing on the front porch of an early twentieth century house that I quickly recognized as one the Ten Commandments, a series of ten identical homes built in a row around 1908.
The last of the buildings was slated for destruction in 1981 to make room for the twinning of the Allowance Avenue overpass. What initially drew me to the photo was a note on the back that said “One of the ten”.
We have photos of the Ten Commandments from a distance as well as from an angle highlighting their sameness, but I had never seen a photo like this amongst the approximately 1 million images catalogued in the Archives’ collections. Visible on the house is an address that can be matched to old city directories.
This address aligns with the surname provided by the donor, Townsend, as well as the names Momma, Arthur, and Edith, which were recorded along with the note above.
Because of this sometimes-surprising rarity, it is always exciting to find a photograph in which people can be named, and the building they are posed in front of can also be identified by address.
It is even more exciting when the structure is as unique as one of the Ten Commandments that for more than 70 years was a well-known landmark of our city.
More images from the Esplanade’s collections can be explored via our on-line catalogue, collections.esplanade.ca. The public is also welcome to visit the Archives Reading Room Tuesday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m.
Philip Pype is the archivist at the Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre
