Little BOND STREET, Queen Street East, north to Ryerson University, is home to several historic institutions.
<PHOTO – St. Michael’s Cathedral and its dormers>
<PHOTO – St. Michael’s Boys Choir School, founded in 1939>
The First Evangelical Lutheran Church, erected in 1898 by German immigrants to TORONTO. The congregation dates back to 1851.
St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church, 115 Bond Street, originally opened as Holy Blossom Temple in 1897. Designed by Canadian architect, John Wilson Siddall, it functioned as a synagogue until 1937, and then was sold to the Greek Orthodox community. It’s now the mother church of the Greek diaspora in Canada.
The church interior is the only one outside of Greece to have been painted in its entirety by the Pachomaioi monks, Theophilos and Chrysostomos, master iconographers from Mount Athos, Greece.
Up from there is MacKENZIE House Museum, home of TORONTO’s first mayor, William Lyon MacKenzie.
Where Bond Street meets Gould, in the heart of Ryerson University’s campus you’ll find RIC – the Ryerson Image Centre, devoted to photography in all its forms. Free admission.