Sherbourne Street, Toronto

Sherbourne Street is an important roadway in Downtown Toronto. It is one of the original streets in the old city of York, Upper Canada.

It was named by Samuel Ridout in 1845 after the town in Dorset, England; the Ridout family emigrated from Sherborne.

In 1838, following the Upper Canada Rebellion, seven blockhouses were built, guarding the approaches to Toronto, including the Sherbourne Blockhouse, built at the current intersection of Sherbourne and Bloor.

In the 19th Century Sherbourne was lined with the stately homes of many of Toronto's most prominent families, but by the 20th Century remaining stately houses, like 230 Sherbourne Street had been converted to rooming houses.

A streetcar ran down Sherbourne from 1874-1942.

In the early 2000s City Council chose Sherbourne as one of the first streets in Toronto to be retrofitted with dedicated bike lanes. In 2012 Sherbourne's bike lanes were improved, changing them from lanes separated from cars and trucks solely by painted lines to lanes with a pavement change that would warn motorists when they had strayed out of their lanes.

...
Wikipedia