Heritage Toronto

York General Hospital, King Street West, Circa 1858. Image by Owen Staples. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.

Toronto General Hospital, Gerrard Street, 1868. Image by William Notman. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library

Toronto General Hospital, College Street, 1920. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.

Dr. Gordon Murray, Toronto, circa 1930. Image courtesy of the University of Toronto Archives.

Toronto General Hospital

Early Toronto Healthcare

Toronto General Hospital is the oldest hospital in the city. In 1819, as the Township of York (today’s Toronto) grew, the Loyal and Patriotic Society of Upper Canada organized a trust fund to support the construction and maintenance of a hospital. The Society was largely concerned with care for the many widows and orphans left behind in the wake of the War of 1812. Fundraising and construction took ten years, with the hospital building opening its doors to patients in 1829.

The Hospital was initially staffed by military physicians from nearby Fort York. As the city’s population grew in the early 19th century, additional buildings supplemented the original two-storey brick hospital. Semi-permanent structures were built to treat those suffering from cholera or typhus, two diseases that besieged early Toronto.

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Toronto General Hospital

Moving the hospital

By the 1850s, the original hospital building could no longer meet the needs of the growing city population. In 1855, the hospital relocated to a new building on Gerrard Street, designed by William Hay. The old hospital building was repurposed to serve the provincial government until 1858.

In the 1910s, the hospital moved yet again, this time to College Street. But before a new hospital could be built, the area had to be cleared of the nearly 200 homes that sat on the site. The area formed part of the St. John’s Ward neighbourhood, home to many newcomer communities. The City expropriated the area at a cost of $600,000 and demolished the homes by 1909. Due to sanitary concerns about the area, bushels of disinfectant were poured on the soil before building the hospital.

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Toronto General Hospital

Current Mandate

When the new hospital opened in 1913, the hospital featured 670 beds (520 public and 150 private). Toronto General has since expanded from College Street to occupy the large lot bound by Elizabeth Street and University Avenue. It shares the lot with the Medical and Related Sciences (MaRS) Centre.

Over the years, numerous landmark medical achievements have occurred at the hospital, including the world’s first coronary care unit (1965), the first single and double lung transplant (1983 and 1986, respectively), and Canada’s first HIV/AIDS clinic (1994).

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Toronto General Hospital

Early Toronto Healthcare

Toronto General Hospital

Moving the hospital

Toronto General Hospital

Current Mandate

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