I had found this picture (below - and again, from the 'Flashbacks 1' postcards book) and thought I'd check it out (it being very close to work too). This is King Street West, looking East from University Avenue (circa 1886).
The building in the center is the Rossin House Hotel, demolished in 1969. Given that there's nothing much visible today (see below) I wasn't even going to publish this picture, except that the (circled) building in the background - partially obscured by the light pole - looked interesting, somewhat older, but wasn't even in the first photograph.
Then, I found another old (but more recent than the first) photo, from 1936 taken from almost the same spot (just from the South side of King) and there it was - the tall building on the right in the background. It's now called Commerce Court North (above) but was the *Bank of Commerce* building in 1936. They merged with the Imperial Bank of Canada in 1961. And this was once the tallest building in the Commonwealth.
And the other tall building (closer, and in the left-center of the picture) is the original Toronto Star building - used as the model for the Daily Planet in Superman comics but sadly no longer around.
20150213 - Update: Thanks to Mark Brader for both giving me the dates for the Bank of Commerce building, correcting other errors I managed to introduce, and pointing out the interesting crossover between the streetcar tracks in the first (oldest) photo. "The streetcars then in use were symmetrical:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Horse_drawn_streetcar_Toronto_1880s.jpg
so a short-turn just required moving the horses to the other end and setting the switch to go into the crossover."
Easy to miss, but then something that I won't miss in future (or is that "in the past"?)!
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