West Queen West and the Strip That Downtown Couldn't Keep

Queen West Toronto Where the Galleries and Record Shops Went

You arrive at Queen Street West expecting the neighbourhood the magazine covers promised. Instead you find a low rise strip of late 19th and early 20th century commercial buildings, streetcar tracks embedded in two lanes of traffic, and no landmark telling you that you have arrived. The thing that made Queen West famous is no longer a single destination. It is a 2.5 kilometre corridor from Bathurst Street to Dufferin Street where creative Toronto relocated when downtown got too expensive. Treat this Queen West Toronto guide as a working neighbourhood to be walked, not a set piece to be photographed.

West Queen West Galleries Toronto: Where the Art Went

When the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto moved north to 158 Sterling Road in 2018, it confirmed what anyone walking Queen West between Bathurst and Dufferin already knew: the galleries had left the eastern end. The concentration of contemporary commercial galleries that earned the strip its second place finish in Vogue's 2014 ranking of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world is now highest west of Trinity Bellwoods Park.

Start At The Gladstone Hotel

Begin at the Gladstone Hotel at 1214 Queen Street West, where 37 artist designed rooms and a rotating exhibition program in a converted Victorian hotel function as a de facto gallery without a ticket booth. Then work east along the blocks between Roncesvalles Avenue and Dufferin Street. The building stock here is the reason the galleries came: former industrial and warehouse buildings with high ceilings and low rent, converted to white wall exhibition spaces that would cost triple in Yorkville.

How To Find The Galleries

You will find the street level doors propped open on First Thursday evenings during the Queen West Art Crawl season, but any weekday afternoon works. Do not expect a single block of consecutive galleries. They are scattered, above ground floor retail or behind unmarked doors. The search itself is the point.

Queen West Boutiques Bars Toronto

Two things separate Queen West's retail from Toronto's other shopping strips. First, the independence ratio. Despite a minority of chain storefronts that has increased since the 2014 Vogue designation, most of what you can buy here is not for sale anywhere else in the city. The boutiques between Spadina Avenue and Bathurst Street carry Toronto designers, vintage reworked by local sewers, and streetwear labels that do not have a Yorkville flagship.

The Music Venues

Second, the bar and live music venues that sit above and beside the shops have been operating since before the strip was fashionable. The Horseshoe Tavern at 370 Queen Street West opened in 1947 and has never stopped booking original music. The Rivoli at 334 Queen Street West runs a bar, a restaurant and a back room venue under one roof. The Drake Hotel at 1150 Queen Street West and the Gladstone Hotel at 1214 Queen Street West anchor the western end with cocktail bars and pool tables that draw a mixed crowd of neighbourhood residents and visitors.

Moving Between Bars

The noise level is higher at the street front than on the side streets. The streetcar runs 24 hours on route 501, which means you never need to watch the clock if you are moving between bars. Skip the Entertainment District's large clubs with their cover charges and bottle service minimums. Queen West's bar scene works on the dive and cocktail axis, not the velvet rope.

Graffiti Alley Toronto Queen West

Graffiti Alley runs roughly 0.5 km south of Queen Street West between Spadina Avenue and Portland Street, a legal street art corridor that has been accumulating layers of spray paint since the late 1990s. It is free and quick. Skip the tours that herd a dozen people through the same fifteen metres of the most photographed section. Walk the full length from east to west, entering from the Portland Street entrance, and watch how the murals change from large scale commissioned pieces near the Spadina end to smaller tags and paste ups in the middle section.

What To Expect

The alley is a lane, not a pedestrian street. Delivery trucks come through, the pavement is uneven, and after rain the paint drips onto puddles. Plan for 15 minutes if you are just passing, 40 minutes if you are photographing. Combine it with a walk north to Kensington Market, which sits 0.5 to 1.2 km north east of Queen and Spadina, or east to the Art Gallery of Ontario at 0.3 to 0.8 km. The alley is busiest between late morning and mid afternoon on weekends. Weekday mornings are nearly empty.

Queen West Trinity Bellwoods Toronto

Trinity Bellwoods Park is the neighbourhood's primary park at 15.2 hectares. On a summer weekend it functions as the outdoor living room for a 20 block radius of Queen West. The off leash dog bowl at the south end, the tennis courts, the baseball diamond and the community centre at 155 Crawford Street are not tourist attractions. The Tuesday farmers market from May to October is.

Farmers Market Strategy

Arrive before 11:00. The produce stalls are picked over after that, and the prepared food line at the greenhouse runs 20 minutes. The park sits 0 to 0.5 km north of Queen Street West between Bathurst and Dufferin, with the main entrance at Strachan Avenue. Do not mistake this for a passive lawn to sit on. The grassy slope south of the community centre is where the neighbourhood gathers in the late afternoon. The crowd leans young, local and patient with the park's capacity crowds in July and August.

Quieter Alternatives

If you want quiet, walk two blocks east to Stanley Park at 2.4 hectares or Massey Harris Park at 0.5 hectares. Both are smaller, emptier and better for reading.

How Queen West Differs from Yorkville, the Financial Core and Distillery District

Toronto visitors who stay only in the financial core produce the city's most common complaint: that it felt sterile and soulless. Queen West avoids that problem by having no office towers, a low rise street wall of three to six storeys, and a heritage conservation district designation under the Ontario Heritage Act that prevents the podium and tower development that defines King West.

Against Yorkville And The Distillery

Compare it to Yorkville, where the retail is designer flagships with valet parking and the hotel zone runs to high end chains. Queen West carries independent fashion and streetwear instead. Its accommodation is boutique hotels and short term rental apartments in converted buildings, not full service business hotels. Compare it to the Distillery District, which is a managed heritage precinct where every storefront is part of a master plan. Queen West is a working neighbourhood. The grocery stores along Queen Street West serve local households, the side streets are residential rowhouses and semi detached homes under mature street trees, and the Toronto Community Housing buildings at Queen and Bathurst remind you that this is not a sanitised retail corridor.

Against Kensington Market

Compare it to Kensington Market, which runs on chaotic Victorian streets closed to cars on Pedestrian Sundays. Queen West has twice the street width, a streetcar line, larger storefronts and a more commercial rhythm. It is not better or worse than these districts. It is the one where you can spend an afternoon buying records at an independent shop, eating at a counter service restaurant, walking to Graffiti Alley and then to Trinity Bellwoods, and never share a sidewalk with a tour bus.

An Honest Caveat About Queen West

The streetcar on route 501 runs in mixed traffic with no dedicated lane. On weekend afternoons, a trip from Spadina to Dufferin can take 25 minutes that would be 12 minutes on foot. The sidewalk crowds are real. The noise from the streetcar tracks rattling under the wheels of delivery trucks is something you will feel in your chest if you are standing near the curb. This is not a sanitised tourism precinct. It is a neighbourhood where the residents are going to work, buying groceries at Farm Boy or Loblaws or Fresh Co, and sitting on their front porches on the side streets while you walk past with your phone out.

What You Are Getting Into

The construction is constant. The Gardiner Expressway and Queen Street streetcar diversions can break a schedule. The blocks are long. If you expected a compact European style historic core, Queen West will frustrate you. If you wanted the city's least interesting streets in the financial core instead, stay there. The strip that downtown couldn't keep is still not quite tame, which is exactly what is worth arriving for.