Faded painted advertisements from the 1890s–1960s that survive on Toronto brick walls — products no longer made by companies no longer in existence, in fonts that predate computers by decades. Kensington Market has a high concentration. Look up on the older brick walls of Spadina, Baldwin, Augusta, and the stretch of Dundas between Yonge and Parliament. These pre-vinyl signs were painted directly onto brick and can survive a century if protected from weather.
Neighbourhood: Kensington / Parkdale / East End · Address: Kensington Market, Parkdale, Corktown — follow the old brick walls · Hours: Always visible from public sidewalk · Price Range: Free
The ghost signs still visible on Toronto’s old brick walls are like time capsules for urban explorers — a rare look at the city’s long-gone businesses and quirky pre-digital graphics. You can literally watch history fading before your eyes.
Unlike murals or graffiti, these are original advertisements from as far back as the 1890s, painted directly onto building facades in now-extinct fonts and palettes. The sheer age, combined with the fact that most are only legible if you look up and squint or shoot from across the street, makes them easy to miss and extra satisfying to find. Kensington, in particular, collects more of these authentic signs than almost anywhere else downtown.
Ghost signs in Toronto are one of those things you can walk past for years and never really notice, until someone points them out and suddenly the city starts changing shape. Once you know to look up, you start seeing them everywhere: faded painted ads stretched across old brick walls, tucked above storefronts, half-hidden by awnings, fire escapes, hydro lines, and newer signs that were slapped on decades later. They’re leftovers from a Toronto before vinyl banners, before LED signs, before digital everything. Tobacco brands that haven’t existed in generations, soap and flour and soft drink companies from another commercial era, department stores and local distributors whose names live on only in peeling paint and weathered brick. A lot of them are so worn down that they barely read as words anymore. That’s part of the appeal. They aren’t polished or explained for you. They just survive, quietly, in the open.
The best thing about ghost signs is that they don’t feel like a formal attraction. You’re not queuing up for an exhibit or buying a ticket or following a one-way route with a gift shop at the end. You’re just walking Toronto the way it still exists if you slow down enough to notice the upper floors. Most people move through the city with their eyes at street level, watching for traffic, looking for a café, checking their phone. Ghost signs ask for a different pace. You cross the street more than usual. You stop in the middle of a block and tilt your head back. You start scanning the second and third storeys instead of the sidewalk displays. It’s a small habit, but it changes how the neighbourhood feels. The city gets a little older, a little more layered, a little more human.
Kensington Market is the place most people start, and for good reason. There’s a high concentration of surviving signs there, especially if you wander around Spadina, Baldwin, Augusta, and the side streets without being in a rush to get anywhere. The older brick buildings in that area still carry traces of painted lettering in cream, red, black, blue, and the occasional washed-out green, and the fonts are often fantastic in that pre-digital way that graphic designers love and everyone else can still appreciate without knowing why. Some ads take up an entire wall and still have enough structure left that you can imagine the full message. Others are barely there at all, just a few letters and a ghosted outline where weather has done most of the work. The area is especially good because so many buildings are older commercial blocks with exposed brick, and because the street life is busy enough that you can stand around looking up without feeling like you’re the only person in the city doing it. Plenty of people are already pausing for coffee, fruit, thrift store browsing, or a cigarette break. You’re just looking at the wall above them.
What makes Kensington different from the more obvious mural spots in Toronto is that these signs aren’t there because anyone planned them to be part of a walking route. They survive by accident, which gives them a different kind of charm. Murals are public art, and a lot of them are wonderful, but ghost signs are something else entirely. They’re commercial leftovers, painted when nobody expected them to become historical artifacts. The wear is part of the point. You’ll see paint fading into brick, letters breaking apart where the masonry has absorbed moisture over time, and sections where a later renovation has cut the ad in half or buried it behind a newer facade. Sometimes there’s a building next door shielding the sign from rain and snow, which is why one wall can still be fairly legible while the one across the lane has been almost completely erased. That uneven survival gives the whole thing a kind of accidental drama. It feels less like preservation and more like luck.
The stretch of Dundas between Yonge and Parliament is worth doing too, especially if you want to see a part of Toronto that isn’t dressed up for visitors. You get a very different mood there. The streets are busier, a little rougher around the edges, and the signs often sit above discount stores, older apartment conversions, garages, corner businesses, and low-rise commercial buildings that have been patched, repainted, or boarded up over time. Some walls still hold readable ads, while others are basically visual echoes, just shadows of lettering and faint blocks of colour. Parkdale has its own survivors too, especially on older brick commercial strips where the original walls were never covered up completely. The East End has pockets as well, including Corktown and other older industrial or mixed-use streets where brick, weather, and timing have all conspired to leave a few signs behind. The common thread is simple: older buildings, less aggressive redevelopment, and just enough protection from the elements to let paint hang on for a few more decades.
A visit here is really about walking and paying attention, not about doing things in any scheduled sense. There’s no big wait, no line, and no single address that gives you the whole experience. What people actually do is drift. They wander slowly, stop often, and look ridiculous in the most enjoyable way possible because they’re standing in the middle of a sidewalk peering at third-storey brick like detectives. Photographers love this because the textures are great and the signs tend to have that slightly melancholy, graphic quality that cameras pick up beautifully. People who like type and lettering tend to get very excited about old fonts, hand-painted curves, and the imperfections you only get from someone painting on a wall one brushstroke at a time. But you don’t need to be a designer or a photo person to enjoy it. There’s something satisfying about spotting a fragment of text from another century and realizing the city has been carrying it around in plain sight all this time.
Timing matters more than you might think. Overcast days are genuinely the best. Bright sun can flatten everything and wash out faded paint, especially on pale walls or lighter lettering. Soft grey light makes the outlines easier to read and the colours feel deeper. Morning can be nice if the streets are quieter and you want to take your time without dodging as many pedestrians, but afternoon often works well too, especially when the light hits the brick at an angle and brings out the uneven surfaces. Near sunset you can get beautiful warm tones on the buildings, though the darker signs can become harder to read. If you’re going for photos, bring patience. Some of the best signs are visible only from across the street, or from halfway down a block, because modern storefront signage blocks them if you’re standing too close. A zoom lens helps, but honestly, your eyes and a little distance do most of the work. If you’re walking without a camera, you’ll still want to stop every few minutes and just scan upward. That’s the whole trick.
The honest reality is that ghost signs are a bit fragile, and that’s why they’re worth seeing sooner rather than later. Renovations cover them. New paint hides them. Demolition removes them. Sometimes a sign is there one year and gone the next, and sometimes it survives only because a property owner hasn’t gotten around to dealing with that wall yet. You can’t count on any one specific sign being there forever, which is part of the appeal and part of the sadness. There’s also no guarantee of a tidy, curated experience. You may find yourself squinting at a wall for a minute or two before you’re sure there’s anything left to see. That’s normal. The best strategy is to keep moving slowly, look up often, and don’t expect every wall to deliver. The good ones reward patience, but the whole point is the accumulation of small sightings: a partial word here, a logo there, a huge advertisement fading into brick like a memory the city forgot to finish losing.
If you’re coming from downtown, the easiest way in is still Spadina Station, then head south into Kensington and let yourself drift from there. You can make a loose loop through Baldwin and Augusta, then continue outward toward the edges of the neighbourhood where the buildings get a little more mixed and the signs can be more surprising. If you’ve got more time, extend the walk to Parkdale or over toward older streets in the East End and Corktown, where the ghost-sign hunt becomes less concentrated but sometimes more rewarding because you’re not expecting it as much. It’s free, visible from the sidewalk, and easy to fold into a longer afternoon of coffee, people-watching, vintage shops, or just wandering with no plan. You don’t need an itinerary, and you definitely don’t need to rush. The point is to let Toronto show you the parts of itself that are still hanging on above eye level.
Ghost signs are faded painted advertisements from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that survive on the brick walls of older Toronto buildings. They advertised products, businesses, and services that often no longer exist. Because they were painted directly on brick (unlike modern vinyl or printed signs), they can last 50–100 years if protected from direct weather.
Kensington Market and the Spadina Avenue corridor have the highest concentration. Look up on the older brick buildings on Baldwin Street, Augusta Avenue, and the side streets off Dundas West. The stretch of Dundas East from Parliament to Broadview also has surviving ghost signs. Parkdale along Queen West and King West also has examples on its Victorian commercial blocks.
WTF Toronto creates guides using independent editorial research, official sources, local knowledge and firsthand experience where available. Commercial relationships are disclosed where applicable.