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 · Editorial status: Not yet verified
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.
If you want one of the strangest only-in-Toronto outings downtown, go wander the PATH with no real agenda. On paper, it’s a practical thing: more than 30 kilometres of underground walkways connecting 75 buildings under the Financial District so office workers can get coffee, pick up dry cleaning, and avoid February. In reality, it’s this mildly surreal second city under the city, where you can walk for 45 minutes, pass bank towers, food courts, hotel corridors, bits of public art, and a full indoor skating rink, and never once see daylight. Most people know the PATH as the land of Tim Hortons, pharmacies, and people speed-walking in sensible shoes. That’s all true. But if you slow down and actually look around, the oddities start stacking up. Scotia Plaza has an indoor ice rink, which still feels bizarre no matter how many times you see it. One minute you’re in a corporate concourse under dark stone towers, the next there are people skating underground like that’s completely normal. There are also weird little public art moments tucked into lobbies and corridors—pieces you’d miss if you were just following the lunchtime crowd toward soup and sushi. One of my favourite parts is the food court under First Canadian Place. It has this stubborn late-’70s, maybe 1987-at-the-latest interior that makes you feel like the renovations simply gave up and walked away decades ago. Heavy lines, hard surfaces, a slightly brutalist mood, fluorescent lighting doing its best. It’s not polished, and that’s exactly why it’s great. Toronto doesn’t leave many places alone long enough to get this weird. The Fairmont Royal York connection is another good one. If you enter from the PATH side across from Union Station, you get this unexpectedly grand transition from underground commuter tunnel to old-school hotel lobby energy. It’s one of those little reveals that makes the whole network more fun than it has any right to be. A big part of the appeal is the disorientation. The wayfinding is famously bad. Even locals who’ve worked downtown for years still have moments where they’re absolutely certain they’re heading east and somehow emerge near the opposite bank tower. Getting genuinely lost in the PATH is basically a Toronto rite of passage. Don’t fight that too hard, but do bring your map app, because the posted directions can be confusing in a very specific, maddening way. If you’re starting fresh, begin at Union Station. It’s the easiest entry point, and you can usually grab a PATH map from the information desk. Go on a weekday morning if you want the eerie version of it—quiet corridors, shuttered counters, cleaning carts, the whole underground city not fully awake yet. By lunch, it turns into a river of office workers. It’s free, open roughly 6 a.m. to midnight on business days, with more limited weekend hours, and honestly it’s perfect on a freezing day or when Toronto is doing that cold rain thing that makes being outside feel personal. This isn’t a polished attraction. It’s stranger than that. It’s infrastructure that accidentally became an urban adventure.
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.
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