Broadview Hotel

Neighbourhood: Leslieville / East End · Address: 106 Broadview Ave, Toronto, ON M4M 2E9 · Hours: Mon–Sun 24 hours · Price Range: $$$ · Phone: (416) 362-8439 · Website: https://thebroadviewhotel.ca/ · Rating: 4/5

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Why Visit

You get some of the best rooftop views in Toronto’s east end, along with serious historic character and top-notch cocktails. The ground-floor bistro is legitimately one of Leslieville’s best spots for dinner or brunch.

What Makes It Unique

The Broadview Hotel is inside an 1891 Romanesque building that was once a strip club—a detail that still leaves a mark on the design touches throughout. Now, it’s a chic boutique stay with a rare-for-Toronto west-facing rooftop bar that puts you above the treetops with proper skyline views. Unlike most boutique hotels, there’s as much to enjoy if you’re a local looking for a scene as if you’re staying overnight.

The Broadview Hotel is one of those places in Toronto that actually earns the praise people throw at it. It’s a 127-year-old Romanesque Revival building on the east side of the city, sitting right where Broadview Avenue meets Queen Street East and looking out over the Don River corridor. The building started life in 1891, spent years looking a little rough around the edges, and then came back in 2017 with the kind of restoration that makes you glad somebody cared enough to do it properly. What’s appealing about it isn’t just that it’s old; it’s that the old parts were left visible and given room to breathe. You see the brick, the turret, the arched windows, the detailed masonry, and all the bits that give the place its character, instead of a renovation that tries too hard to make everything sleek and anonymous.

Inside, the mood is somewhere between historic hotel and polished neighbourhood hangout. It doesn’t feel stiff, and it definitely doesn’t feel like one of those glossy downtown properties where everyone is rushing through a marble lobby with headphones in. At the Broadview, people actually linger. You’ll see hotel guests checking in with weekend bags, couples waiting for a table, locals dropping by for a drink, and groups heading upstairs for sunset. The lobby has that useful kind of buzz: enough activity to make it feel alive, but not so much that it turns chaotic. If you go in for a coffee in the morning or a drink later in the evening, the place has a very different energy depending on the hour. Early on, it’s calm and almost sleepy, with light coming through the old windows and the staff moving at a steady, unhurried pace. By late afternoon, the tempo picks up. Around golden hour, everyone starts angling toward the rooftop, and the whole hotel seems to pivot upward.

The rooftop is the reason a lot of people come here, and honestly, that makes sense. The view looks west across the Don Valley toward downtown Toronto, so you get the skyline spread out in front of you: the CN Tower, office towers catching the light, the tracks and greenery below, and then that warm evening sky that makes the whole city look better than it has any right to. It’s especially good in summer, when the terrace is packed with people having cocktails, celebrating birthdays, or just trying to squeeze one more decent night out of the season. The crowd is a mix of hotel guests and people who’ve come specifically for the bar, which means the rooftop has a destination feel without being completely detached from the rest of the building. If you’re expecting a quiet, private hotel terrace, this isn’t that. It’s lively, popular, and often busy enough that you need to be a little strategic about timing.

The best time to go is usually just before sunset if you care about the view and don’t mind a little wait. That’s when the whole west-facing panorama turns cinematic, and Toronto stops looking like a sprawl and starts looking like a city with actual shape. Later in the evening, the mood shifts again. The lights come on, the skyline gets sharper, and the rooftop becomes more social and a bit louder. If you’re visiting with someone and want the most flattering possible version of Toronto, this is the place to do it. But if you show up at peak dinner hour on a warm weekend without a reservation, expect to wait. That’s just the reality here. The rooftop’s popularity is part of its appeal, but it also means it’s rarely some secret, low-key perch with empty tables.

The ground-floor restaurant is the other part of the equation, and it’s more useful than people sometimes give it credit for. For a lot of neighbourhood regulars, this is the spot for brunch, dinner, or a drink before heading somewhere else. Sunday brunch is especially popular, with enough activity to keep the room feeling social and neighbourhood-oriented. The food tends to be the kind of thing you’d actually want to eat in a hotel restaurant: polished but not fussy, comfortable without being boring. It works for people staying at the hotel, but it also works well if you just live in Toronto and want somewhere with a little more polish than the average east-end brunch spot. The lobby bar does a lot of quiet heavy lifting too. It’s where locals drop in for a more casual drink, where people meet before dinner, and where the hotel earns some of its real personality. That’s important, because without that local traffic the Broadview could have ended up feeling like a pretty shell. Instead, it feels used, which is better.

The rooms are not huge, and it’s worth saying that plainly because some people picture boutique hotel rooms as magically spacious just because they’re stylish. These are compact, but they’re thoughtful. You can tell the design team worked around the bones of the building instead of bulldozing them. Where the original structure could be preserved, it was. You get the sense of old brick, warm materials, and an approach that values texture over excess. The fixtures are modern, the beds are comfortable, and the whole thing is arranged sensibly, but it’s still a heritage building, so don’t expect the blank-box efficiency of a new-build hotel. If you’re someone who appreciates old buildings, that’s part of the charm. If you’re traveling with a ton of luggage or you need a lot of room to spread out, you’ll want to be realistic about what you’re getting. This is not the place for pretending you’re in a sprawling suite with endless closet space. It’s better than that in a different way: it has personality.

What makes the Broadview stand out from other Toronto boutique hotels is that it doesn’t feel like it was designed only for tourists or only for Instagram. A lot of stylish hotels in the city lean heavily on the same formula: dramatic lighting, trendy furniture, a rooftop if possible, and a vibe that’s carefully calibrated to look better in photos than it feels in real life. The Broadview is more grounded than that. It’s tied to its neighbourhood in a way that you can actually feel. It doesn’t sit in the middle of the financial district trying to convince you that downtown is exciting; it’s in the east end, where the city feels more lived-in and less polished. That gives it a different kind of confidence. It’s comfortable with being a hotel, a restaurant, a bar, and a local landmark all at once.

The surrounding area matters a lot here. Riverside and Leslieville have changed a ton over the years, and one of the easiest ways to understand the neighbourhood is to walk out of the hotel and head along Queen Street East. You’ll pass independent shops, cafés, bars, bakeries, and a mix of old storefronts and newer businesses that have given the area a lot more energy than it used to have. It’s not a neighbourhood that tries to impress you with grandeur; it wins people over gradually. In the daytime, it’s a good area for walking, coffee, and browsing. In the evening, it feels more social, especially on the restaurant-heavy stretches of Queen. If you’re staying at the Broadview, you’re in a good spot for exploring the east end without needing a car, and the streetcar makes it fairly easy to get around if you want to head west or back toward the core.

A practical tip: if the rooftop is the main reason you’re going, don’t treat it like a casual afterthought. Check the weather, aim for a reservation if you can, and build some flexibility into your plans. On busy summer nights, the wait can be longer than you’d expect, and the rooftop can feel crowded enough that the best move is simply to arrive early and settle in. If you want a quieter experience, go on a weekday or earlier in the day, when the place is less swarmed and you can enjoy the view without having to shoulder your way to the edge. The same goes for brunch downstairs: it’s popular, so don’t assume you can just stroll in at the busiest hour and be seated immediately. This isn’t a place that’s impossible to enjoy without planning, but a little planning makes it much better.

The honest reality is that the Broadview can be busy in a way that’s both great and mildly annoying, depending on your expectations. On one hand, the crowds are proof that the rooftop and restaurant aren’t just attractive in theory; people actually want to be there. On the other hand, that means service can feel stretched at peak times, and the rooftop can lose some of its relaxed charm when everyone has the same idea at the same moment. If you’re after a perfect, quiet, lightly occupied hotel experience, you might be happier elsewhere. If you want a place with character, a genuinely good view, and a real connection to the east end, this is one of the city’s strongest options. It’s especially good for visitors who want to see Toronto from a less predictable angle. Staying here gives you a better sense of how the city opens up once you move east of downtown and away from the obvious postcard version of Toronto.

The best Broadview experience is pretty simple: check in, go up to the rooftop near sunset, have a drink, then wander the neighbourhood afterward. If you’re staying overnight, come back through the lobby later and notice how the building changes once it’s dark and the windows are lit from inside. It’s one of those rare Toronto hotels that feels appealing for more than one reason. The architecture matters. The view matters. The neighbourhood matters. And, just as importantly, it feels like a place where other people in the city actually choose to spend time. That’s a big part of its charm.