Broadview Hotel Neighbourhood Murals

Neighbourhood: Riverside · Address: Broadview Ave from Queen to Dundas, Toronto, ON · Hours: Open 24 hours · Price Range: Free

Why Visit

The area around Broadview Hotel has become East Toronto's unofficial open-air gallery, with large-scale murals leading you between Queen and Dundas. Each block offers a mix of contemporary and community-focused street art you'll actually want to photograph.

What Makes It Unique

This is one of the only neighbourhood mural corridors in Toronto where hotel, business, and artist commissions actively build on each other, rather than scattered one-off pieces. You’ll see a mix of international names and local artists, including some works curated specifically for the hotel's facade. The result actually feels intentional—not random.

If you want to get a feel for how Riverside has changed without losing its rough edges, walk Broadview from Queen up toward Dundas and keep looking at the walls. That stretch around the restored Broadview Hotel has quietly become one of the best mural walks in east Toronto, not because it was planned as a tidy attraction, but because it feels like the neighbourhood kept building itself up one painted wall at a time. The hotel helped set the tone by commissioning two big exterior works, and once that happened, nearby businesses, laneways, and side streets started filling in the gaps. What you end up with now is a corridor that feels lived-in rather than staged: brick facades, parking lot walls, garage doors, side elevations, and the backs of old commercial buildings all doing a little bit of visual work.

The nice thing about this area is that it doesn’t ask much of you. You don’t need a full afternoon or a game plan. You can show up with a coffee, walk north from Queen, and just let the murals reveal themselves as you go. One moment you’re looking at a broad, high wall that takes over your whole view, and the next you’re spotting something half-obscured above a driveway or around the side of a building you’d otherwise walk past without thinking. That’s part of the fun. The pieces here don’t all announce themselves equally, and the area rewards people who are willing to slow down, cross the street, and look up. If you like taking photos, you’ll probably stop every few steps. If you’re not much of a photographer, it still works, because the walk itself has a nice rhythm to it. You get storefronts, cars, streetcars, pedestrians, and then suddenly a huge burst of colour breaking through the brick and concrete.

The Broadview Hotel is really the anchor here, and even if you’re just coming for the murals, it’s worth paying attention to the building itself. The east-facing commission on the hotel is one of the major pieces in the area, and it’s much better when you know to photograph it from Morse Street rather than standing directly in front of it and trying to make sense of the whole thing up close. From the sidewalk beside the hotel, you’re too close and the composition gets chopped up by street signs, poles, parked cars, and whatever else is happening at the curb. From Morse, though, you get a clean angle and the whole thing opens up properly. If you’re there late in the day, that’s when it really works. The brick warms up, the colours soften a little, and the building feels like part of the neighbourhood instead of just an object sitting in it.

What I like most about this cluster of murals is that it doesn’t feel isolated from everyday life. People aren’t coming here to stand around in a plaza and admire a curated art display. They’re grabbing takeout, heading into the hotel, meeting friends for drinks, walking dogs, waiting for the light, cycling through, or cutting across the area on the way somewhere else. The murals are just part of the streetscape, which makes them feel more honest. Some are bold and obvious, others are easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. A few look better from a distance than they do up close, while others have little details that only come through when you’re standing right below them. The whole area has that satisfying Toronto thing where old infrastructure and newer creative work are sharing the same block and neither one is pretending the other doesn’t exist.

If you’ve got the time, the rooftop bar at the Broadview is a great way to change your perspective after you’ve walked the street. Even if you only stay for one drink, the elevated view gives you a better sense of how many murals are actually packed into this small strip of the neighbourhood. Some of the pieces that feel awkward from the ground suddenly make sense from above, especially the ones that wrap around corners or sit on walls you can’t fully see from the sidewalk. You also get a nice contrast between the mural corridor and the rest of the east end spreading out around it. From up there, you can see that this isn’t just one decorated block, it’s a little cluster of painted surfaces that keeps growing in a loose, unforced way. It’s one of the few times where a rooftop stop really adds something to the experience instead of just being a bonus.

Broadview and Riverside also have a different energy depending on when you show up. In the morning, the area feels a little quieter and more practical. People are on their way to work, cyclists are moving fast, and the murals look sharper in the flatter light, which can be good if you want detail rather than drama. Around midday, the sidewalks get busier and the area feels more active, but also a bit harsher visually because the light can flatten the walls and make photos trickier. Late afternoon is easily the best time if you care about how the murals look. That’s when the sun starts doing the work for you. The colours gain depth, the shadows become useful instead of annoying, and the whole street feels warmer and more forgiving. If you stay into early evening, the mood changes again. The hotel starts to glow a bit, restaurant patios fill up, and the street gets that relaxed, pre-dinner pace where people are lingering but not in a rush.

Neighbourhood-wise, this stretch makes sense because Riverside has always sat in that in-between space between old industrial Toronto, residential streets, and newer independent businesses trying to make a mark. It isn’t polished in the way some downtown art districts try to be, and that’s exactly why it works. There’s enough foot traffic to keep it lively, enough brick and older building stock to give murals a good surface, and enough everyday movement to keep the area from feeling over-designed. Compared with other mural areas in the city, this one doesn’t rely on a single official route or a big festival atmosphere. You’re not dealing with an overwhelming amount of signage or a theme park feeling. It’s more casual than that, more distributed, and honestly more interesting because of it. The murals here are tied to the businesses and buildings around them, so they feel embedded in the neighbourhood rather than dropped into it for attention.

A practical tip: don’t treat this like a straight-line checklist. The best approach is to start near Queen, head north along Broadview, and allow yourself a little drift east or west whenever something catches your eye. A lot of the best viewing angles aren’t directly on Broadview itself. Morse Street is especially useful for the Broadview Hotel wall, and some of the side streets offer cleaner sightlines than the main avenue. Bring a charged phone or camera if you care about photos, because you’ll probably end up taking more than you expected. If you’re shooting at street level, watch for parked cars, hydro poles, and traffic lights, because they’re often the difference between a decent frame and a frustrating one. If you’re not photographing, that’s fine too — just be ready to pause in awkward spots while you line up your view. That’s part of the deal here.

The honest reality is that this area isn’t empty and it isn’t a secret, so you may end up sharing the sidewalk with other people doing the same thing. On a nice late-afternoon or weekend outing, you’ll likely see small groups stopping to take pictures, couples wandering around with drinks, and the occasional person clearly using the hotel as a meeting point before dinner. That said, it rarely feels crowded in a stressful way. The flow is loose, and because the murals are spread across several blocks instead of concentrated in one tiny plaza, people disperse naturally. If you want the calmest experience, go earlier in the day or on a weekday. If you want the best light, go later and accept that you may need to wait a minute or two for people to move out of your frame. That’s the whole strategy here: be patient, cross the street when you need to, and don’t expect every wall to look perfect from the first angle you try.

Realistically, give yourself about 45 minutes if you’re just wandering, more if you like to stop for photos or grab a drink at the hotel. It’s open all day, free to explore, and easy to fit into a larger east-end outing. You can make it part of a bigger Riverside or Leslieville walk, or just treat it as a standalone art stroll and call it a day. Either way, it has that satisfying Toronto quality where the city keeps revealing itself in layers if you’re willing to look closely. The walls change with the light, the street keeps moving, and the murals feel different every time you come back.