9. The First Evangelical Lutheran Church - 116 Bond Street

Here at 116 Bond Street is the First Evangelical Lutheran Church, founded in 1851, the oldest Lutheran congregation in Toronto, still holding services in German. Formed by a small number of German Lutheran families in Toronto, the current building was opened in 1898 on the site of the original simple frame church, and over the decades the church amalgamated with another Lutheran congregation and saw new additions to the community with immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe after World War II. First Lutheran is Toronto’s Lutheran mother church and helped found other Lutheran congregations in the Finnish, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian and Swedish communities.

Bond forms part of the Ryerson University’s evolving urban campus and is a particularly Torontonian blend of old and new. At the top of the street is the Eugene O’Keefe house, named after a successful brewer, and the street is also home to the Ryerson Image Centre, with its undulating lit façade at night, as well as remodeled warehouse buildings. Saint George’s Greek Orthodox Church is here as well and is the mother church for Toronto’s Greek diaspora, but the building was previously Holy Blossom Temple before it relocated to Bathurst Street. Sheikh Deedat Mosque, closer to Dundas, rounds out this most spiritual of Toronto streets.