First Chinatown, Toronto

First Chinatown, Toronto 舊多倫多中區華埠
Former neighbourhood
The first Chinatown went along Elizabeth and York Street, between Dundas and Queen Street.
Country	Canada
Province	Ontario
City	Toronto

First Chinatown is a retronym for a former neighbourhood in Toronto, an area that once served as the city's Chinatown. The city's original Chinatown existed from the 1890s to the 1970s, along York Street and Elizabeth Street between Queen and Dundas Streets within St. John's Ward (commonly known as The Ward). However, more than two thirds of it was expropriated and razed starting in the late 1950s to build the new Toronto City Hall and its civic square, Nathan Phillips Square.

The remainder of Toronto's First Chinatown still exists as one of Toronto's Chinatowns, with numerous Chinese restaurants, north of Hagerman and Armoury streets and around Dundas Street between Bay Street and University Avenue, albeit much reduced and the neighbourhood is now being better known as Japantown, Little Japan, and Little Tokyo.^[1] The economic and cultural centre of the downtown Chinese community has largely shifted to the newer West Chinatown located at Spadina and Dundas Street West.