Originally a large railway switching yard near the Toronto waterfront, including the CNR Spadina Roundhouse and the CPR John Roundhouse, it has since been redeveloped and today is home to mostly mixed-used development, including the CN Tower and Rogers Centre.
[3] From the 1850s to 1920s, the area south of Front Street was filled in to provide more room for railways, industrial growth and harbour needs.
During station construction, the Grand Trunk Railway went bankrupt, was fully nationalized by the Government of Canada, and merged into the Canadian National Railway which would assume the Grand Trunk's 50% ownership of the TTR (and thus the third Union Station).
Going as far back as 1965, when Canadian National (CN) began to shift the functions of many of its yards in the Greater Toronto Area to a centralized facility in the northern suburb of Vaughan, the railways lands were made redundant.
It also saw the redevelopment of the Toronto Postal Building into the Air Canada Centre (since renamed to Scotiabank Arena) in the late 1990s along the eastern boundary of the Railway Lands.
The western portion of the Railway Lands, defined by the city as Railway Lands West,[1] is today home to the CityPlace neighbourhood built just west of Spadina Avenue, south of Front Street and north of the Gardiner Expressway.
Railway Lands Central[1] is mixed use land slightly east of Spadina to the area east of the CN Tower is home to Rogers Centre and CN Tower and parts of CityPlace.
Railway Lands East[1] is now the South Core neighbourhood and is a mixed used land slightly east of Rogers Centre and is home to Union Station (and Union Station Bus Terminal), Dominion Public Building, SkyWalk, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Roundhouse Park, Steam Whistle Brewing, Southcore Financial Centre, Delta Hotel Toronto, CIBC Square, Maple Leaf Square and the aforementioned Scotiabank Arena.