rfmcdonald | [PHOTO] Stores made houses

Since I've moved to Toronto, I've noticed that a non-trivial number of buildings that were once stores--plate-glass windows, doors opening at unusual corners, locations on intersections--are now houses. While I don't know the exact reasons for this, it doesn't seem unreasonable to suppose that as big-box and other large-format stores grew in the second half of the 20th century, these stores became unprofitable and were eventually sold Thus, you've got all manner of houses with heavy curtains on the front and art or flowers in the front display spaces, and so on.

Here are pictures of five of them. The quality of some of them may be low, but that's because they were taken last year using one disposable camera or another.