Wood frame cottages from the 1880s to the 1910s in solid paint, and The Heatley pub playing the Belveris bar in Smoke.
What Strathcona looks like
Residential streets here run on a flat grid of narrow lots, wood frame houses one and a half to two and a half storeys with a steep front gabled roof and a full width porch on round posts. The door usually sits to one side of the porch, in line with the front stairs. A bay window often takes up the other side.
The siding is a narrow channel drop board, and some houses still have a cedar shingle roof. Many are painted in solid colours rather than left natural, mustard yellow next to slate blue next to deep red on a single block of East Georgia Street. A workers cottage on that street keeps its bay window set behind the porch and decorative shingling in the gable end.
occupies its own block between Pender, Jackson, Heatley and Keefer Streets. Its brick buildings have pediment gables and a grand exterior stair up to the second floor. Two blocks over, 's three and four storey maisonettes and a nine storey tower ring a circular lawn behind a serpentine brick wall. 's lawn and community garden run along Malkin Avenue at the grid's south edge.
The grid ends at Venables Street, where painted industrial buildings, loading docks and rail sidings take over. Rogers Street runs along the waterfront past the BC Sugar refinery, its silos and warehouses visible over the rooftops from deep inside the neighbourhood. Powell Street continues east with the same mix of low industrial buildings and older storefronts toward the rail yards.
Shot in Strathcona
The Heatley plays a bar in Smoke, and the BC Sugar refinery off Rogers Street has doubled for warehouse districts in the Arrowverse. A storefront on Powell Street played a crime family's headquarters in Rogue.
Smoke, 2025
Played the Belveris bar, Umberland, present day
The Heatley is a pub on East Hastings Street with vintage decor and stained glass windows. It doubles as the Belveris bar in Smoke, the Apple TV+ series about a team investigating a string of arsons. The pub sits at Hastings Street and Heatley Avenue, on the same commercial strip as the storefronts and apartment blocks nearby.
Arrow, 2016
Played a warehouse district, Star City, present day
The BC Sugar refinery at the foot of Rogers Street, its silos and warehouses backing onto the rail yards, has stood in for a warehouse district across the Arrowverse. Oliver Queen parachutes down onto the site after falling from a helicopter in Arrow's fifth season opener.
Rogue, 2013
Played a crime family's headquarters
342 Powell Street played the headquarters of the Lee crime family in the first episode of Rogue. The storefront sits near Dunlevy Avenue, and two kids throw molotov cocktails through its window at another character's request.
Cabbagetown's Wellesley Street cottages are small gabled houses painted in solid colours block after block, built in the same 1880s to 1910s window as Strathcona's own rows. Both neighbourhoods keep the porches and narrow lots from that period. Cabbagetown's cottages are more uniformly restored and sit on narrower lots with less space between houses, so a wide shot reads tidier than Strathcona's mixed block faces. Try searching painted gabled cottages porches now.
Corktown's modest Victorian rowhouses and cottages sit close to Michigan Central's rail corridor, much the way Strathcona's grid runs up against the rail yards. The scale and massing, one and a half to two storeys with narrow street frontages, is close to Strathcona's own. Corktown's brick and stone trim reads heavier than Strathcona's wood siding, so tight frames on porches and clapboard work better than wide shots that show the material difference. Try searching modest Victorian rowhouses now.
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