A boardwalk runs along Lake Ontario past the Art Deco R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant. Queen Street East runs a block inland, lined with independent shops.
What The Beaches looks like
is the neighbourhood's commercial spine, running from Victoria Park Avenue to Coxwell Avenue. Independent shops and restaurants fill its storefronts, and tenants turn over often enough that the street looks a little different from one year to the next. The , a single-screen cinema at Beech Avenue, has operated since 1914.
Behind Queen Street, the side streets are mostly semi-detached Victorian and Edwardian houses, with low apartment buildings and a few row houses mixed in. Some of the larger houses near have wraparound porches and round turrets under bell-shaped roofs.
South of the houses, a single stretch of sand runs the length of the neighbourhood, backed by a wooden boardwalk and the Martin Goodman Trail bike path. Paddleboarders work the water past a lifeguard station on the sand, with downtown Toronto's skyline visible across the lake. The , a clapboard building with a rooftop lookout tower, stands at the foot of Leuty Avenue. Kew Gardens runs from Queen Street down to the water, past the Alex Christie Bandstand.
At the eastern end of Queen Street, the rises above the shore in yellow brick and stone, its central tower set into a long arcaded wall. Marble-lined corridors run inside, beneath arched skylights and a terrazzo floor. The plant still supplies close to a third of Toronto's water, and its grounds are open to the public.
Shot in The Beaches
The R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant, at the far east end of Queen Street, has stood in for several fictional institutions on screen. In the Mouth of Madness opens on its exterior and used it again for the asylum interior where Sam Neill's character is held. Nightmare Alley filmed the scene where Stan Carlisle arrives to meet Ezra Grindle there, and Strange Brew used the same exterior as the Royal Canadian Institute for the Mentally Insane, next door to the fictional Elsinore Brewery. Queen Street East has doubled as an ordinary main street too. The Black Stallion used the former bank building at Kenilworth Avenue, now the Stone Lion pub, for a shot of a horse galloping past a teller's window, and Frequency filmed at the Garden Gate Restaurant, the Chinese restaurant known locally as the Goof. The CBC series Kim's Convenience filmed at Murphy's Law, the former bank building at Kingston Road.
In the Mouth of Madness, 1995
R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant
Played an insane asylum
John Carpenter's film opens on the plant's exterior. The production used it again for the interior of the asylum, where Sam Neill's character tells his story, held alongside John Glover and David Warner.
Nightmare Alley, 2021
Played the site of Ezra Grindle's interrogation
Guillermo del Toro's film used the plant's exterior for the scene where Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) arrives to meet Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), not yet realizing he is about to be interrogated. The scene plays out on the plant's grounds rather than inside.
What The Beaches can double for
Museum Campus in Chicago, Illinois
The plant's Art Deco arcaded wall and central tower sit above the water the same way the Adler Planetarium does on Lake Michigan, both built within a few years of each other. The Beaches version faces a residential shoreline rather than a downtown skyline. Keep Chicago's museum campus buildings and the planetarium's dome out of frame, and shoot the plant's own arcade and tower for the period detail. Try searching Art Deco arcaded wall now.
North Park in Buffalo, New York
Two and three storey brick storefronts along Hertel Avenue, anchored by the single-screen North Park Theatre, give North Park a similar commercial scale and era to Queen Street East and the Fox Theatre. Both strips still run independent shops rather than chains. Hertel Avenue's street trees and angled parking read differently from Queen Street's, so tight storefront framing hides the difference better than a wide street shot. Try searching single screen storefront theatre now.
A bandstand, a long promenade and lifeguard facilities along the water give Hove's seafront a similar rhythm to the Beaches boardwalk. Both run a straight beachfront with a park just behind it. Hove's pebbled beach and Victorian ironwork differ from the Beaches' sand and clapboard lifeguard station, so close framing works better than a wide shot of the shoreline. Try searching promenade lifeguard facilities now.
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