Corner of the city – Mono Lino Typesetting, Herb Graab, 1963

Notes

A full-page ad announcing Mono Lino’s move to their new home at 420 Dupont Street. The company had moved there in October 1963 but this ad appeared one year later. Up to the end of the 1950s, many of the printers and typesetters in Toronto were located downtown in what was then loosely known as the ‘graphic arts district’, roughly bounded by College Street to the North, University Avenue to the East, Spadina Avenue to the West and Front Street to the South. Within those boundaries many of the city’s printers, typesetters, engravers, and art studios were all within walking distance of each other. After the Second World War, many of those companies began to expand, at first primarily the printers, as the need for larger and cheaper space gradually forced them out of the district.

In this ad Mono Lino was trying to assure their clients that the greater distance to their new plant, roughly 4 kilometres, would be worth the extra effort needed to get there. This was a major move for the company, costing $130,000 in 1963, just over one million dollars in 2023. That cost may have included the purchase of the new building, as well as three old houses on Howland Street that they bought, and then demolished, to expand the employee parking lot. 

Mono Lino entered into volunteer receivership on the morning of April 27 1985, although the large metal sign across the front of the building remained in place for over thirty years and would itself become a minor Toronto landmark, ironically making Mono Lino better known to more people than it was in its heyday. – Rod McDonald