Clarence Square at Brock Street (Spadina Avenue) Wellington Street was planned as a broad 'Wellington Place', likely modelled after similar large boulevards in the planned Capital of the United States, Washington which had been burned during the War of 1812 in return for the American occupation of Toronto. Toronto was divided into 'wards' with much of the 'New Town Extension' in St. Andrew's Ward. Toronto now extended horizontally from Niagara Street (with the Garrison Creek and Common beyond) to the Don River in the East, the area north of Queen having been planned as large estates. The areas in the extreme west ('New Town Extension') and east ('Corktown') remained largely undeveloped for some time and as poor relief programmes in Britain brought many poor and diseased to Toronto in the following years the empty lots in these areas quickly filled with poorly constructed housing and the land value deteriorated. Several Cholera and Typhoid outbreaks forced the City of Toronto to use these lots to house the sick. Many of the immigrants to this area were Irish Catholic and Toronto's first Catholic Church to serve the western part of the city was built in McDonell Square: St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church. Most of Toronto's institutions and businesses preferred to remain closer to the central city in land subdivided from former 'Park Lots' north of Queen Street. Residential and industrial development In the 1850s the railway reached Toronto from Hamilton cutting across the Garrison Common and by 1860, more of the Garrison Common west of the Garrison Creek and south of Queen street was subdivided around a 'Strachan Avenue' leading up to Bishop Strachan's Trinity College. Some of the housing in the older St. Andrew's Ward was rebuilt. At the end of the 19th century Toronto carried out a large number of annexations and planned new grand institutional building north of Queen Street in St. John's Ward (now the Discovery District), this led to the deterioration and demolition of many of Toronto's old institutional buildings south of Queen Street with many of the large lots being sold to the expanding Railways. Within the former 'New Town Extension', most of the area east of Bathurst Street and south of King Street, especially along 'Wellington Place' became industrial. In the first half of the 20th century many working families immigrated, especially from southern Europe (especially Italy and Portugal), to this neighbourhood. McDonell Square, the