The University of Toronto St. George[3][a] (UTSG or U of T St. George) is the main campus of the University of Toronto, located in the downtown of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Set on the historic grounds that surround Queen's Park, it is the oldest of the university's three campuses, the other two of which are the Mississauga campus and Scarborough campus. St.George is also the largest of the University of Toronto's three campuses and the largest university campus in Canada in terms of student enrolment.
The St.George campus is home to the university's central administration and the majority of its academic faculties, Varsity Blues athletic programs, and professional and graduate studies programs. It is the location of the university's college system, comprising 11 distinct constituent and federated colleges, each with their own character, history and varying degrees of autonomy. Unlike the other two campuses, St.George does not act as its own academic division. Instead, it is made up of various faculties, colleges, and schools, the oldest and largest of which is the Faculty of Arts and Science.[4]
History
The founding of University College, the university's first non-secular college, marked the beginning of the University of Toronto as it stands today; its main building opened on October 4, 1859, and the grounds have since grown to encompass a large area spanning multiple city blocks which comprise the University neighbourhood.[5][6]
It has been known historically as the St.George campus,[7][8] named after St.George Street which bisects the grounds from north to south, and the name came into more frequent use to distinguish it from the Scarborough and Mississauga campuses established in the later part of the twentieth century. The street, and by effect both the campus and nearby subway station of the same name, is named after French Royalist military officer Quetton St.George (1771–1821).[9]
Campus
Architecture styles
The north-central portion of the St.George campus as seen from Robarts Library, with the skyline of downtown Toronto in the background.
The architecture of the St.George campus reflects its establishment during the mid-nineteenth century. It is epitomized by a combination of Romanesque and Gothic Revival buildings spread across the eastern and central portions of campus, most dating between 1858 and 1929.[10]
Central campus
The Back Campus fields in front of Wycliffe College and Hart House.
The central area of the St.George campus is roughly bounded by St.George Street to the west, Hoskin Avenue to the north, Queen's Park Crescent West to the east and College Street to the south.[11]
Hart House, located just northeast of King's College Circle, is the University of Toronto's historical student activity centre built in 1919. It hosts a theatre, library, the Arbor Room restaurant, and various recreational spaces.[12] The Justina M. Barnicke Gallery of the Art Museum at the University of Toronto is situated within Hart House, and hosts the second largest gallery space for visual art and programming in Toronto after the Art Gallery of Ontario.[13]
Situated next Hart House is Soldiers' Tower, a carillon bell tower constructed in 1924 as a memorial for students lost during the World Wars.[14][11]
The Back Campus Fields are two outdoor synthetic turf fields behind University College used for recreational sport.[15][16]
The area surrounds King's College Circle, a central campus space surrounded by its namesake street which outlines the Front Campus lawn. The circle underwent a major transformation in 2024 known as the Landmark Project, which turned the area into a pedestrian-only space with a newly constructed parking garage beneath Front Campus. Also part of the initiative was the creation of a geothermal system beneath the area, which is the largest of its kind in Canada.[17] King's College Circle includes (clockwise) the main building of University College, the Gerstein Science Information Centre, the Medical Sciences Building, Convocation Hall, Simcoe Hall, and Knox College.
Sidney Smith Hall is the central building of the Faculty of Arts and Science, the largest division of the university, which provides the majority of undergraduate education at the St.George campus.[20]
Varsity Centre and Area is a sports complex comprising Varsity Stadium, Varsity Arena, and the Varsity Pavilion. It is the practice and training facility for various Varsity Blues teams, and a venue for intercollegiate sports.[22]
Queen's Park is a large urban park within the campus grounds, surrounded by Queen's Park Crescent. It is the location of the Ontario Legislative Building, which is not part of the campus area. However, the land was acquired by the Government of Ontario in a 999-year "peppercorn" lease from the University of Toronto in 1859.[23]
All of the colleges in the University of Toronto's collegiate system are located on the St.George campus. The model was made to resemble those of the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge,[27] and each hold some degree of autonomy over admissions and other academic and financial affairs. They include housing and social duties of typical residential colleges.[28]
St. George station is the second-busiest in the Toronto subway system, serving a combined total of 209,994 passengers per day in 2023–2024[32], and located near the north-central portion of the campus. It has a non-staffed entrance in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) building.[33]
Parking on the campus is limited. There is an underground parking garage located at the Rotman School of Management building on St.George Street and the Landmark Garage underneath King's College Circle, the latter of which was completed in 2024 and maintains 48 electric vehicle charging stations.[34][35]
Students' unions
Full-time undergraduate students at the St.George campus are represented by the University of Toronto Students' Union (UTSU), which is also the largest student union at the university.[36] Student representative bodies also exist at the various colleges, academic faculties and departments. The Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students (APUS) and the University of Toronto Graduate Students' Union (UTGSU) are tri-campus bodies which represent part-time undergraduates and postgraduate students, respectively.[37][38]
St.George has the largest number of students of the three campuses, with approximately double that of the Mississauga (UTM) and Scarborough (UTSC) campuses combined. It also attracts the most graduate students, with 94 per cent of the university's postgraduates in the 2024–25 academic year. Approximately 29.0 per cent of its students are international, a larger proportion than the 25.7 per cent at UTM and slightly less than the 30.7 at UTSC.[39]
Television series filmed at St.George include Overcompensating (2025– ), which used the Old Vic building of Victoria College, and Gen V (2023– ), a spin-off of The Boys mainly filmed on the Mississauga campus with some shots from the St.George campus as well.[41]
↑Allsop, Robert; etal. (1999). "Investing in the Landscape". Investing in the Landscape. The Open Space Steering Committee, University of Toronto. Archived from the original on July 28, 2009. Retrieved January 11, 2009.
↑"Subway ridership, 2023–2024"(PDF). Toronto Transit Commission. Retrieved November 12, 2024. This table shows the typical number of customer-boardings made on each subway line and the number of customers travelling to and from each station platform on a typical weekday in Sep 2023–Aug 2024.
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