The Annex runs from Spadina Avenue west to Bathurst Street, immediately north of the University of Toronto campus. It is one of Toronto's most intact Victorian neighbourhoods, with large red-brick homes built in the 1880s and 1890s for the city's professional class. The university's presence has kept the neighbourhood intellectually charged: it is full of bookshops, independent coffee houses, and restaurants that cater to faculty and students.
Bloor Street West is the main commercial spine, running east-west through the neighbourhood. The Beguiling (known for graphic novels and comics), Seekers Books, and several other independent bookshops are here. The Bloor Cinema is a reliable repertory cinema with an eclectic programming schedule.
Spadina Avenue, on the eastern edge, runs through the northern end of Chinatown and the beginning of the Korean commercial strip around Bloor and Bathurst. Walking west along Bloor from Spadina takes you into a succession of food cultures — Korean, Ethiopian, and various others — that reflects how successive immigrant communities have layered onto the neighbourhood over decades.