A visual history of Queen and Bay

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It wouldn't be too difficult to make the case that the intersection Queen and Bay streets is one of Toronto's most important hubs â or at least that it has been for the last 112 years or so. This time-span, of course, covers the period in which the intersection in question has housed Toronto's City Hall, first with E.J. Lennox's Romanesque Revival masterpiece on the northeast corner (1899-1966) and then with Viljo Revell's modernist icon (completed in 1965), which still serves as our house of municipal governance today.

Although there was a brief period in the 1960s during which it appeared Old City Hall might be lost to the development of a much larger Eaton Centre than was eventually built, looking back it was the construction of Revell's building that most changed the surrounding area. Over and above the buildings that were demolished for its enormous site (which included Nathan Phillips Square), the City also expropriated a swath of land on the south side of the street because the buildings that were there didn't match the architecture of the new centerpiece. In their place, (amongst other things) we now have the Sheraton Hotel, which while a successful Brutalist structure, is just awful at street level.

Lastly, I must mention that the southwest corner was once home to what's commonly referred to as Toronto's first skyscraper â the Temple Building. Demolished in 1970 to make way for the anonymous Queen-Bay Centre, its loss remains one of the most painful preservation failures in Toronto's history.

Here is a visual history of Queen and Bay streets.

1899 - A cyclist approaches Bay Street