City
When the Toronto skyline got its jolt of modernism
At the outset of the 1960s, Toronto's skyline was positively Buffalo-esque. While marked by majestic old structures like the Royal York Hotel and the Canadian Bank of Commerce Building, approaching the city by boat, one would have also noticed a preponderance what we would now consider low-rise buildings and more than one church steeple that had yet to be obscured by the intense development of the city's downtown core that was about to get underway.
In more ways than one, this process started with the rise of the first and tallest of the buildings that would eventually compose the Mies van der Rohe-designed TD Centre. At 56-storeys, it's monolithic black steel body rose above the tired skyline with a modernist minimalism that was almost completely foreign at the time.
The future may have arrived in Toronto a couple of years earlier with the construction of new City Hall, but from the standpoint of the skyline, the importance of the TD Centre would only be rivalled by that of the CN Tower, which was completed nine years later and has remained the city's most iconic structure to this day.
Although it may not strike the casual observer in such a way today, Mies' masterpiece — composed of two towers and the banking pavilion at King and Bay streets — was about as bold as Toronto architecture got. The stark black aesthetics, its metal construction, and the expansive site upon which it was built (the complex encompasses four standard city blocks) demonstrated a type of vision that Toronto was unaccustomed to heading into the 1960s. Thank you Allen and Phyllis Lambert.
The city has since grown around Mies' towers, lessening their dramatic mark on the skyline, but they nevertheless remain some of Toronto's most elegant buildings.
PHOTOS
The final beam...
1965
The Bank of Toronto Building would eventually be demolished for the TD Centre
Rising above the skyline in 1966
The original Mies complex
At night in 1966
Late 1960s aerial
1967
Skyline 1970s
The skyline from the Island in the 1970s
Office of the Vice President, 1960s
Inside the Pavillon shortly after opening
Topping off in 1966
Photos from the Toronto Archives (marked at bottom), the Toronto Port Authority, Chuckman's Nostalgia, and from the source material of Mean City.
Discussion
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The CIBC tower is a good runner up
Some would argue the original complex (6th image) was weakened by the later TD offspring, such as the bizarre building on top of the stock exchange, but it's still one heck of an impressive collection of midcentury architecture.
The picture of the skyline from the Island is a very nice picture! I also like the interior picture, gotta love 60s interior design :-)
second, the I beams are visable as protruding out along the sides which is Mies's way of showing the design material (up to that point, most of the buildings were constructed with brick, etc).
The idea is very minimalist. the intent was to create a building which captures a space and then users have the ability to modify that space as they see fit. when the building is empty you can see right thru to the other side.
The buildings are almost identical to the US postal buildings in chicago, designed also be Mies in the exact same form.
Lastly, the chairs you see in the second last picture are called barcelona chairs. if you notice they are still in the lobby to this day. This is because those chairs were also designed by Mies.
Only a fool would discount Buffalo's significant architectural heritage.
And agreed on the Buffalo comments. They have several important buildings, including ones by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. It's actually a great (and cheap, and close) place to look at innovative American architecture.
The TD Centre eschews ornamentation, and its beauty lies in form, arrangement and a mathematical attention to detail. The International style, and to some extent a bit of Modernism, definitely produced some duds, and leave a bit to be desired from urbanity's point of view. That said, the movement ushered in a new way of thinking that produced some of the finest structures ever built by man.
And really, the Victorians were just rehashing a grab-bag of styles from eras long gone by. They weren't necessarily forward-thinking, but closer to the faux-historicists of their day. If there's anything to bemoan, it's the loss of our old Georgian city.
Although, anyone who has any notion of tower in the park really doesn't either.
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