Toronto
The top 10 buildings lost to demolition in Toronto
The top 10 buildings lost to demolition in Toronto is surely a strange title. In that these buildings no longer exist, the "top" serves the double function of referring to the merits of these former structures and the tragedy that was their demolition. And tragedy isn't really too strong a word. Toronto would be certainly a better place if these and many of the other buildings that were often rather carelessly destroyed remained vital pieces of our urban environment. But, for reasons that I've never fully made sense of, the city planners of the 1960s and 70s had virtually no historic sense, and numerous buildings of great significance were destroyed in favour of bland structures of little consequence or, unconscionably, parking lots.
Here are the 10 lost buildings that I "miss" the most.
The Temple Building
Built: 1896
Demolished: 1970
What exists there now: Queen-Bay Centre
Why it's missed: Aside from being the tallest building in Toronto upon its completion, it was a lovely Romanesque counterpart to nearby Old City Hall.
Trinity College (original)
Built: 1852
Demolished: 1950
What exists there now: Trinity Bellwoods Park, though the original gate and women's residence still stand, the latter as a retirement home.
Why it's missed: Designed by Kivas Tully, the building was an excellent example of Gothic-Revival architecture.
The Armouries
Built: 1894
Demolished: 1963
What exists there now: Provincial Court House (University Avenue)
Why it's missed: Thomas Fuller's Romanesque masterpiece was not only the largest armoury in Canada, but just look at what replaced it.
The Board of Trade Building
Built: 1892
Demolished: 1958
What exists there now: EDS Building
Why it's missed: Originally occupied both both the Board of Trade and the TTC, the rounded building would be the perfect companion of the still-standing Flatiron building a couple streets away.
Chorley Park
Built: 1915 (started in 1911)
Demolished: 1961
What exists there now: Parkland
Why it's missed: Chorley Park was the fourth and last official residence of the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. Modeled after the chateaux of the Loire Valley, the opulent building was closed in 1937 due to the high cost -- paid for by taxpayers -- required to maintain the building. After stints as a military hospital in WWII and and subsequently as offices of the RCMP, Mayor Nathan Phillips acquired the building in 1960, which would have cost a significant amount to restore, with the intention of demolishing it. Still, without any replacement other than parkland, it seems a sad waste to lose such a beautiful building.
Union Station II
Built: 1873
Demolished: 1931
What exists there now: Citigroup Place (and a rather anonymous brick building)
Why it's missed: As wonderful as the current Union Station is, think of what it'd be like to have the previous iteration of the station preserved and used for another purpose.
Grand Opera House
Built: 1874
Demolished: 1927
What exists there now: Scotia Plaza
Why it's missed: A fabulous Second Empire-style building with an an intriguing history courtesy of one-time owner Ambrose Small, the millionaire that one day up and vanished, nothing like it remains in Toronto.
The original Toronto Star Building
Built: 1929
Demolished: 1972
What exists there now: First Canadian Place
Why it's missed: Designed by Chapman and Oxley, it was one of Toronto's finest examples of Art Deco architecture.
Odeon Theatre
Built: 1947-48
Demolished: 1973
What exists there now: Carlton Tower
Why it's missed: Despite its short life span, the 2300 seat theatre, with its curved marquee was everything a cinema should be (and nothing what they look like today).
Sam the Record Man
Built: 1961
Demolished: 2008-2010
What exists there now: Rubble, but Ryerson University will be building on the site shortly.
Why it's missed: Although not an architectural marvel, Sam's nevertheless was a Toronto icon. And while the neon sign may one day return in some capacity, it'll never be the same.
Update:
Here is a Google map of the approximate locations of these buildings.
Photos from the Wikimedia Commons and the City of Toronto Archives with the exception of the last, which is by spotmaticfanatic in the blogTO Flickr pool.
Discussion
94 Comments
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If possible, would love to see a photo project based on the preserved remnants kept at the Guild Inn.
http://www.cydonian.com/photos/cat76.htm
Would love to see pics of what has survived, and a pic of what it originally was.
If you've never been out there, you should really check it out. Hands down, one of the coolest hidden gems of Toronto...
Was torn down and is now a hideous Pizza Pizza.
at King and Bay Streets. Marble everywhere and a
stained glass ceiling. There was wrought iron work
on the doors as well.
This link has a photo:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Bank_of_Toronto_Building_1915.JPG
Trinity College was beautiful!
The city just sucks and always has - despite the people.
In its constant, desperate attempts to be "world class" and "now" toronto has become a bland , blank slate of a city with zero personality (architecture and design wise).
I love this city but, admit it, it looks like shit.
It's completely filled top to bottom with computers and wiring. In fact, they took out two of the elevators to run wiring.
For those lamenting Toronto's past, please remember that Toronto was a sleepy burgh until the 1950s. There wasn't really a lot to tear down, truthfully. Many of those American cities that some love to loathe were actually much larger than Toronto, until recently. (Even Buffalo!)
Be great to see you picks for the top ten saved and restored buildings to compliment this article.
Oh, and notwithstanding what it replaced (the Armoury), I wouldn't be *that* hard on the courthouse at 361 University; all things considered, its "New Formalist" vocabulary has worn well, architecturally and urbanistically (and if one also considers the Frost and Macdonald Blocks at Queen's Park, the vocabulary characterizes Robarts-era Ontario as surely as the original "trillium logo")
that doesn't even include the entire 16 square block neighbourhood torn down to make way for the WTC site.
Toronto doesn't have the sort of unbroken heritage districts some cities have, but it's not an ugly city. Not beautiful either. It's finding itself, and that's okay with me.
Perhaps the Armoury could have been repurposed into a courthouse at a reasonable cost using present technology, but not back then.
I'm sure there were very good reasons to tear them down. I wonder if the archives could shed some light on those kinds of decisions.
Most of these are doubtless lost to us forever, but there have been cities in Europe, in the last decade which have actually completely rebuilt historical treasures from scratch.
We can and should do that here, for the 2 or 3 sites where it is practical.
My first choice would be the armoury, not a complicated rebuild, and has a design that could easily be partially or totally repurposed for today's age. The public still own the land.
*****
On another note.....Sam the Record Man? Really? Ugh. Not of any value historically, aesthetically or in any other way, in the past, the present, or the future.
There are better things to lament.
****
Speaking of which, there are also some great buildings not lost to us yet, if only we restore them....(Eglinton Cinema comes to mind)
So sad to see what could have been, but interesting to look at these magnificent buildings. I've always wondered why architecture in Toronto is lacking.
And let's not forget the old St. Larence Market buildings (plus Toronto Town Hall).
There's also the Shell/Bulova Tower at the CNE and all those other modernist + Deco buildings at the CNE, and wasn't the old Sunnybrook Hospital knocked down?
Anyways, there's a lot more, but my mind is blanking right now.
http://www.blogto.com/city/2010/03/vintage_toronto_postcards_redux/
1. Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder and for any group to impose an architectural standard beyond economic reason would be in opposition to a free society.
2. Because Toronto(nor any other North American city) is not being "designed" by a single entity other than high level zoning. This is not Paris under Napoleon.
I like nice buildings too, but not at the expense of higher ideals. Especially if all that is being offended is my sense of style and good taste.
1 - You need to look at the whole picture. Developers are often only thinking of their short-term economic gain when they design buildings, design-review panels are thinking of, among other things, the city's long-term financial health.
Good architecture is always a boon to a city economically. NYC's building stock is significantly more valuable because of it's quality, versus if it were filled with concrete slabs. The buildings themselves become part of the brand, and some even become icons of the city, promoting it internationally, and drawing in tourism.
But a "get in, get out" developer who is purely motivated by immediate profit is not going to consider any of that - which is why we need to have standards of excellence. These standards aren't in opposition to free society - often they are to protect society from developers which don't always act in accordance with the long-term social and economic interests of a city.
Also, in regards to your point on "maximum profit" you're not taking into account the nature of the development industry in early Toronto vs Now. Back then, developers had faces and personalities, they weren't anonymous multinationals like Cadillac Fairview. They also cared more about locality, and becoming involved personally in the cities they did business in. Whereas now developers would rather be removed and invisible. As such, early developers liked to be seen as patrons of the city, and readily invested in architecture that would benefit it as a whole - now many are only concerned with guaranteeing good returns for their shareholders.
So I don't think you can say that many of the buildings featured here wouldn't have been built without "maximum profit" as a motivation. Because buildings were seen as much more than just "profit machines" and had an important civic role to play.
As for the then vs now. That's 100% baloney. The TD towers were built by a corporation. They cared enough to build a place that would stand out. But don't be fooled, they didn't spend so much on design as to impede their profit margin. That goes for the other private buildings on this list. In contrast, First Canadian was built by a family firm and it's ugly. (and efficient).
I go back to my original comment. These buildings are nice, but there were good reasons why they were torn down. I wish we knew what they were so that we don't just fetishize the past.
That's not true, there was a considerable amount of buildings put up in the 20s and 30s, even with the Depression.
Actually, back then Toronto was typically known as the fastest growing city in North America, and even sometimes the world.
There was a huge blend of Art Deco, Victorian, and even Beaux-Arts structures all in and around what would now be the downtown core (especially the Financial District).
And don't forget, this was also the time that Toronto's Stock Exchange surpassed Montreal's.
It was the 50's where the historic buildings started to get demolished (because of 'urban renewal,' Toronto's second) for newer modernist, International, and brutalist buildings that get so much criticism today, not to mention our first taste of 'starchitecture'. This was all the way to the late 70s.
But with all we lost, it was this same period that Toronto became known as one of the world's most progressive architecture cities, the infrastructure was envied, we were 'The City that Worked', and... our TTC was much loved (reps from the PAris Metro and London's Underground were even hired to come here to see a trnsit system that 'worked').
One likes to think we in this age are more enlightened, but recent talk of demolishing the pods at Ontario Place shows we are kind of in the same place.
Toronto is full of architectural treasure, spread over a large area, which is the case in many cities. Few cities are consistently architecturally beautiful. Definitely we should be trying to honour and protect the good stuff better than we do.
Historicism isn't exactly the best way to commemorate lost buildings. Using the same designs as what was there before would mean 1) The building is a lie and 2) We are not moving forwards architecturally.
Also, Alsop designed OCAD before we was famous worldwide. We barely had any commissions, and none outside the UK.
And both the ROM and OCAD were chosen for architectural merit. The ROM was chosen because it was the most dramatic design out of the bunch - they took a chance. What other city in Canada can say the same thing? In the end, it wasn't perfect, but the building came out beautifully.
<I>"The winning design was chosen after five architectural design teams were selected from a field of 30 from around the world in February 2010 to develop full architectural designs in Stage 2 of the St. Lawrence Market North Building Design Competition. On May 7, 8 and 9, the five teams each exhibited a design at St. Lawrence Hall and online at www.toronto.ca. Thousands of Torontonians viewed the short-listed designs and over 1,000 individual comments, letters, e-mails and essays from citizens were received and submitted to the panel of jury members for their consideration.
The jury, made of some of the most distinguished members from across North America in markets, architecture and culinary arts, unanimously selected the submission from Adamson Associates Architects and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners."<I/>
The purpose of architecture is to serve people, not the Architect, and certainly not for some notion of moving forward. So if people all universally prefer a historic design, please explain how a building can be "a lie". The definition of design itself is the confluence of where form meets function. In the case of OCAD and ROM crystal, they are epic failures in both regards. I agree they are "different", "unique" or "dramatic", but none of these adjectives is a merits on its own. Plain and simple OCAD and the ROM crystal are the Lady Gaga meat dress of architecture.
Because it cannot be historic if it was built yesterday.
And sure, if you want to look at design as a calculative measure, sure, but others see it as creating art, and art was never about calculating.
And i'm glad we agree that OCAD and ROM Crystal are fine if you think of them purely as big ass art installations, but as buildings and architecture they suck.
I'm sure gonna miss sam the record man, where else will i be able to buy music in toronto? other than the store right across the street from sam the record man, the hmv next to that, the 10 stores in the eaton center that sell music, or on itunes from anywhere in the city/world
Alsop wasn't that famous before OCAD.
You know, you have no place assuming what someone was thinking while they were creating.
And good architecture is original architecture, therefore historicism is wrong.
ps. Gehry and Calatrava are staple "starchitects"
You on the other hand are incapable of seeing gradients and can only see things in broad tenets, which you've yet to justify. In your pompous view: Architecture = mission to move things forward, historicism = wrong, original = good, people who don't like a new building even if they can justify their view = historicists and therefore should leave Toronto. I don't think i need to shred each of your shallow arguments again, as they are clearly horse shit and don't stand up on their own. I will let you just sulk away on your own.
You seem to think that your mind is capable of a much broader range than what it really is (i.e thinking for others, knowing one's thoughts when designing buildings, etc), but I'm here to tell you that it's not.
All I'm saying is that people want good architecture. That is, original, contemporary, structures that don't rely on backtracking to create an image for itself.
I hope that we can just agree that people just want beautiful, functioning buildings.
Now we have to go to Montreal or Boston to experience what, at least partly, we could have experienced in our own city.
@Ved: Being a big drama queen, much? As was said above, a lot of other cities got rid of a lot of the same architecture just like Toronto did. When something no longer serves a purpose, it is gotten rid of, not kept around because it 'looks beautiful'.
Try and get this through your heads: <i><b>A city is not a museum</i></b>. People live in it, work in it, play in it, and die it in, and each building either serves a function or it simply is garbage-beautiful garbage, but garbage nonetheless. I don't see you crying for Regent Park (or Moss Park when it will eventually be torn down) so what's with all the tears and heartbreak?
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The old Bank of Toronto building at King and Bay makes the present TD Centre look like a dump.
I'm still on the look out for Wilsons I can't account for..
Regards,
leslie Wilson
aka williesbaby
And how is this different from now?
OK, 3 differences:
In the 1960s, vast swathes of downtown was torn down to make way for surface parking lots. In 2012 that does not happen.
In the 1960s, there was no heritage body, and no such thing as a "listed" building. Not the case today.
In the 1960s, one wouldn't think to preserve or incorporate a facade when approving a new building. It's different in 2012.
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Stephen bigmac1x@gmail.com