News   Jul 10, 2024
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Built Books on Architecture (New Book Store in Toronto!)

I went there last week.... i'm sorry but i'm not 'feeling it'....I was however really impressed that they had tattoos for your hand so you can jot down "to do's" in a straight line! :)


I miss Ballenfords :'(
 
It looks like Built has been folded back into Swipe - it's now a "store within a store", in a corner of Swipe, as opposed to having a separate space elsewhere in the 401 Richmond building. It's a pity that didn't work out (although maybe that was the plan all along, I don't know). I hope Swipe continue to thrive: they're a spectacular resource and we're lucky to have them. Now, to start saving my pennies for that Dieter Rams retrospective I saw on the front table.
 
'Twas a review copy. It ought to be available in the stores any day soon, if it isn't already.

The St. Lawrence Sunday antique market is a great place for finding second hand books about the city - I've put together quite a library of sometimes rather obscure volumes over the years. Toronto Architecture: A City Guide, by Patricia McHugh is one I picked up there a couple of weeks ago, and I highly recommend. And last week - about 7 a.m. - I just missed out on a large format Goad's street atlas of the city in 1910 that a dealer snapped up quickly.
 
It's been available for a little while now - I flipped through it in Ben McNally's the other week on my lunch. Seemed nice. I'd have spent more time with it, but that store isn't my favourite and I was disinclined to linger.
 
At the antique market this morning I bought a copy of Lucy Booth Martyn's nice little volume Original Toronto ( 1983 ) for $15. It explores the architectural and social fabric of the city as it was around 1834, with histories of prominent early buildings. Also, for $40, bought a slipcased, numbered copy of the republished ( 1984 ) Art Work on Toronto ( first published in 1898 ) with George Baird's introduction - plenty of photographs of just-built hefty Richardsonian Romanesque landmarks, the river valleys, streets, parks and the Islands as it all looked at the end of the Victorian era. There's even a rendering of Lennox's City Hall then still under construction, showing it not exactly as built.
 

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