Miscellany Toronto Photographs: Then and Now

[thecharioteer]

I suspect you're right. Except when the Victorians tore something down they replaced it with--something. And--personal taste aside--that something tended to be something very elegant, Grand and well made. In retrospect a bit OTT for some, a bit loose and easy in its appropriation of earlier architectural styles, but they were truly aspirational and inspiring buildings. The block clearing modernists replaced most of what they tore down with: nothing--or its equivalent, a sea of parking.

I know, I know, Berczy Park. People love to eat lunch there etc. The point is, it will never be equal to the beautiful, crowded 19th century cityscape that was lost here.

Very elegantly and eloquently put. The examples of the "now" being preferable to the "then" on this thread can probably be counted on one hand. The loss of the old Bank of Toronto building at King & Bay, for me, is bearable because of the quality of the Mies pavilion. Likewise, the buildings replaced by Commerce Court. Shea's Hippodrome would have been nice, but Nathan Phillips Square is worth the price.

The list of "on the other hand" unfortunately is longer. First Canadian Place, does not balance the scales in losing the old G&M Building, the Star and the old BOM building. Nor 390 Bay and the Temple Building. Nor "The Maples" and the Odeon Carlton. Nor the Federal Tax Building and the old Post Office. Nor any of the new buildings on Toronto Street or at King and Church. Nor 33 Yonge or Berczy Park.

 

[thecharioteer]

And the City really cares:

Berczy Park, in the last two years has been totally cleaned a number of

TWO TIMES!

Once for the '08 Buskerfest, but not the bike race.

Once for the '09 bike race but not Buskerfest.

The mud that sloughs off it's naked hills is something

to behold.


Regards,
J T

Agreed! Which is part of a larger problem that has progressively gotten worse since amalgamation, namely the underfunded Parks Department.

Berczy Park suffers the same neglect as Courthouse Square, Townhall Square (at 18 Yorkville) and numerous other "niche" open spaces: broken water features, bad or minimal planting, little maintenance, cracked surfaces, thoughtlessly placed garbage receptacles, the list goes on and on (did anyone notice that the "postcard" fountains by the monument at Queen and University never went on all summer?)

Don't get me started on the condition of our street trees (did anyone notice that the tree stumps in the central median on Spadina north of College have been there at least two years?).

Though the City will blame the condition of our trees on climate and the impact of salt on our roadways, why then do the trees on Chicago's Michigan Avenue thrive?

Since this is a thread on "now" and "then", why did the trees "then" on our main streets look so much better?

1909:

 

[adma]

The block clearing modernists replaced most of what they tore down with: nothing--or its equivalent, a sea of parking.

Blame the block clearers, not the modernists; and the replacement-with-nothing/parking pattern was already evident in the depressionary 1930s, before the International Style hit these parts...

 

[thecharioteer]

Blame the block clearers, not the modernists; and the replacement-with-nothing/parking pattern was already evident in the depressionary 1930s, before the International Style hit these parts...

True, Adma, but don't you think it was also a question af perceived value (or lack of) with these buildings?

The worst period for demolition was really from the early 50's to the mid 70's (the aerial I posted above, showing 19thC St. Lawrence virtually intact was from the 40's.) In a number of cases, particularly with Romanesque Revival (or High Victorian if you will), these buildings were actively disliked. The first Eaton Centre proposal, demolishing the Old City hall was 1966. The Board of Trade Building came down around 1960, the Temple Building in 1970, the Oeon Carlton in 1973, John Howard's Lunatic Asylum in 1975. The First Candian Place block was cleared around 1973-4 (John Sewell was a lone voice protesting the loss of the Toronto Star Building).

Remember also Dundas-Sherbourne and the Hydro Block on Beverley Street; Victorian houses were equally distained in the early 70's (St. James Town). The carnage didn't really stop until the election of David Crombie.



Three newspaper articles from the early 1970's:

 

[Anna]

October 24 addition.

Then: Mt. Pleasant looking N from Belsize. c1925-ish?

I hope you stopped off at Penrose F&C to replenish your energy and admire the 'then' pictures hanging on their wall.

 

[Anna]

Haven't read Unbuilt Toronto, but I would suspect that the proposal to put a theatre on the Flatiron block was the result of it being a vacant block already.
... the City bought the land intending to build the St. Lawrence Centre there, but then opted to put it on the south side of Front instead. The SLC was a Centennial project (along with the restoration of the St. Lawrence Hall), and was announced in 1967, opening in 1970. It would appear from the archival photographs that the Flatiron block was cleared in the early 60's, years before the City acquired the land.

Toronto Star - September 25, 1962

 

[syn]

Great photos, guys!

Here's a picture I found in the City Archives of Front Street just east of Scott (it's labeled 27-29 Wellington, but the building goes through-block, and it's clear that the mansarded building to the left is the British American Assurance Building, with a glimpse of the Board of Trade Building further left).

Sigh......

The block shown in the 1910 Goad (Front Street address would be 36-38 Front):

Then:

Now:

If I was a billionaire I'd rebuild that entire section. They rebuild old structures in Europe, why not do it here?

 

[Hipster Duck]

While I regret the loss of those buildings, to look on the bright side, the St. Lawrence neighbourhood hasn't lost any of its animated, walkable flavour. Although none of us were around to experience it in 1900, I would imagine that it is just as interesting and appreciated a neighbourhood today, even if the majority of the buildings are gone. This is not all that different from, say, great neighbourhoods of London or Berlin that were bombed to oblivion but had enough resilience to rise from the ashes and assume the same life they once had, albeit in modern buildings. This is quite a bit different than looking at photos of lost neighbourhoods in cities like St. Louis or Detroit where a thriving, mixed-use neighbourhood of tidy Victorians was replaced by vacant fields that will never be reclaimed. My conclusion probably is that the qualities of life in a city matter more than the buildings in which they're housed.

Second - and this is going to make me very unpopular - I don't regret the loss of most of the Bay street stuff because many of the pre-war buildings, while nice, were not particularly remarkable for their era. Collectively, they were no more special than any handful of pre-war commercial downtowns. However, most of the modern office towers that replaced these pre-war blocks are exemplary structures and, when you take all of the MINT towers in the aggregate, they are a tour de force of North American skyscraper architecture that rivals parts of Midtown Manhattan or the Loop.

For example, the old Beaux Arts Toronto Dominion bank building from 1911 was rather stately, but you can find numerous examples of stuff like this in mid-sized American towns in the Midwest and Deep South. Mies van der Rohe's TD Centre , however, is sublime. Having visited Mies buildings in every city where there is one, I can say that the TD centre is still my favourite of his creations for its unique combination of tower and podium elements in a perfect ensemble. I walk through it every chance I get. Similarly, no other building in Canada conveys power and wealth to me quite like the lobby of Scotia Plaza. At least at the corner of Bay and King I get a sense that modern and postmodern architects were engaged in creative destruction, obliterating the good for the better. And, as adma correctly points out, the Victorians and Edwardians were no different in this regard as they leveled pretty much all of pre-Confederation Toronto to build the city in their image.

I do wish we kept more of our historic urban fabric, but mostly I save my tears for those sections of the city where we genuinely lost a sense of urban dynamism and vibrancy: Gerrard street near Bay, for example, or a lot of Jarvis.

 

[Mustapha]

I hope you stopped off at Penrose F&C to replenish your energy and admire the 'then' pictures hanging on their wall.

I did. The 'Then' pictures on the wall are wonderful aren't they? I worked it all off at the Mt. Pleasant and Davisville Goodlife; took the pictures ... a good way to spend a day off.



October 25 addition.


Albert street looking W. Two 'Then' pics and Now.

 

[J T CUNNINGHAM]

"the old Beaux Arts Toronto Dominion bank building from 1911" QUOTE.


Should read 'the old Beaux Arts Toronto Bank Building from 1911'

The Toronto Dominion Bank was the amalgamation of the Bank of Toronto

with the Dominion Bank - 1955. (The first marriage of two financially strong

chartered banks in Canadian bank history.)


Regards,
J T

 

[thecharioteer]

Toronto Star - September 25, 1962

Very interesting. It would be fascinating to find out what happened between 1962 and 1967 with the block. Did the City start acquiring individual buildings and knock them down in preparation for this grand scheme? Did they expropriate? Perhaps the City scaled down its ambitions (which would have demolished the old Market as well) when the costs started coming in. Even for 1962, $25.0M seems light.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

I do wish we kept more of our historic urban fabric, but mostly I save my tears for those sections of the city where we genuinely lost a sense of urban dynamism and vibrancy: Gerrard street near Bay, for example, or a lot of Jarvis.

Rather than expand, we have always torn down and rebuilt our CBD, which has shifted only a couple of blocks in the past 200 years (this slight shift saved the area east of Church). Part of the reason some people (including me) don't shed many tears for the downtown buildings demolished in the post-war era for MINT towers is that equally attractive and historic towers were demolished to build them (and previous waves were demolished to build them, and so on), so it's not like crying about an old growth art deco or Beaux Arts forest being logged. The 1904 fire didn't help, either.

It's why Toronto's downtown feels so small compared to so many other North American cities (even a few cities that have demolished everything downtown other than their CBD towers and replaced it with parking lots and stadia and highways). Toronto almost completely lacks large swaths of pre-war 'downtown' urban fabric next to its CBD, which transitions almost immediately to blocks of houses, although the recent condo boom has filled many areas out and up. If we had not built over and over and over in the same 6x6 or so block square of downtown, we'd have all kinds of warehouses and cute little pre-war office blocks. Spadina & Dundas would probably look like Spadina & King, while Dundas & Sherbourne would look like King & Sherbourne. Perhaps Yonge/University & Dundas would have received many of the more modern office towers, pushing the institutions farther north or somewhere else entirely. I don't think this would have been a huge improvement - our downtown would be far, far less compact and we'd have many more parking lots scattered around.

So, yeah, I totally agree that if anything really worth keeping around was lost, it's the areas outside the CBD...Bay & Gerrard might be ground zero for this, as you suggest, on the neighbourhood scale, but there's a few lost gems sprinkled all over the place as seen in this thread.

 

[Long Island Mike]

More good Toronto Then and Now info/pics...

Charioteer: Thanks for the good word! I will try to input here when I can contribute to this topic. Those 70s era news articles were quite interesting!

Mustapha: I am thinking late 70s perhaps for that Eaton's Budget Store pic.
I would like to read the Ontario license plate on that car on the left-it looks like a J series issued around 1977 or so. Back then license plates stayed with the vehicle - that changed in the early 80s with the Plate to Owner program.
LI MIKE

 

[adma]

Boy, those were fat Ionic capitals on the Eatons annex.

Second - and this is going to make me very unpopular - I don't regret the loss of most of the Bay street stuff because many of the pre-war buildings, while nice, were not particularly remarkable for their era. Collectively, they were no more special than any handful of pre-war commercial downtowns. However, most of the modern office towers that replaced these pre-war blocks are exemplary structures and, when you take all of the MINT towers in the aggregate, they are a tour de force of North American skyscraper architecture that rivals parts of Midtown Manhattan or the Loop.

For example, the old Beaux Arts Toronto Dominion bank building from 1911 was rather stately, but you can find numerous examples of stuff like this in mid-sized American towns in the Midwest and Deep South. Mies van der Rohe's TD Centre , however, is sublime. Having visited Mies buildings in every city where there is one, I can say that the TD centre is still my favourite of his creations for its unique combination of tower and podium elements in a perfect ensemble. I walk through it every chance I get. Similarly, no other building in Canada conveys power and wealth to me quite like the lobby of Scotia Plaza. At least at the corner of Bay and King I get a sense that modern and postmodern architects were engaged in creative destruction, obliterating the good for the better. And, as adma correctly points out, the Victorians and Edwardians were no different in this regard as they leveled pretty much all of pre-Confederation Toronto to build the city in their image.

And yet, and yet...the fact that the old Bank of Toronto was demolished in 1966 sure wouldn't be an argument for "if you had to do it all over again today". In this sense, I feel you're still selling the former fabric of the financial district short--thus, if my regrets about the demolition of the Bank of Toronto are more muted than some, it isn't because the B of T was unremarkable for its time, it's because the demolition was unremarkable for its time. Unlike some of the preservation-minded, I deliberately try to view the loss through a 1966 prism, and sans platitudes about heritage barbarism.

And while point taken with T-D, I'd probably contend that by your benchmark, Scotia Plaza was just as "not particularly remarkable for its era": Bryan Adams/Jim Vallance 80s Cancon cheesechitecture. At least when it comes to "replacing the good with the better", there was very little left on-site for Scotia Plaza to destroy in the first place: mostly just parking, postwar buildings and prewar facadectomy candidates...

 

[Hipster Duck]

And yet, and yet...the fact that the old Bank of Toronto was demolished in 1966 sure wouldn't be an argument for "if you had to do it all over again today". In this sense, I feel you're still selling the former fabric of the financial district short--thus, if my regrets about the demolition of the Bank of Toronto are more muted than some, it isn't because the B of T was unremarkable for its time, it's because the demolition was unremarkable for its time. Unlike some of the preservation-minded, I deliberately try to view the loss through a 1966 prism, and sans platitudes about heritage barbarism.

While it is a grand pile of stone, the Bank of Toronto building would not be out of the ordinary in Washington DC or in one of the post-Daniel Burnham civic centres in a large US city (think: San Francisco or Cleveland) and seems like an epigone of Chicago's city hall. Even in Canada, I think Darling and Pearson did a better job with the 1907 Bank of Commerce building in Montreal and even North Toronto station. One personal gripe I have with Beaux Arts buildings (although I admit this doesn't warrant demolition) is that the base of those buildings can be so oppressive - if you look at the 7 foot tall pediments that would've presented pedestrians with a blank wall, you can sort of sympathize with modernists of the 1960s. At least the Graphic Arts building is still around if you're into that sort of thing.

And while point taken with T-D, I'd probably contend that by your benchmark, Scotia Plaza was just as "not particularly remarkable for its era": Bryan Adams/Jim Vallance 80s Cancon cheesechitecture. At least when it comes to "replacing the good with the better", there was very little left on-site for Scotia Plaza to destroy in the first place: mostly just parking, postwar buildings and prewar facadectomy candidates...

I wouldn't exactly call SP cheese. That red granite tomb with the brushed stainless steel accents, those staircase railings...and that Byzantine form really get me going. Of all the Postmodern 80s towers, I think it's up there with the AT&T tower or Houston's Bank of America center.

Others:

- losing the art deco building with the Admiral sign to BCE and Calatrava's Galleria was more than a fair trade.
- losing Toronto Star for FCP probably wasn't, but I have a soft spot for Edward Durrell Stone
- losing the Registry building for New City Hall was worth it, too.