So you'd be OK with the old Simpsons (now Bay Store) being torn down and replaced with a contemporary big box store because there nothing sacred about retail stores?
Toronto Eaton Centre (Ongoing Renewal) | ?m | ?s | Cadillac Fairview | Zeidler
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So you'd be OK with the old Simpsons (now Bay Store) being torn down and replaced with a contemporary big box store because there nothing sacred about retail stores?
Tewder
Senior Member
Right, gold stars for everybody for playing nicely and getting along with others.
adma
Superstar
Okay, so you're a sophomorically pretentious adolescent. Fine.
Besides, wouldn't that be contradicted by the historically reverent tack certain "mall retail" takes t/w its own marketing? Y'know, everything from old-school Gap tees to Roots resucitating its original logo...
DavidJamesTO
Active Member
What an ironic question to ask in a thread about the Eaton Centre...
Well that was another era wasn't it. If I could go back and do it again with what I know today I would have saved both the Bay Street and Yonge Street strips. The new mall would have been inserted between the two. And I would have updated the insides of the buildings that were ultimately torn down. The ones on Bay could have been gems. Forum member thecharioteer posted a neat plan like that somewhere on UT.
And I'd ask condovo if he's be OK with taking down any of our iconic office towers? After all they only exist to make, not unlike malls, money.
And I'd ask condovo if he's be OK with taking down any of our iconic office towers? After all they only exist to make, not unlike malls, money.
Uncle Teddy
Senior Member
Correct me if wrong but in return for closing Albert Street the Eaton Centre is supposed to allow folks access from Yonge to Bay even when the stores are closed. Sounds like quasi-public space to me.
condovo
Senior Member
But that's just the point, isn't it? Everything's for sale. Nothing's sacred. Including the building. It's a mall.
Said property lines encroach on the public realm. Eaton Centre's interior is an entirely self-contained private space within a mall. Different animal. I don't lament Manulife's recent interior 'freshening.' Do you? How 'bout you, adma?
Like Eaton's? And how much remains of the old Simpsons interior? Should that have been left untouched in perpetuity? Even if it gets in the way of conducting business?
Private. 'Quasi-public' is just double-speak for public consumption; a time-honoured mall strategy that gets 'em every time.
Next.
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adma
Superstar
Actually, had it survived with a certain degree of integrity into the "preservation era" (and the more recent, the more likely), it probably would have been accounted for. Though when it comes to "getting in the way of conducting business", there's the post-Eaton's saga of Eaton's College Street to consider--but by your logic, they needn't have even bothered to be forced into keeping *any* of the Deco interior. "Private", you know. Allow for market forces. (Yeah, sure, and that nearly resulted in the Carlu's demolition.)
In fact, given your pretentiously cynical pro-materialistic arguments, maybe you should be arguing against virtually all of what preservation's become over the past half century, hearkening back to the days when men were men and they had no compunctions about demolishing noteworthy old works on behalf of noteworthy new works (cf. the TD Centre pavilion--or for that matter, BNS replacing Cawthra House kitty-corner). Come to think of it, modernist preservation should itself be an oxymoron, given how the style's founded upon our not being martyrs to history. And, of course, organizations like this
http://www.sca-roadside.org/
ought to be a complete waste of time, by your logic.
And for that matter, forget mall retail--there's building types such as schools and hospitals where overwrought "public good" arguments have been quite commonly used to condemn the old holus bolus--I've already raised Riverdale Hospital, but there's time-honoured cases like 999 Queen as well.
By such logic, this demolition was a good and welcome thing.
condovo
Senior Member
^^ You're onto something despite yourself.
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unimaginative2
Senior Member
picard102
Senior Member
Honestly, if you people really gave a shit about the railings you'd have done more then whine about it on the internet.
Don't act like it's some sort of great injustice when you did nothing.
When the sun has scorched all life off this planet we'll certainly be glad we devoted 100 posts to railings at the mall.
Don't act like it's some sort of great injustice when you did nothing.
When the sun has scorched all life off this planet we'll certainly be glad we devoted 100 posts to railings at the mall.
Tuscani01
Senior Member
It's a train station. Just a place to get from A to B.
But a train station doesn't have any competition, and isn't a business.
adma
Superstar
Actually, it *was* matters of competition and business that played a role in Penn Station's destruction--the post-WWII decline of passenger rail in the face of air and road travel, coupled with the belief/hope that modernization and ridding the dead wood of the old (plus a little collateral revenue from air rights development and class-A office space) was just the thing to give a fresh new face to a tired, fading industry, neighbourhood, and what have you.
Though as I've suggested before: would the heritage narrative be different (and more readily framed in "reactionary" terms) if Mies designed Penn Station's replacement...
droyces
Active Member
Just curios adma, as you certainly have strong opinions about the changes being made to the Eaton Centre, but have you been to the mall to see the changes yourself? If yes then what do you think (putting aside the issue of the fact that this is a renovation rather than something new)?
nrb
Active Member
Actually you're completely wrong. Penn station and Grand central were built by different railroad companies in competition with one another.