dt_toronto_geek
Superstar
They shut the street down back in the 70's for a few years. It was not a success.
I vaguely remember that. Below, Yonge s. of Gerrard facing east
They shut the street down back in the 70's for a few years. It was not a success.
They shut the street down back in the 70's for a few years. It was not a success.
They shut the street down back in the 70's for a few years. It was not a success.
Returning, briefly, to the ribbon of mid/late Victorian commercial buildings that runs south of Bloor to King, nobody could object to the hustle and bustle and the variety of businesses there, just to the way in which the collective architectural statement the buildings make has been obscured by the treatment of their commercial fronts. Much as the old Gooderham and Worts buildings have been renovated, and play off of the new Distillery condo towers, so could these Yonge Street buildings be brought back. Their collective identity is strong enough to stand as a counterpoint to whatever individual residential/office towers are built behind them. I can only think of Queen Street ( east and west ), Front Street just east of Yonge, Colborne Street and a few other small pockets, as equivalent runs of mid/late Victorianred brick commercial buildings with an equivalent strong character that exist near the downtown core. Bay Street doesn't have them, nor University Avenue. Bloor never had them, east and west of Yonge. Spadina has a wonderful collection of big, stocky warehouse and factory buildings that are from a slightly later date and have a different character, and neither Church, Jarvis, Sherbourne nor Parliament have the equivalent ribbons of commercial buildings from the same era that Yonge does. They're quite a treasure, despite the incursions of decades of development by large projects such as the one proposed for the south east corner of Bloor and Yonge, and I wish they'd be refurbished and seen for their collective effect.
Looks... awkward. ... but maybe it's just the blue colour. Just looks awkward and chunky-- trying to put curves and squared forms together. In real life I think it'd be better but... we'll see!
Is the rendering posted at the intersection much more clear than those on the website?