Toronto Pinnacle One Yonge | 345.5m | 105s | Pinnacle | Hariri Pontarini

Nearly the whole neighbourhood was obliterated, not just the area of Berczy Park. These pix from the early-70s are reminiscent of Cold War Berlin.

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Those particular pictures get me every time. Quite frankly, they're shocking. I'm actually surprised the city didn't decide to indiscriminantly destroy the flatiron building as well while they were at it.
 
Nearly the whole neighbourhood was obliterated, not just the area of Berczy Park. These pix from the early-70s are reminiscent of Cold War Berlin.

4931-15029.jpg

Source

m13t38spxuIinIdqOTHXxiq1xxEpCTs3Zam5pqNSmmQ.jpg

Source

Excellent post.

A couple of questions and observations based on the pics above:

1) I having trouble placing this building w/the smokestack, its well east of Jarvis, south of Front, not sure if its east of Sherbourne. Anyone have thoughts?

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2) Look at something that had survived to this point, but would be lost not too many years later, St. Lawrence Market North:

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3) Look at the size of the rail yard along the south side of the Esplanade. Its truly difficult to comprehend how much of DT was railway. West of Union many of us remember, The CN tower essentially surrounded by tracks.

Fewer remember the rail yard where Metro Hall and Roy Thomson Hall now stand.

But this one too!

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I now return this thread from tangential area history to our regularly scheduled problematic math!

Note that all photos above are taken subset, zoomed crops of the photo from Toronto Archives posted by Condovo
 
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Late 1960s till mid 1980's was a terrible time for cities. Post war suburbanization had hollowed cites out and rise of cars required ramming expressways through the urban core which devastated the surrounding areas and more cars required more areas be turned into parking lot.

Glad since the 1990's, this gentrification began in Toronto and hope to be complete by the 2030's in which all surface level parking spots are going to be re-purposed.
 
Excellent post.

A couple of questions and observations based on the pics above:

1) I having trouble placing this building w/the smokestack, its well east of Jarvis, south of Front, not sure if its east of Sherbourne. Anyone have thoughts?
I think the smokestack must be on the west side of Berkeley St?
 
3) Look at the size of the rail yard along the south side of the Esplanade. Its truly difficult to comprehend how much of DT was railway. West of Union many of us remember, The CN tower essentially surrounded by tracks.

I recently found this very informative article about this history of the area:
 
There needs to be reverence to the history that established the area, the time, the importance to the growth of the city to where we are now.
 

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