Walking tour of Toronto's downtown Deco skyscrapers

Prudential House (55 York Street, 1929)

On Saturday June 16 at 10 am, award-winning author Tim Morawetz will be leading a Heritage Toronto walking tour entitled 'The Art Deco Towers of Bay Street.'

The free, 90-minute tour will walk past seven high-rise office towers, financial institutions and a department store.

The tour departs from Prudential House, 55 York St, just north of Front Street and the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, and wraps up at the corner of Bay and Richmond Streets.

The tour happens rain or shine, and wear comfortable shoes!

Magnificent chandelier lights up downtown Toronto synogogue

If you want to see wonderful original (or restored) Art Deco chandeliers in Toronto, you could visit the Allstream Centre (formerly the Automotive Building at the CNE), or the CIBC Mellon Building (formerly Canada Permanent Mortgage Corp.) on Bay Street.

Or, perhaps surprisingly, you could pay a visit to the Anshei Minsk Synagogue in Toronto's Kensington Market and see this magnificent chandelier featuring broad terraces and universal fan-shaped Deco motifs interspersed with the Star of David. 

The synagogue, at 10 St. Andrew Street, is open daily with morning minyan at 7:30 am.

You've got (Art Deco) mail!

Canada Post has released the designs for a series of five postage stamps, to go on sale June 9, that feature five Art Deco structures from across Canada.

Stamp designer Ivan Novotny of Taylor | Sprules says: “Many of the great (Art) Deco buildings across this country have very distinct silhouettes that were defined by the principles of the movement. It’s the commonly overlooked extraordinary details that adorn these great spires that demand a closer look.”

The five buildings featured in the series are:

• MONTREAL: Cormier House – Ernest Cormier (architect and engineer); 1930–31
•  OTTAWA: Supreme Court of Canada – Ernest Cormier (architect and engineer); 1939
• TORONTO: The R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant – Thomas C. Pomphrey (designer, of engineering firm Gore, Nasmith and Storrie); initial phase designed 1932–1937 and opened 1941
• REGINA: Dominion Building – Reilly and Portnall (architects), 1935–37
• VANCOUVER: Burrard Bridge – George Lister Thornton Sharp (architect), 1930–32

If I was asked to add five buildings to turn this into a top-ten list, I would recommend:

• QUEBEC CITY: Price Building – Ross and MacDonald, 1929–30
• TORONTO: Garden Court Apartments – Page and Steele, 1939–42
• CALGARY: (former) Bank of Nova Scotia (Eighth Avenue West) – John M. Lyle, 1929
• VANCOUVER: Marine Building – McCarter and Nairne, 1929–1930
• VANCOUVER: Vogue Theatre – Kaplan and Sprachman, 1940–41

What great Canadian Deco buildings would YOU add to the list?

Check out this dozen Toronto Deco photos!

A brief profile of the Art Deco Architecture in Toronto book has just been published in Canada's History magazine that features a dozen photos of Tim Morawetz's favourite Deco buildings in the city.

These are just some of the 70-odd buildings featured in the book.

Enjoy!

Feature attraction! gas, milk and a coffee

Allenby (later Roxy) cinema as Hollywood dinner theatre in the 1980s.

Toronto's Allenby cinema – located at 1215 Danforth Ave., just east of Greenwood Ave., later rebranded the Roxy – was designed by noted theatre architects Kaplan and Sprachman in 1936. (After its cinema days were over, it was known to a generation of mostly youthful Torontonians as the home of midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show, and as then as the Hollywood Dinner Theatre before lying closed and derelict for more than a decade. 

About a year ago, things began happening when Imperial Oil (which owned the corner lot, formerly the site of a gas station), began transforming the tired but still intact yellow brick building with decorative stone details into a state-of-the-art On the Run convenience store.

Original canopy has been faithfully
rebuilt, including neon lettering.

With the building now essentially finished, Torontonians who once eagerly lined-up to watch the latest movie now line up in droves to get their daily fix of Tim Hortons coffee!

At end of August, the hoarding was still up.
The contemporary On the Run entrance
is to the far right of the photo, facing west.

 Kudos to Imperial Oil for their wisdom to preserve and restore so much of the building to create a unique 'c-store' experience, and to ERA Architects and Teksign for pulling it off!

Read the story about the building's transformation in articles by Dave Leblanc (The Globe and Mail) and Christopher Hume (The Toronto Star). 

Footnote: Other Deco-era cinemas in Toronto designed by Kaplan and Sprachman are the former Eglinton cinema (400 Eglinton Avenue West, 1934-36); the former Bayview (1605 Bayview Avenue, 1936), the former State (1610 Bloor Street West, 1937), the Metro (679 Bloor Street West, 1938) and the Paradise (1008 Bloor Street West, 1939). Two other Deco cinemas (the Pylon – 608-610 College Street, 1939, now the Royal; and the Kingsway – 3030 Bloor Street West, 1939-40) were designed by different architects. Source: Art Deco Architecture in Toronto by Tim Morawetz, 2009.

Art Deco shimmers in Battle of the Blades

Last year, the Battle of the Blades 'figure-skater / hockey-skater combo' TV show took place at Maple Leaf Gardens, the ultimate Art Deco ice palace (1931; Ross & Macdonald, with Jack Ryrie and Mackenzie Waters).

  Georges Laraque and Anabelle Langlois with classic lotus-leaf Art Deco decoration behind.

But this year, despite the fact the show now originates from a brand-new, custom-built set in a giant production studio, the show's designers have retained the Gardens decor. (Read more from National Post columnist Peter Kuitenbrouwer about the creation of the show's set in the Pinewood Studios Toronto.)

Stone 'balconies' accentual recessed vertical strip windows

For instance, the sides of the hall are adorned with crisply fluted vertical piers topped with the Gardens' signature zig-zag details.

More boldly,  there are decorative screens around the ice surface that feature  timeless Deco lotus leaves.

To me, the fact this shamelessly populist reality TV show is putting Art Deco front-and-centre is the best proof that this style truly resonates with the general public!

Notice the bold zig-zags and horizontal stone detailing on the Gardens' facade.

New Women's College Hospital is fracturing its Deco spine

In all the publicity lately about the revitalization of Women's College Hospital, it appears to me that scant attention is being paid to the fact that a heritage building – a National Historic Site, in fact – is being demolished to make way for this new facility.

According to the WCH website History page, the hospital moved in 1935 to its present location at 76 Grenville Street, located close to the University of Toronto. The 10-storey-tall building housed with 140 beds and 45 infant cots, and was officially opened February 22, 1936 by His Excellency, Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada.  The architects of the building were the Boston architectural firm, Stevens and Lee, collaborating with a local Toronto architect, Harold J. Smith.

(For a very detailed history of the institution (formerly known as the Women’s Medical College of Toronto) and its outstanding contribution to women's health in Toronto, click here.)

 
Now I'm well aware that 'the horse is well out of the barn' in terms of any efforts to save the old building, but I believe it deserves some recognition and celebration for its stately, Deco-tinged design.

Women's College at the time of its opening in 1935. (Credit: City of Toronto archives)

Recent view of the original 1935 wing. (Photo: Alan L. Brown)

On the rather quiet Stripped Classical facade, notice the vertical treatment of the windows, the decoration on the spandrel panels, but especially the multiple-plane detailing of the stone-and-brick corners of the piers protruding above the main roofline on either side.

Beyond its contemporary styling, the building also ushered in some important functional innovations for its time:

• improved fireproofing, thanks to a combination of steel frames, reinforced concrete, and hollow tile to isolate fire stairs and panic doors, as well as improved electrical systems.
• enhanced soundproofing to create a quiet environment conducive to recuperation, through the use of noiseless door hardware, elevators and staircases located away from wards, rubber hallway flooring, and a silent light 'call button' system.
• ease of maintenance to maintain sanitary conditions.
• efficiency of the floor layout (a double-loaded central corridor).
• brighter pastel colours – a breath of fresh air compared to the institutional grey and white colour schemes prevalent at the time.

I invite anyone who has information or would like to dig out more information about the design of the 1935 building to add a comment or get in touch!

Toronto Art Deco book an award finalist!

I'm delighted to announce that my book has been named a 'Finalist' in 2010 Heritage Toronto Awards! 

For info on the awards (or to possibly attend if you're in Toronto!), click here. 

To read about the other finalists, click here.

Note: Another book finalist is Glenn McArthur's A Progressive Traditionalist: John M. Lyle, Architect (Coach House Books, 2009). This excellent book is the 'definitive work' on the life and work of the man who, in my opinion, was English-Canada's premier architect of the first half of the 20th century, and a master and promoter of 'Canadian-themed' Deco architecture.

From cars to conventions... the re-birth of the Automotive Building

The design of the Automotive Building – completed in 1929 and located at 105 Princes' Boulevard, Toronto (on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition, fondly known as the 'Ex') – involved a competition with 36 entrants.

The competition winner, Douglas Kertland (1880 – 1982), created what I consider to be the finest example of the 'Stripped Classical' style in Toronto.

The facade of the 120,000 square-foot, two-level facility – built as a showcase for the latest cars, buses and trucks, as well as automotive accessories – featured ribbed pilasters, round arched entries, a decorative moulding and ornamental metal grilles. (For more info, see pages 67 – 69 of Art Deco Architecture in Toronto.)

Here are some photos of the building from 1993 (prior to its major renovation):

Green, cast-iron spandrel panel with multiple planes.

Notice decorative carved owl atop smooth pilaster.

Metal grille covering blind windows contains stylized floral motifs.

In the fall of 2009, after an extensive renovation, the building was reopened as The Allstream Centre, a state-of-the-art convention centre.


Click here to view a photo of the renovated exterior.

The article below, written by The Toronto Star's architecture reporter Christopher Hume at the time of the renovated building's opening, includes a photo of the interior.

See Toronto's skyline circa 1930!

I just googled (digitally stumbled) upon a blog posting from Janet McNaughton that has some wonderful images of what Toronto's skyline looked like around 19230. Deco skyscrapers that we now perceive within a dense urban context were once landmarks on the skyline, with their pyramidally massed elevations that much more compelling. Check it out!

Three Deco-era skyscrapers: Canada Life (far left); Royal York Hotel (centre left); Canadian Bank of Commerce (centre right).