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!

Art Deco architecture across Canada – sneak peak!

This Sunday afternoon (March 25), Tim Morawetz is delivering an illustrated lecture entitled 'Art Deco Architecture Across Canada' as part of the Roaring Twenties Lecture Series at the Bata Shoe Museum in downtown Toronto.

Ceiling of Marine Building lobby, Vancouver, 1929

During the talk, Tim will showcase several dozen Art Deco buildings from coast to coast, including:

Hambly House, Hamilton, 1939

* Halifax's Bank of Nova Scotia
* Montreal's best Deco Roman Catholic Cathedral
* Toronto's legendary Maple Leaf Gardens
* Hamilton's newly restored Hambly House
* Winnipeg's best Moderne high school
* Calgary's dismantled York Hotel
* Vancouver's spectacular Marine Building

This talk is a chance to preview some of the buildings that will be featured in Tim's upcoming book to be published later this year.

Lecture tickets are $16, which includes Museum admisison and a short tour of the Roaring Twenties exhibition following the lecture (free for Bata Shoe Museum members). Pre-registration is required; call 416-979-7799 x240 or email programs@batashoemuseum.ca.

Tragic loss of Moderne high school in British Columbia

The 1948 Streamlined Moderne style Southern Okanagan Secondary School, located in Oliver, B.C., was consumed by fire on Monday, Sept. 12. 

The school had been undergoing a $29-million renovation, and while the new gymnasium, science laboratory and cafeteria were saved, the south and east wings were destroyed, as was the cherished and historic auditorium.

Thanks to Robert Hill, author of the Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada 1800–1950, for passing along that the school was designed by Theo Korner and Harry W.  Postle in 1945–46.

For news story links, visit The Globe and Mail, Wikipedia, or Google the school's name. 

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?

News from Miami Beach

As you'll see in the Miami Design Preservation League's February 2011 newsletter, the advocacy campaign to protect the historic district's vacant windows from being used for ad space was successful. Also, read about the various activities that made the city's Art Deco Weekend such a great event.

(Miami Beach is the birthplace of the International Congress of Art Deco Societies, the governing body that's responsible for overseeing the bi-annual World Congress on Art Deco® -- the ultimate experience for Deco aficionados. The next one is being held in Rio de Janiero in August 2011.)

Miami Beach, Florida and Napier, New Zealand are two communities that have very effectively leveraged their Art Deco heritage and created ongoing events that celebrate their cultural value while also fostering economic activity!

URGENT: Help stop the defacement of Miami Beach's Art Deco district!

The Miami Design Preservation League is encouraging Deco-lovers and others to make their voice heard and help persuade the Miami Beach City Commission NOT to liberalize its proven sign laws at a committee meeting on Monday, Jan. 31.

If the laws are weakened, Miami Beach could soon have full-sized advertising signage in empty store windows, and potentially allow for roof-top billboards – the scourge of so many other cities.

If you feel strongly about preserving the character of this unique historic district, please click here and send a email to the Mayor and Commissioners.

Thanks in advance for your support!

How Deco helped sell glamour and style

The weekend of January 14 to 16, 2011 is the annual Art Deco Weekend in Miami Beach, Florida, and the theme this year is Selling Glamour & Style.

As usual, the weekend includes a lecture series (highlighting the influences of the Art Deco era on the modern marketing machine),guided historical walking tours, a couture fashion show, furniture exhibit, film series, weekend drive parade and classic car fest.

Click here for details.

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.

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!