Curiosities
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The story of the Toronto Island’s modern architecture
When the flood water on the Toronto Island eventually recedes it will reveal a damaged and possibly forever altered landscape. For the first time in...
By Chris Bateman -
The short, mysterious life of the Beard Building
The Beard Building is a historical enigma. Toronto’s first skyscraper, the 7-storey building was constructed in 1895 to designs by E. J. Lennox, one...
By Chris Bateman -
The oddities of the Dundas Street Extension
In December 1954, the railway tracks near Logan Avenue presented the final obstacle in one of Toronto’s first major post-war road building...
By Chris Bateman -
The lost streets of South Parkdale
No Toronto neighbourhood paid for the Gardiner Expressway quite like Parkdale. Before construction of the lakefront highway in 1958, the land south of...
By Chris Bateman -
The demise of the first “air rights” project in Toronto
When Toronto’s first subway line opened in 1954, much of track north of Bloor Street was located in a shallow, open trench. The money-saving open cut...
By Chris Bateman -
The story behind the first computer in Canada
In 1949, a team of professors and graduate students at the University of Toronto began building a machine no-one in Canada, and few in the world, had ever...
By Chris Bateman -
The space age Parkway Plaza, Toronto’s first heritage supermarket
It was only a shopping mall, but when the Parkway Plaza opened at Ellesmere Road and Victoria Park Avenue in 1958, it signalled the arrival of space age...
By Chris Bateman -
Book Review: Toronto Then and Now
Toronto Then and Now is an elegant, large-format coffee table book that highlights the past and present of some of Toronto’s most interesting...
By Dylan Reid -
LORINC: The next massive mural should be at Yonge & Bloor
It seems to me that the act of adornment – indeed, the compulsion to adorn – is a fundamentally human impulse that speaks to our deep craving for...
By John Lorinc -
The life and death of Peter Dickinson and The Inn on the Park
Peter Dickinson was dying when he designed the Inn on the Park. From a bed in Mount Sinai hospital, his body weakened from cancer, Dickinson listened to...
By Chris Bateman -
The Toronto Park Pavilion needs your love
It’s hard not to love the Park Pavilion. Designed in 1958 by British-born architect Alan Crossley and consulting engineer Laurence Cazaly, the space...
By Chris Bateman -
40 in the shade: Toronto’s worst heatwave
For an excruciating week in July, 1936, Toronto, the province, and much of Canada burned. An unprecedented and deadly continent-wide heatwave...
By Chris Bateman