Architecture Fetish
October 1st, 2009
With summer coming to an end and nature’s most colourful season just around the corner, I’m reminded of an architectural style that put as much emphasis on the view from the building as it put on the view of the building itself. Regency style buildings sought to connect architecture and nature, often with a touch of whimsy. Few examples were ever built here and even fewer remain, but they are more than worth a mention.
The Regency Style began in England in the early nineteenth century when the Prince Regent (George IV) commissioned English architect John Nash to design a whimsical palace in the Indo-Gothic style. The Royal Pavilion at Brighton has nothing comparable in Canada, but the essence of its inspiration is linked to the Regency style cottages that began to appear all over Ontario a few decades later.
Retiring British officers were the originators, bringing with them memories of the distant countries where they’d served the King. Set within the landscape, these houses were part of the picturesque movement which placed great importance on the connection between the building and the landscape ensuring beautiful views to and from the building.
The context of these buildings was so important that the main reason they no longer exist is that as the city grew around them they lost their deliberate connection to their location becoming confined to small city lots. This combined with advanced age meant that most examples disappeared long ago.
May 14th, 2009
Toronto has been inhabited for thousands of years. During those years countless structures were built housing the aboriginal peoples who lived here but today there are only archaeological remains from those periods that describe the city’s oldest structures and the beginning of architecture here.
When humans arrived in what is now Toronto approximately 12,000 years ago they were proto-Algonquian speakers, a nomadic people, travelling the land to hunt and gather what they needed to survive. The structures they built were not meant for permanent habitation. What they actually looked like or how they were constructed remains a mystery.
When a shift towards agricultural society developed with the arrival of Iroquoian-speaking people between 500 and 1300AD, semi-permanent settlements and structures began to appear too. These settlements contained a small number of elliptically shaped houses encircled by a fence or a single-row palisade. By the beginning of the 14th century these settlements had developed into large fortified villages. These villages were located throughout southern Ontario and in Toronto specifically within the Humber, Don and Rouge river drainage systems.
Two of the best known were the Humber settlement called Teiaiagon (near where Baby Point is now located) and the settlement of Ganatsekwyagon near the mouth of the Rouge River. The type of structures built were a response to the environmental conditions and the materials available, resulting in the building most commonly found in the Toronto area: the longhouse.
January 23rd, 2009
Though I maintain Toronto’s first architectural style was The Georgian, I want to give a more humble form of early architecture its time in the spotlight too: the log building. It’s a structure somewhat tied to our national mythology of intrepid settlers forging a new nation from his (and her) humble log dwelling. It seems like every Canadian childhood involved a trip to some sort of pioneer village, where log buildings were abound and the roots of our communities were on display and conveyed to us through timber.
In Canada the log house sprang up out of an odd set of circumstances. The big European powers that largely founded our county and influenced so much of our history (France and England) have no real tradition of building with logs. French Canadians began to use wood in their construction (though they were more inclined to use stone) because trees were so unavoidable here. However, when considering log buildings as we know them today, the credit goes to the Swedes who brought their traditional log architecture to North America. The short lived colony of New Sweden (1638-1655), located in present day Delaware at the mouth of the Delaware River introduced the log structures of Sweden to the English and Dutch settlers in the area. It was a suitable type of construction given the conditions in the area and eventually spread to all parts of the colonies. Loyalists brought it to Canada and British settlers began to build homes using the materials and techniques as well.
It is somewhat fitting then that the building regarded as Toronto’s oldest structure, Scadding Cabin, is built of logs. Reputed to have been built in 1795 and originally located on the east shore of the Don River near Queen Street, the house was moved to its present location on the Exhibition Grounds by the York Pioneer Society in 1879. An early example of an appreciation for local history, the move was planned to coincide with the opening of the Toronto Industrial Exhibition (or as we know it today, the CNE). Built for John Scadding, clerk to the first Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, the one room cabin is constructed of squared, white pine logs with dovetailed corners. Though it is now completely removed from its original context, it is a demonstrative example of what some of Toronto’s earliest structures would have looked like. Structures like the Osterhout Log Cabin in the Guildwood Village area of Scarborough, built in 1795 for Augustus Jones, (also an early employee of Mr. Simcoe as Scarborough’s surveyor), the house is similar in layout and design as the Scadding Cabin and is Scarborough’s oldest building.
December 4th, 2008
Toronto is a Georgian city. It’s our first architectural style and the basis of our city’s grid plan. There may not be much of it around, but it has left a lasting legacy.
Described most simply as a style of proportion and balance, symmetry and simplicity, the Georgian structure was a conception of the classical architecture of Greece or Rome through the lens of renaissance England. The style came out of the Palladian architecture of the Italian Renaissance that emerged as a style of the wealthy in England, Ireland and Scotland, before being simplified in detail and material in the era of the King Georges from 1714-1830. It was suited to the rapidly expanding urban areas of England and, for colonists in the United States, it was often a direct reminder of home. When the Loyalists moved north following the American Revolution they brought the style with them as a sign of their loyalty to Britain and as a means of identifying themselves in their new homeland. Further waves of British settlers after helped sustain it.
In the wilderness that was Toronto at the end of the 18th century, Georgian architecture represented calm, order and good taste, and was just the style a country wishing to characterize ‘peace, order and good government’ needed. It’s no wonder that when plans were drawn up for Toronto as early as 1788 (five years prior to the establishment of the settlement), rational Georgian planning was at work. When a system of surveying and dividing the land was created in 1792, it was acting deputy surveyor General David William Smith (1764-1837) who, working for the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canadna, John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806), devised a checkered plan, in which townships were 9 miles wide, 12 miles deep, each with fourteen concessions of 24 200 acre lots. This plan became dominant in Upper Canada creating the concessions and roads that would later become our highways and major thoroughfares. Toronto’s regularly spaced arterial roads are a Georgian planning legacy.
July 16th, 2008
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK - In early March, I discovered a missing board on the hoarding surrounding an abandoned glass factory in my neighbourhood in Brooklyn. The day prior to these photos being taken demolition had begun on this derelict structure. The missing board was too tempting to pass so I grabbed my friend Jenn and we decided to venture in.
From scrap glass this factory used to produce those little coloured stones you would find in the bottom of aquariums, so the place was filled with old glass bottles, plates, cups, vases, anything that was glass. We found some awesome art deco cologne bottles, Victorian glass ware, an endless supply of miniature glass vases and the list goes on.
It always amazes me what people leave behind when they abandon a place. Needless to say we took an extensive collection of glass items and are now creating a collective photo essay/found object exhibition for a gallery.
Even though this place was in the beginning stages of demolition it was evident that nature and time had already begun the process many years prior. Sections of ceiling had caved in, there were massive holes in the floor allowing glimpses into a flooded basement, and turquoise paint was peeling off in beautiful coiled sheets.
Not only was this place an amazing find for enthusiasts of abandoned buildings, it was an amazing collection of additions created of corrugated steel, brick, siding, asphalt shingles; pretty much any building material you could find. The inside was like a rabbit warren of hallways and rooms, one leading into the next leaving you without bearings. The sound of dripping water and the smell of must made the experience even that more surreal.
I hope you enjoy this brief photo essay below with a few video clips. I’m working on creating several photo essays of abandoned structures I’ve been exploring in Brooklyn and Manhattan, so there will be more in the future. Once we have created our gallery show, I hope to put that on line and will post it on the Wire. That will be a far more cohesive, and in depth exploration of this and other similar sights.
Joe Clement, a long-time Spacing magazine contributor, left his hometown of Toronto in the summer of 2007, and is now living in New York. He will be our Big Apple correspondent covering public space issues. If there are any particular ideas or topics you would like him to cover, leave a comment or email Spacing Toronto.
May 23rd, 2008
Toronto is a city of bungalows. Though we’d fancy ourselves as a city of tall and thin Victorians, tightly packed together on narrow streets, Toronto spreads low and humbly. Once you leave the …
March 27th, 2008
Casa Loma may be Toronto’s favourite and best-known castle, but chateaus still abound. The chateau style was used all over the world, most often for private estates, hotels, and train stations. In this …
February 27th, 2008
Given the winter we’ve been having it would seem impossible to think of Toronto as being in any way exotic, much less to draw comparisons between our city and …
February 8th, 2008
Toronto is pretty flat, but it’s no prairie. Perhaps that’s why the Prairie style didn’t catch on. While it’s not surprising that a style so closely associated with …
January 15th, 2008
If you’ve ever tried to distinguish between the myriad of Victorian architectural styles then you know it isn’t always easy. ‘Victorian architecture’ has numerous forms and influences requiring a bit of patience and a …
