To add to the long and growing list of individuals working on Toronto projects close to their hearts that benefit the rest of us, here is TOBuilt. Local urban-things and architecture enthusiast Bob Krawczyk has painstakingly rode his bike around the city (the whole megacity, not just ye old Toronto) taking photographs of buildings and structures and cataloging them with whatever information he can dig up. This amazing database covers most of Toronto’s tall buildings, many heritage properties and lots of other structures — but it’s a work in progress, and buildings and new information are always being added. As of last week, there are 7871 structures on TOBuilt. Some of these include proposed but never built buildings, as well as things demolished.
So when you’re at the computer and wonder what the Downsview Central Heating Plant looks like or when the St. Lawrence Centre was built, this website is for you. Remember to click on each picture for more information and bigger photo.
3 comments
This is a very useful site despite its flaws. I looked at the section about my neighbourhood – the Grange – and see some assignments that I would question. For example, one building may be listed under its original name, but has a completely different use and name today. Meanwhile there are other structures where their current names rather than their original names are used. My caution is that this is not a site for historians, especially social historians or those interested in accuracy of building provenance. Useful for looking at, data on the developers who were involved. Could be more interesting if it somehow matched up with Shawn’s murmur project to give the people stories.
Hey Hey,
Speaking of useful Toronto Building websites, you might want to look at http://www.virtualcity.ca/ – It’s an elevation version of google-earth, came across it during my last studio project, they’ve managed to photo-document all the major streets in the city and combine the images with the map. As well, flikr’s got a new map/image thing starting up now, not nearly as useful as virtual city, but they do have the ability to geo-tag photos… can find many many images of one spot! – Saves an architecture student much time when looking for the right perspective!
Anyhow,
Enjoy!
-Jordan!
There’s a good article on Bob in today’s G&M:
POSTED ON 19/01/07
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THE ARCHITOURIST: ARCHITECTURE
The ultimate interactive website for armchair architourists
A serial archivist has set up an encyclopedic database of Toronto’s built heritage
by
DAVE LEBLANC