Cross-posted from No Mean City, Alex’s personal blog on architecture
If the name No Mean City sounds vaguely familiar to you, that’s because it’s borrowed: I’m nodding at the book No Mean City by the late Eric Arthur. That was an important look at Toronto’s early architectural history, in which Arthur – a transplanted New Zealander and zealous Torontonian – catalogued every good scroll and pilaster of the city’s Victorian buildings. Arthur was a crucial figure for historic preservation in this city.
But he was also, in his own work as an architect and professor, a modernist. He was important in advancing modernist ideas at the University of Toronto, where he taught for four decades. He built very little, but he did contribute a couple of buildings to U of T during its 1960s expansion. And the best of his campus buildings, Wymilwood, is about to get a respectful revision by Moriyama and Teshima.
Wymilwood was built in 1952 as the student centre for Victoria University (essentially part of U of T). Just 20,000 square feet, it’s a two-and-a-half storey structure that cuts down into the earth to create a cozy subterranean cafe, warmed by a hearth and lots of southern daylight. Upstairs, a suave curving staircase links the first and second floors, which house handsome meeting and activity rooms. It’s capped with a folded plate roof made of Douglas fir.
By the time I was a student hanging out there in the nineties, it was looking a bit tired – but many of its details were intact.
The Moriyama and Teshima project will double the centre’s size with a new wing that complements, but doesn’t imitate, the original building. Now named the Goldring Centre, it will be wrapped in limestone cladding, with generally small windows carefully positioned to relate to the surroundings.
The big move is in the back. The neighbouring student residence, which is a mediocre modern slab, really impinges on the beauty of this building and of Annesley Hall, the 1903 Queen Anne confection next door. MTA are designing a new plaza, turning it into a classic quad arrangement.
Inside, the upstairs rooms and the downstairs cafe are getting reorganized and restored. The material palette suggested by these images looks a little too spare, to my eyes, but MTA’s recent work on campus suggests they will handle the details tastefully.
There was some doubt a few years ago whether this building would survive. It will, and it looks like it will be well treated.
This is excellent – not only because of Arthur’s importance but because of the quality of the urban ensemble around it. Its close neighbours are the Bader Theatre, by Lett/Smith Architects, which is a good building, and the McKinsey offices by Taylor Hariri Pontarini, one of the finest Toronto buildings of the past century.
I’ve always thought this was one of the best blocks in Toronto. Now it’ll get a little better.
2 comments
When I was a law student at U of T in the late 90s, I would occasionally get a coffee with people at the Wymilwood Cafe. It was a lovely place to sit during the daytime, even in the depths of winter. Goes to show what good architecture can accomplish – nice places to sit in the sun during the Toronto winter are incredibly rare.
Glad to hear that the building is getting a facelift and not a redesign.
Eric Arthur was another of those individuals who did so much for architectural preservation in the city with his book “No Mean City” by making it clear that Toronto is a city with a rich architectural past at a point when many of the buildings were run down and in need of restoration. Many were being demolished, depriving the city of its best evidence of architectural achievement. So many beautiful buildings were being demolished back then, even for trivial reasons like having a windswept plaza, parking lot, or trivial park.
Though a lot more work is needed in the preservation culture in Toronto, one can be proud that his prediction that Osgoode Hall would be the only Victorian building left standing in 21st century Toronto proved to be totally false. I also admire the fact that he was a Modernist, yet he cared about preservation, as the two seemed to be often at odds with each other. His ideals of preserving the beauty of the past and faith in modern design are inspirational.