Save Otter Loop?

(Otter loop photograph by Richard Leitch)

Adam Sobolak of the Toronto Architecture Conservancy sent me this press release about the group’s desire to save the distinctive transit shelter in the loop at the corner of Avenue Road and Otter Crescent:

“Recently, the TTC sold the “Otter Loop” bus turnaround (on Avenue Road at Otter Crescent, south of Lawrence and across from Havergal College) to the City for $1, Thanks to the efforts of Post City Magazines publisher Lorne London, together with the endorsement of Councillors Moscoe & Stintz, it is slated for conversion into “Heart Park” (“North America’s First & Only Heart-Shaped Urban Park”), with a call for submissions by July 1, and a prize of $1000 for the winning entry.

While not a proposal for the park per se, may I make a strong recommendation that the existing Otter Loop transit shelter—perhaps the last of its mid-c20 type remaining in Toronto, neglected and forgotten yet with its integrity remarkably intact—be accounted for in the proposals.

In the lore of early modern Toronto, the original Yonge Subway of 1954 plays an important part, not least for its station architecture: clean, simple designs reflecting the sensibility of pioneering Toronto Modernist firm John B. Parkin Associates. (Their legend has even survived the 1954 line’s brutal modernizations of the past generation and continuing.)

What’s been virtually forgotten by posterity, though, is that Parkin’s design consultancy to the TTC predated and encompassed more than just the subway. Influenced by Charles Holden’s designs for London Transport between the wars, the Parkin firm provided designs for a number of transit loops and shelters in the 1940s. These were, in effect, an aesthetic dress rehearsal for the Yonge line (and “TTC Modern” in general).”

Toronto Architectural Conservancy