Streetscape
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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 -
REID: Transforming Buenos Aires
A radical transformation of the centre of Buenos Aires, Argentina, combining a new Bus Rapid Transit project and a pedestrian-and-cyclist priority...
By Dylan Reid -
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 -
Yonge Street Mall: The fun and failure of pedestrianizing Toronto’s iconic strip during the 1970s
On June 3, 1971, there was a party on downtown Yonge Street. Around 8pm, following the news that Ontario Premier Bill Davis had cancelled the Spadina...
By Daniel Ross -
Sex on Yonge: Examining the decade when Yonge Street was the city’s sin strip
“I take a walk down Yonge Street, where good times are bought and sold.” When folk music great Ian Tyson penned those lines in 1970, he knew his audience...
By Daniel Ross -
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 Shell Oil Tower is a lost 1950s masterpiece
A little over 30 years ago this winter, one of Toronto’s earliest Modern buildings was pulled to the ground. When the Shell Oil Tower at Exhibition...
By Chris Bateman -
The rise and fall and rise of St. Lawrence Hall
In 1966, Toronto’s St. Lawrence Hall was in terrible shape. The venerable old neoclassical building at the southwest corner of King and Jarvis...
By Chris Bateman -
When will Toronto love its Modern architecture?
What do you picture when you read the words “heritage building.”? It probably isn’t the Carlton Tower at Yonge and Carlton streets. The...
By Chris Bateman -
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