{"id":55256,"date":"2016-06-17T13:00:20","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T17:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=55256"},"modified":"2016-06-17T12:24:07","modified_gmt":"2016-06-17T16:24:07","slug":"city-hall-ended-st-clair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2016\/06\/17\/city-hall-ended-st-clair\/","title":{"rendered":"How City Hall ended up on St. Clair Avenue"},"content":{"rendered":"
In the late\u00a01940s, Toronto City Hall was\u00a0bursting at the seams.<\/p>\n
Now known as Old City Hall, the building on the northeast corner of Queen and Bay streets was approaching\u00a050 years old and becoming increasingly crowded with\u00a0court rooms, crown attorney and judge’s offices, councillors, and city staffers, not to mention\u00a0the council chambers.<\/p>\n
The situation\u00a0was so bad most city departments\u00a0were\u00a0forced to relocate parts\u00a0of their operations\u00a0to a separate building\u00a0across the street.<\/p>\n
The Parks Department, for example, had their community centre office at City Hall and their accounting office in\u00a0the Dominion Building at Bay and Albert streets. Some planning staff\u00a0were jammed in the former City Hall housekeeper’s apartment\u00a0(traffic was\u00a0in\u00a0the old bathroom) while other divisions spilled into the corridors.<\/p>\n
“Almost every inch of City Hall’s 5.4 acres of floor space is occupied,” the Globe and Mail<\/em>\u00a0reported in 1948. “But even with temporary offices in halls and other make-shift arrangements, some offices of the administration must be housed wholly outside City Hall.”<\/p>\n
The public had approved the idea of a new civic square on the west side of Bay Street, north of Queen Street, in a referendum the previous year, and the idea to add\u00a0a new City Hall onto the plan quickly gained traction in\u00a0the early 1950s.<\/p>\n
In June, 1953 city council under Mayor Allan Lamport\u00a0selected\u00a0Toronto\u00a0architecture firms Mathers & Haldenby, Marani & Morris, and Shore & Moffat\u00a0to dream up\u00a0a new municipal\u00a0headquarters\u00a0for the civic square site, which was formerly part of\u00a0a\u00a0dense immigrant neighbourhood\u00a0known as The Ward.<\/p>\n
The group design process, however, was fraught with difficulties. Principally, the City and new Metropolitan level of government couldn’t decide exactly what they wanted from the new building.<\/p>\n
If Old City Hall could be made entirely into a courthouse, the city\u00a0wondered, the new City Hall\u00a0could save on space. The city toyed with the idea of incorporating a police headquarters into the design, and there was also a plan to\u00a0devote part of the new building\u00a0to the newly-formed Metropolitan Toronto.<\/p>\n
Eventually,\u00a0a 1955 report by consulting\u00a0architects Craig & Madill said City Hall was unworthy of conversion into a courthouse and “not worth preserving” either. The 55-year-old building was 30 percent too small to serve the suggested purpose, the firm said. Besides, it was “time-worn” and\u00a0“fortress-like,” according to the Globe and Mail<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Even the three architecture firms couldn’t agree on the concept. According to the Globe and Mail<\/em>, Shore & Moffat wanted to build a contemporary complex consisting of several buildings, but the more traditionalist Mathers & Haldenby and Marani & Morris voted them down. The design presented to the city in November, 1955\u2014a single, multi-storey edifice with a three-storey council chamber\u2014was a compromise reached between the trio, and it showed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nUnder the Mathers & Haldenby, Marani & Morris, and Shore & Moffat proposal, the council chamber would have been located in a three storey block overlooking the civic square. Image: City of Toronto Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The building\u00a0was roundly panned by members of the public\u00a0and\u00a0big-name architects alike. Frank Lloyd Wright said the plain Modernist structure was a “clich\u00e9” and Walter Gropius called it “a very poor pseudo-modern design unworthy of the city of Toronto.” The University of Toronto’s architecture faculty hated it, too, dubbing it “a monstrous monument to backwardness.”<\/p>\n
In December, 1955 the citizens of Toronto rejected the expenditure in a referendum, and the City Hall project temporarily collapsed.<\/p>\n
While all this was unfolding, multinational petroleum company Imperial Oil was\u00a0planning a new executive office\u00a0on St. Clair Avenue West. Until that point, the company\u00a0was spread\u00a0across several\u00a0buildings\u00a0in the King and Church area, as well as in Leaside.<\/p>\n
In 1953, Mathers & Haldenby prepared a design for Imperial Oil that was strikingly similar to the joint concept for New City Hall. The 19-storey structure had the same simple modernist facade and basic shape, just with bigger windows. “[It] will have so much glass some are already calling it a ‘glass skyscraper,'” the Globe and Mail<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n
The paper also noted the company’s decision to locate north of downtown. “A northern trend of large buildings may help to relieve downtown Toronto’s parking problem, but the restaurants and dining rooms around King Street East will not rejoice in the move out of the downtown area of some 800 healthy appetites,” wrote Wellington Jeffers, the financial editor.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nMathers & Haldenby’s 1953 proposal for Imperial Oil’s headquarters on St. Clair Avenue bore a striking example to the firm’s later proposal for Toronto city hall. Globe and Mail, June 13, 1953.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
<\/p>\n
The St. Clair West project received planning approval in 1955, right around the time the city was tossing the Mathers & Haldenby,\u00a0Marani & Morris, and\u00a0Shore & Moffat proposal in the trash.<\/p>\n
Perhaps believing their work shouldn’t go to waste, Mathers & Haldenby appeared to merge the tower component from the City Hall proposal with their existing plans for the Imperial Oil headquarters. The revised office tower dispensed with the three-storey council chamber and enclosed courtyard located at the front of the complex, keeping only the office block at the rear.<\/p>\n
Excavation for the revised Imperial Oil Building began in December, 1955 and the structural\u00a0skeleton\u2014the largest all-welded steel structure in the world at the time\u2014was finished 11 months later. Due to its location on a natural ridge, the building’s rooftop observation level\u00a0was the highest point above sea level in the city, offering unbroken views of downtown.<\/p>\n
Construction didn’t entirely go to plan, however. Residents of Foxbar Road directly south of\u00a0the tower site fought hard against the Imperial Oil Building’s back\u00a0parking lot, which required the demolition of several of their homes.<\/p>\n
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