A whole lot of things have changed in my life in the last little while that have resulted in me spending time rearranging things. In the middle of all of that, I have also tried to not let this whole blogging enterprise fall by the wayside. It’s one of the more enjoyable things that I have going. In between all of the other things, I’ve been continuing to pick at the long story I have going about the Canada Square project in Toronto at Yonge and Eglinton. That should come soon enough.
This one is probably better off in the ‘Blog’ section, as so much of the story is in the notes. Nevertheless, because the front hasn’t seen much since February, I’ve put it here.
If you’ve had a chat with me in the last year or so, there is a good chance that I found occasion to slip something about apartments, Centretown, or both into the conversation. It should come as no surprise that during the Depression, construction of all sorts ground to a virtual halt. If you were take a look around the neighbourhood during those years, it would appear that someone forgot to let a small group of developers know that the party was over.
Continue reading Centretown’s Apartments, Civil Servants, and the Great Depression
As I wrote about a few times this past Fall, one of the homiest neighbourhoods in Toronto for me is the Junction Triangle. I won’t go over the ultimately poetic reasons again, but there are also more mundane things that really pull me in. One of those is one of my favourite examples of buildings being integrated with infrastructure is the warehouse on Bloor built into the first of the two subways (underpasses) in the area. I should note that in the time I’ve been researching this, the good folks on the Urban Toronto discussion boards have also been sleuthing the same underpass.
I’ve never hidden my love for the modernist campus of Carleton University. That its Rideau Campus was designed from the get-go as a modern departure from the Oxford-Lite or Harvard-Lite approach that most Canadian universities up to that point had taken was not only a breath of fresh air, but a bold and confident step in an Ottawa that was not always known for such things.1For an interesting history of Carleton, see H. Blair Neatby and Don McKeown. Creating Carleton: The Shaping of a University. Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.
Continue reading Views: Carleton’s University Centre From Above (1963-2015)
Notes
| ↥1 | For an interesting history of Carleton, see H. Blair Neatby and Don McKeown. Creating Carleton: The Shaping of a University. Montréal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002. |
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Almost two weeks ago, I wrote a short story about the Tisdale Municipal Building in South Porcupine. While I was able to get an architect and speak a little about the context, that was about as far as it went. If you’ve followed along on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, you’ll see that I’ve just returned from a trip to Toronto, where I spent time at the Archives of Ontario. While I was there to do some research for my thesis, I took the opportunity to peruse some of the pages of the Porcupine Advance.
Continue reading Update: Porcupine General Hospital (1938) and the Tisdale Municipal Building (1940)
When I was growing up in South Porcupine, the Tisdale Municipal Building was always an interesting one. The white stucco, though worn by the 1980s, glistened defiantly in the sunlight. When I would walk the single block from my family’s Bloor Avenue apartment with my mom, she’d often point out that my grandfather had worked out of an office in there in property assessment.1Brian Ehman. See Diane Armstrong. “A Proud Community,” Timmins Times, July 27, 2011. When I began to notice the building, it was more than a decade past Tisdale Township’s amalgamation into the City of Timmins2See John Slinger. “1,000 square miles: Timmins biggest city in McKeough plans,” Globe and Mail, June 13, 1972, p. 1; “New challenge for Timmins,” Globe and Mail, October 9, 1972, p. 6. and after hosting the new city’s engineering department for a short period, it was sold off and converted into apartments.
Continue reading Tisdale Municipal Building (1940)
Notes
| ↥1 | Brian Ehman. See Diane Armstrong. “A Proud Community,” Timmins Times, July 27, 2011. |
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| ↥2 | See John Slinger. “1,000 square miles: Timmins biggest city in McKeough plans,” Globe and Mail, June 13, 1972, p. 1; “New challenge for Timmins,” Globe and Mail, October 9, 1972, p. 6. |
As I recently wrote in a recent story about Le Versailles apartments on Henderson (1964), I find the midcentury apartments in Sandy Hill to be “just slightly a cut above” those in the remainder of the city. Although it may lack the flourish of Le Versailles, Constantine Zourdoumis’ Albany Apartments at 305 Nelson is a tidy example of the style.
Midcentury Modern. Modernism. International Style. Whatever one’s choice term to describe the style of architecture, the road to recognition of buildings in the style as being worthy of preservation on a heritage basis has been a long one and the journey is far from over. Today, most would still take one look at the building above and fail to shed a tear over its 1994 demolition. Even among those who were present to advocate for its preservation, the arguments usually had more to do with who designed it than they did with what it was.
Between 1943 and 1991, the pentagonal lot bounded by Beechwood, Springfield, Bertrand, Vaughan, and MacKay street in New Edinburgh was home to this smart stucco clad concrete building. A project of F.X. Barrette, it was intended to serve as a residence for women and mothers involved in war work and was leased by the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (Wrens) between 1943 and 1946. Today the site is occupied by the New Edinburgh Square seniors’ complex.
Continue reading Demolished Ottawa: Wrens Fly Away With St. Michael
Metcalfe street was once more akin to the Montreal’s Golden Square Mile than to the mixed-use neighbourhood that it is today. After having been subdivided, the Colonel By Estate’s lots were quickly purchased by local merchants and politicians who constructed large homes, some of which, like the Booth House or Birkett’s Castle, were quite ornate and continued to be appreciated today.
