Danforth & Gough, 1984 and 2016.
In August 1984, the Toronto Star reported that 40 people from the surrounding neighbourhood had taken Sun Valley Fruit to the Ontario Municipal Board to force them to provide parking.
Gerrard Street East and Marjory, July 1986 and July 2016.
Queen Street East and Jones: July 1986 and July 2015. The mural, which depicts Alexander Muir, has since been freshened and updated.
I came across the following picture this evening while working on another project and felt it would be good to share.
In June 1964, when it was completed, František (Frank) Stalmach’s Ontario Telephone Employees’ Credit Union building on the south east corner of Wilson and Avenue Road in North York was featured in the Toronto Star for its use of sun shades to cut air conditioner usage. Perhaps a testament to their efficacy, the tinted plastic shades remain in place today, more than fifty years on.
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.
Every Spring we get one: an abnormally warm day that brings us all out. When I recently came across this 1986 photo in the Toronto Public Library’s digital archive, I couldn’t help by want to look up the sort of slow-day lifestyle reporting that it accompanied.
After having recently been stuck on a short turn of the 506, I couldn’t help but notice the neat brickwork at the top of the Dollar Tree store on Coxwell. After tripping over the photograph above for an unrelated search, I decided to dig a little.
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.
It has not been often that I’ve posted “then and now” photos here on Margins. While browsing the photographs that have been digitized by the Toronto Public Library this evening, I was reminded of one of the more influential-to-me discussion threads on the Urban Toronto boards: Miscellany Toronto Photographs: Then and Now. Although it has slowed down considerably in recent times, the nearly 900 page discussion is a rich one.
If the built environment is not an archive, then it’s a darn good book. At least that’s how it has always felt to me. Not only are all aspects of the urban fabric laden with the uses and values that informed their construction and assembly, but the life story of each building is too.1I’m referring, of course, to Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn. The whole vista will tell you stories (or serve as a sort of record) and whenever I’m out and about – whether in Ottawa, Toronto, or elsewhere – my eyes are peeled.
Continue reading Another Sort of Municipal Archive
Notes
| ↥1 | I’m referring, of course, to Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn. |
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When I wrote this past summer about the closing of Harry’s Char-Broil and its location in Kinhurst Plaza, I was a little disappointed that I was not able to locate photographs of the shopping centre soon after completion, an architect, or some more specific information about the proposal itself. It is also true that when I wrote it, I did not have the opportunity to get into the City of Toronto Archives, which limited the resources available to me.