Newly renovated
CRITIC ALEX BOZIKOVIC UPDATES LATE PATRICIA McHUGH’S LOVING GUIDE TO TORONTO ARCHITECTURE
Toronto Architecture: A City Guide By Patricia McHugh and Alex Bozikovic McClelland & Stewart 352; $ 26.95
By common consent and tired tradition, guide books are humdrum compendiums of prosaic prose, stripped of humour and irony. Compared to a guide book, a No Parking sign seems clever.
But, since rules are made to be broken, the just published Toronto Architecture: A City Guide ( McClelland and Stewart) turns out to be a splendid exception. It’s the work of two accomplished authors. The late Patricia McHugh ( 1934- 2008) was the first, an American journalist who lived in Toronto for years and left us two editions of the book. Now Alex Bozikovic, an architectural critic, has signed on as McHugh’s coauthor, picking up where she left off in 1989. Their contributions are identified by their initials.
Toronto sees itself evolving and now its guide book is also evolving. Where McHugh’s style was restrained and sophisticated, Bozikovic offers sharp opinions and educated gossip. When he deals with Yonge Street he points out the building, once called “the Friars,” where Bob Dylan first met The Band and made them his collaborators. Bozikovic explains that the Eaton Centre was built by the Bronfman family’s development wing and Phyllis Lambert, the architect daughter of Samuel Bronfman, steered the commission to Eberhard Zeidler.
He tells us that Massey College, designed by the late Ron Thom in 1963, is arguably the greatest Toronto building of the 20th century, its common room and dining hall among the city’s finest spaces. At a time when narrow-minded modernism was running rampant in Canada, Thom drew on the inspiration of Frank Lloyd Wright to produce a gem that seems more gemlike every year.
As much as he loves Massey College, Bozikovic has nothing but criticism for Daniel Libeskind’s 2009 version of the Royal Ontario Museum. He mentions that Libeskind won the commission over 51 other applicants and notes that this was the era of the “starchitect” — Libeskind was a European star. He regards the showy “crystal” facade on Bloor Street as something of a failure and judges the interior impractical for display and circulation. “The museum is planning a renovation of the lobby after less than a decade, clear evidence of the project’s poor planning.” He thinks the older versions, from 1914 and after, were better than Libeskind’s.
When dealing with the enduring myth of Rosedale, the guide borrows a quotation from the late Scott Symons, described as “a boundarypushing queer artist and a scion of Rosedale.” Symons once said that without Rosedale’s “embodiment of decent manners and its sense of family and historical continuity, we might be merely Americans.” For Toronto explorers brave enough to enter the maze of Rosedale, the Guide gives a long list of major houses, noting who lived where and when.
Sometimes Bozikovic expresses only what Roberson Davies described as “restrained rapture.” He says that the Eaton Centre turned out to be “a relatively sensitive piece of massive urban renewal.” At one point he’s almost struck dumb: When viewing the Dundas Square movie house, a massive pile- up of cinemas and billboards, he notes that it “has almost no architecture to speak of.”
He’s clearly an admirer of much Toronto architecture of the last few decades. He salutes the smart, beautifully organized YMCA building designed in 1984 by A. J. Diamond on Grosvenor street, which appropriately “glows with health and vigour.” Bozikovic says “One has the feeling this building will still be winning kudos 100 years from now.”
It’s bold to predict the opinions of the future but Bozikovic sometimes goes even farther and writes approving words about buildings not yet erected. When pondering the two King Street towers ( one to be 92 storeys, the other 82) to be designed on King Street by Frank Gehry for David Mirvish, he suggests that “If and when it’s built, this project will be Toronto architecture at its biggest and boldest.” He admires what Gehry has already done for Toronto, the reorganized and enriched Art Gallery of Ontario.
Following McHugh’s example, he salutes the bravado of the sweet little rococo building designed by Darling & Curry in the 1880s for the Bank of Montreal on Front Street. But he doesn’t neglect to note that it’s now the Hockey Hall of Fame. Since it always resembled a temple, he now finds it a temple to the national game.
He quickens to the design of Raymond Moriyama’s Toronto Reference Library on Yonge Street — “large but retiring, novel in form but wrapped in familiar brick,” efficiently combining the needs of researchers (upstairs) with a gathering place for citizens (the main floor). Speaking of research, the University of Toronto’s 14- storey Robarts research library drew a lot of criticism when it suddenly appeared, looming over St. George Street, in the early 1970s. Critics said it overpowered the nearby streets and its brutalist design was wrong for a building devoted to education. But some critics (I was one) have softened over the years as we used it and eventually learned that it had to be pretty big to do the job. And now, Bozikovic tells us, young architects are actually beginning to speak well of the design. He admires the public spirit of Viljo Revell’s 1965 City Hall (“one of the boldest leaps forward in the city’s history”) and doesn’t forget to point out details that most of us take for granted (“teak and mahogany handrails”).
In the readable prose of this City Guide, as in the 23 walking tours it suggests, you can feel a sense of purpose. This edition has more to tell us because so much has happened to the city in recent decades, but its intention is the same as in the McHugh versions. It asks visitors and local people to observe and enjoy a fascinating city, and it provides us with precisely the information we need.