CLASH OF STYLES
The corner of Wellesley and Jarvis is an architectural mishmash that show’s Toronto lack of self-respect,
Why does it seem that whenever Toronto turns a corner, the effects are felt at Jarvis and Wellesley? As unlikely as this intersection may be, it has been at the centre of the evolving city since the mid-1800s.
Back then, only the richest, the 1 per cent, could afford to live there. Today, it is a sadly degraded crossroads with a bright red plastic gas station and a fast-food joint on one corner, Jarvis Collegiate on another and a pair of nondescript slabs on the others.
Nearly two centuries later, the story of Jarvis and Wellesley is the story of the city’s journey from wealthy provincial outpost to fully branded modern metropolis.
The most obvious change is the decline in architectural quality. In the beginning, Jarvis was an elegant many-treed boulevard lined with some of the most opulent mansions this side of Montreal’s Square Mile.
Then came the car and with it, highrise urbanization. Jarvis was remade into a five-lane artery used by northenders to get downtown conveniently and quickly.
By the 1960s, the Massey family house on the east side of Jarvis just north of Wellesley had been turned into a restaurant. Its greenhouse was demolished and gardens sold off. In short order, the corner became the site of a gas station. In 2017, no doubt for the benefit of high school students, an A&W suddenly appeared.
The result is the sort of mishmash that reveals the confusion of a city in a state of constant transition as it scrambles to accommodate shifting priorities. The incongruity of allowing a Petro Canada beside a grand neo-Gothic manor happens in cities that don’t take planning or themselves seriously. The pressure to adapt is a given — even by 1915, when the Massey moved from Jarvis St., it had changed significantly — but that doesn’t lessen the need to balance new and old.
This is something with which Toronto struggles. Without an overarching vision or sense of itself, it has traditionally been more focused on the mud below than the sky above. This is still the case; Muddy York could still be the city’s nickname. What does it say, for example, that when the Petro Canada-A&W site was redeveloped in 2016, the property owner, Suncor Oil, angered neighbours by cutting down a number of perfectly healthy trees in the process? At the same time, the gas station was moved east along Wellesley to make its relationship with the Massey mansion even more irksome.
Clearly, the only consistent element in Jarvis and Wellesley’s history has been the city’s lack of consistency and its indifference to context. Perhaps that’s why Toronto’s public realm has always felt like leftover space. That’s often exactly what it is. Lacking any notion of the larger picture, the city has allowed buildings to go up — and be pulled down — willy-nilly. No wonder whole sections of Toronto are filled with buildings that are angry architectural neighbours bickering with one another.
There’s no doubt that the mansions of Jarvis — and Sherbourne to the east for that matter — don’t look too kindly on their more recently arrived low-rent street mates. Except for location, they have nothing in common. The contrast couldn’t be starker. Sometimes that’s a positive thing; more often, it isn’t. Modernist esthetics can provide an appropriate foil to the heavily embellished surfaces of Victorian architecture. Mostly, though, what we notice is the clash of uses and the fight between height and materials.
Placing a filling station and a fast-food joint next to a stately heap is no way to treat a city. It does no one any favours; the new stuff looks tackier than it would almost anywhere else. And as for the Massey house, it feels sad, forlorn and abused. It speaks of a city that lacks self-respect.
Former local councillor Kyle Rae used to say that Jarvis “needs to catch up with its history.” He was right, but Torontonians care more about gas stations than heritage, convenience than beauty. Rae’s plans for rows of trees and wider sidewalks never materialized. And once Rob Ford became mayor in 2010, he quickly removed the bike lanes installed that same year.
That’s why Jarvis seems a lost cause. Its function now defined by the car and its needs, the street and its past have been ripped apart. The one at odds with the other, they are locked in a perpetual standoff.
Regardless of how it ends, both have already lost.
Twitter: @HumeChristopher