Keeping up with the facades
Toronto’s facadism has taken some interesting turns of late. That’s the peculiar practice of preserving the front of an older building and erecting a new one behind it. Many other cities do it, but Toronto’s explosive growth and sometimes-dithering commitment to heritage preservation makes for an abundance of historical curiosities here.
Some facadism just slices off and preserves the first layer of a building, like the 1921 studio that belonged to renowned architect John Lyle that was dismantled and rebuilt as part of the One Bedford condominium on Bloor St.
Nowadays, it provides an elegant front to the Starbucks outlet on the ground floor, but behind the door it’s pure 21st-century coffee chain, with no further traces of what was. On Broadway Ave., the facade of the old North Toronto Collegiate has been incorporated into the new school building, which itself is part of two condo buildings.
On the University of Toronto campus a number of the historical mansions on St. George St. were renovated and wholly incorporated as part of new school buildings, a kind of facadism that goes much deeper by preserving the entire building.
Similarly, two condo buildings on Sherborne St. a block south of Bloor, one completed and the other under construction, preserved and renovated grand old mansions that serve as common areas for condo residents, a kind of memorial to Toronto’s single-family-home fetish. If you can’t afford a house, at least your party room can be in one.
Right now, half a block of Yonge St. across from the Toronto Reference Library is vacant and boarded up. The buildings have been gutted and will be part of the new 1 Yorkville tower behind it.
Like the storefronts on a few blocks south of here on Yonge St. that became part of the Five condo on St. Joseph St., the buildings were preserved where they originally stood, but it remains to be seen if the shops that will inhabit them can replicate the natural variety of Yonge St. and the sense of strange or interesting things going on second or third floors that old buildings sometimes provide.
Preserving more than just the first layer means more of the essence of a building remains: the nooks and crannies; oddities of earlier designs; craftsman elements and even oldbuilding smells. Where that essence gets lost is subjective, depending on your affection for history and willingness to let the city grow.
The city has many oddball versions of facadism. At 426 University Ave., south of Dundas St., the Residences at RCMI dominates a wee beaux-art facade that dates to 1908, the former Royal Canadian Military Institute. The two “nine-pounder” guns out front suggest Toronto’s most militarized condo concierge works here. Odder still is the 1928 Third Church of Christ, Scientist facade incorporated into the base of the condo at 70 High Park Ave., preserving both the church front and entrance hall.
Then there is the strangest breed of all: pretend facades.
The Eaton Centre added fauxhistorical store facades decades after it opened along its Yonge St. side in an effort to repair its relationship with the street, some even with their own doors, though they aren’t used by all of the stores that have them.
More dramatic are the exteriors of some of the malls around the GTA such as Yorkdale, Square One and Sherway Gardens where facades were created to make the malls appear like an urban street, though they face a sea of parking.
Keeping up appearances is important on residential streets too. Pay attention to how many houses, downtown or suburb, which have stone on the front and cheaper materials on the sides and back.
Of late, some buildings have lost their facades completely. Sutton Place Hotel on Bay St. and the office tower on the northwest corner of Dundas St. and University Ave. have both had their elegant concrete facades removed in favour of new glass skin.
Fashion is tough, even for build- ings, and it’s a pity we don’t yet think concrete is historical enough to save. One day we will. Shawn Micallef writes every Saturday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef.