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LowPolygon

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On June 14, 1954 a photographer employed by the City of Toronto went out to shoot all the new construction going up in the fast growing city.

In the process he documented a good number of mainly smallish projects that reflected Toronto's increasing interest in the soon to be dominant International Style.

I was surprised at how few of them i recognized....

s0381_fl0308_id12103-12.jpg


s0381_fl0308_id12103-14.jpg


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s0381_fl0308_id12103-19.jpg


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s0381_fl0308_id12103-38.jpg


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Wow, really interesting! I also barely recognize any of those.

It was fun to see the hoarding in the 3rd pic - looks exactly like the sort of hoarding we still see around construction sites today.
 
Great set of photos- thanks

s0381_fl0308_id12103-19.jpg

NE Jarvis & Earl - Milk Marketing Board

s0381_fl0308_id12103-22.jpg

SE Bloor & Church

s0381_fl0308_id12103-38.jpg

Still one of my favourite buildings in Toronto
 
Some of them look like they could pass off as new projects todays. Even "Diamond and Mogul" sounds somehow contemporary :cool: .
 
Still one of my favourite buildings in Toronto

Dickinson's 111 Richmond, to be specific.

Others I spotted...

(1) that Remington Rand one's still extant (W side Bay N of Wellesley)
(2) 800 Bay (cor College)
(3) well, the signage identifies it--still extant (but too bad it was resashed--and good thing 111 Richmond wasn't resashed)
(6) you guessed it, S side Bloor opposite the Yonge line/Bloor streetcar exit
(7) a toughie...it could be a low-rise on University that lasted only a few years before Sun Life was built on the site (and the lamppost/median in front seems to affirm the fact)
(8) Yonge S of Eglinton--still extant (the street number's the giveaway)--that P.S.I. on top is really intriguing
(10) Yonge + Woodlawn, still extant (though considerably altered); the present Cineplex building is to its left--intriguing shot both for the Lake Iroquois slope and the presumed tearing-up of streetcar tracks (this would have been around when the Yonge line opened)
(11) I'm stumped, though maybe I shouldn't be
(12) ? (Bloor East? I know there's a mid-50s office building next door to Greenwin or something)
 
(7) a toughie...it could be a low-rise on University that lasted only a few years before Sun Life was built on the site (and the lamppost/median in front seems to affirm the fact)

A toughie indeed. Intriguing set of clues - no overhead wires which should narrow it down significantly, the median which is another rarity and the main floor not being at grade suggests an industrial use for the basement. The background buildings don't really conform to what is on Simcoe Street. This is going to drive me nuts.



Regarding photo 12 and Bloor Street East, here again, the background buildings on Selby don't correspond to the photograph. It must have been a comfort to potential tenants to know that there was elevator service.
 
s0381_fl0308_id12103-29.jpg


After zooming in a bit, I noticed the lamppost directly in front of the building has a King's Highway sign attached to it. I'm not an authority on the King's Highways in and out of the city. The only ones I am aware of are numbers 2 and 5 on the western side of town. Perhaps this might mean something to someone out there and you can put me out of my misery.
 
Well, if it were University Avenue...would that have been part of 11A?

Quite possibly. As much as I would like it to be the Sun Life site, I'm having a problem. There was at least one older structure and possibly two on the north end of the site which had to be torn down for Sun Life. One was a 30's building faced in limestone (approx. 3 floors) which I think used to house Old Favourites Used Book Store. It was quite a wonderful book store. I'm not sure if there wasn't a brick building next door. My memory is a bit dodgy on that point so I won't go making any bets on its existence.

The whole thing with the median is a bother isn't it since there are so few in Toronto. What was previously on the site of Market Square? I can't recall.

Did you notice on the second photo of Bay & College that there is a patch of lawn and a bit of garden belonging to an old house on the North East corner? Didn't Dickensen design the office building that was erected there as well?
 
Awesome!

These photos are a cool reflection to a boom Toronto had that is in a way a smaller reflection of the current one.

This thread really shows you how we've returned to modernism in its purest state in the last few years-- some of these buildings look so "2007". :)
 
Maybe this will help, it's from the same group that the other shots are from. In the far right corner you'll notice the same low-rise white building under construction. I don't recognise where this one is either though :D

s0381_fl0308_id12103-28.jpg
 
Maybe this will help, it's from the same group that the other shots are from. In the far right corner you'll notice the same low-rise white building under construction. I don't recognise where this one is either though :D

s0381_fl0308_id12103-28.jpg

TKTKTK - you're brilliant! That's the NW corner of Adelaide & University, the site of the new Shangri-La Hotel. At the far left of the photo you can see the Bishops Block.

Adma - you were certainly on the right track, or should I say the right avenue. Did it get replaced by the Zurich Insurance building?

Now I can get a good night's sleep.
 
TKTKTK - you're brilliant! That's the NW corner of Adelaide & University, the site of the new Shangri-La Hotel. At the far left of the photo you can see the Bishops Block.

Adma - you were certainly on the right track, or should I say the right avenue. Did it get replaced by the Zurich Insurance building?

Now I can get a good night's sleep.

Zurich as in Sun Life? Yup. (I figured it from an old RAIC Journal illustration that showed an earlier incarnation of Parkin's design using that lowrise as a podium--in the end, it was decided it was worth sacrificing, despite being only a few years old...)
 
I kinda wish we had an ongoing Mysteries thread. It's fun trying to sleuth the location of buildings, and decode the history of our secretive town :)

We have such great resources available, but there's nothing in place to link them all. It seems a real shame. More than I desire a physical museum of the city of Toronto, I want an online resource that allows all Torontonians (and Canadians) to contribute their knowledge. Basically a WikiTdot.

You want to be able to assign a geographic location for each photo (a la Flickr/Google maps), have a text description (a la Wikipedia), and have the ability to tag photos (a la Facebook) with links to other entries. You could take it an extra step and include a 3D model with each, linked to a time scale, so that you could get a visual representation of how the city's mutated through time.

I wonder how one would go about getting a grant for a project like that? It's a shame our centennial, or bicentennial, isn't now...it seems like that kind of project.
 

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