[Joe]

Just saw this post on Spacing... and immediately thought that UT was the best place to put a call out for ideas.

Spacing is hard at work on our summer-fall 2009 issue, but with the on-going City strike, services like the Toronto Archives and the fine people at Heritage Preservation department gone AWOL, our research work has become all the more difficult. And this is where Spacing readers come in.

We’re compiling a list of Toronto’s clock towers. If you can help us identify the locations of past and present towers, or provide any links or titles of books, we’d be very grateful. You can leave us a comment on this post or send an email to us at clocktowers@spacing.ca.

 

[Joe]

Here are the ones submitted in the comments on Spacing so far:

A couple obvious ones to start:

Toronto Fire Hall no. 315, 132 Bellevue Avenue
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18378305@N00/3644902648/

Summerhill-North TO CPR Station, 10 Scrivener Square
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill-North_Toronto_CPR_Station

The transplanted Fire Hall no. 3 tower, Yonge/College
http://bowjamesbow.ca/images/yonge04-20.jpg


The old clock on the NW corner of King & Bathurst:

http://gencat4.eloquent-systems.com/webcat/systems/toronto.arch/resource/fo1244\f1244_it3008.jpg

And the new one on the same corner today:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jfitzg/3073463094/




from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historic_Toronto_fire_stations#Clock_tower

* Station 312
o Built: 1878 for Yorkville Fire Department, became TFD 10 upon annexation in 1883.
o Location: 34 Yorkville Avenue
o Main Structure: It is one of the city’s oldest active fire halls. Formerly Hose No. 8, the two-story structure has a five-story clock tower with three bays (additional bay added later). It has a coat of arms from the old Yorkville Town Hall. It was restored in 1974.




The town of Weston clock: http://www.nowtoronto.com/_assets/issues/2171/news6_468.jpg




The good old Bulova Tower at the CNE:

http://pages.interlog.com/~urbanism/shelltower.html




I noticed one at Ryerson University recently:
http://www.torontohistory.org/Pages_PQR/Ryerson_Polytechnical_Institute.html




-Cathedral Church of St. James
-Soldier’s Tower
-Upper Canada College
-federal building at Keele and Annette




My contribution is the Beaches Firehall… just east of Queen and Woodbine.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wikisauga/3358966263/

 

[Urban09]

I added the Etobicoke Civic Centre and also Elmesley Hall at St Michael's College. The latter I think is a neat story, since a clock was planned for the tower (which conceals a now-decommissioned smoke stack) but not installed until last year, 50 years later.

I like that you can see the shadow of where there used to be a clock on the Carlton Building on the northeast corner of Carlton and Yonge. Not sure that a tall building with a clock counts as a "clock tower" though.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

the clock tower killed the sundial, the wristwatch killed the clock tower and the cellphone killed the wristwatch. the vicious cycle of time.

 

[egotrippin]

I suppose just about any church spire in the city could count, most of them sport big ol' clocks.

 

[junctionist]

I suppose just about any church spire in the city could count, most of them sport big ol' clocks.

You're mistaken; the overwhelming majority of church spires that do not have clocks. St. James does, but the likes of St. Mike's or Met United do not, and the same goes with scores of churches in the city with spires.

 

[egotrippin]

You're mistaken; the overwhelming majority of church spires that do not have clocks. St. James does, but the likes of St. Mike's or Met United do not, and the same goes with scores of churches in the city with spires.

Yeah, after some researching, you're right. In fact, the only one I've been able to find so far with a clock is St. James. I could've sworn that St. Mary's on Portugal Sq. has one, but alas I'm wrong on that one too.

As some redemption, I can add to the clock list (correctly this time). The Queen's Quay Terminal building has a clock on its north face. I've found another one too; the Soldiers' Tower at U of T.

edit: nevermind, the Soldiers' Tower is in the original post. I suck at this game. Though, another one comes to mind but I need help identifying it. In this photo, the clock tower on Yonge St., as visible just behind the Odd Fellows' Hall. It appears to just sit above the buildings lining the street, is it a replica/preserved portion of an older building? It looks very much like an old firehall tower of sorts.

 

[khris]

I guess this is a Toronto only thing, but there is the Mississauga Civic Centre as well.

 

[whatever]

Do clocks-on-a-building count? There's also the one on the Mechanical Engineering Building, fronting onto King's College Road

http://rrs.osm.utoronto.ca/map/spinv.download_bldg_photo?p_file=59

And can we count digital clocks? There's the one on (I think) the Manulife building, at the northern terminus of Jarvis.

Oh, and the new addition, Coupland's clock at Don Mills.

edit: And I have a question. I've noticed many of the older (and refurbished older) clocks have the same clockface. Firehall no. 3 is a good example. Is this a standard patten, is there a history behind it, and does the pattern have a name?