guru
New Member
Well... Hi everybody! "Guru" would be me. 
Thanks to my friend Iain for pointing this forum and thread out to me.
I am a self-declared fanatic about the Constellation Hotel. As slickpete (I know you from Facebook, right?) said, I used to be there every year for a convention, and we were there the weekend it was closing, so we went exploring... And found all kinds of cool passages and hidden hallways and whatnot. I started researching the history of the hotel, and even made contact with one of the original builder/owners, who is now retired and living in downtown Toronto. I put up a website on the old icomm isp - which, sadly, shut down all their free accounts without warning. And stupid me, I had no complete backup of the site. So I lost most of it. Though most of it can be found in the internet archive at http://web.archive.org/web/20050123095058/corsaont.icomm.ca/constellation/ - I just haven't had the time and enough free server space to put it all back together and online again. I really should though, given the new interest in the hotel coming from the new demolition activity.
As noted at my more recent "quick and dirty" site that I have up at http://guru.exrica.com/Regal/, I did attend the auction when the new owners were trying to raise money to fund the demolition, and I was able to obtain a sh*tload of hotel memorabilia, including a lot of the old photos and stuff that slickpete mentioned. The stuff is now taking up most of my basement.
What makes the site so amazing, to me, is that it's all based around a Motel that was built in the 1960s - and the base of the smallest tower is STILL the same building that was the core of that motel, while everything else (including the "cheese grater" tower") was built around it over the decades. So as you walk through the bowels of the hotel, you keep finding things that have been there since the 1960s, some unchanged, some "adapted". For example, one of the original restaurants was changed into the staff cafeteria. Another example is the "freight elevator to nowhere" near the wine cellar, that serves a loading dock that no longer has outside access.
To answer a few things that have been noted here:
- The HIG announcement is very obsolete. After that went out, HIG sold the property to another company, and that company ended up renegging on a lot of the signed contracts with the companies that were supposed to come into the hotel, including Wolfgang Puck's restaurant. They sued. There was lots of legal action - which, since the court records were all public, made everything easy to follow for a while. Finally, they reached a settlement, and then the new deal with Hyatt was signed.
- When I approached the heritage society about the hotel, I was basically told that it "wasn't old enough for anybody to care about it". The impression I got was that 1960s architecture - even something as unique as this (it is one of only 2 remaining buildings in the world by the architect in question, whose name escapes me now) was of no interest to them.
- We were told for years that the International Tower (aka the cheese grater tower - you guys call it the west tower, but in fact that's how they refer to the other tower next to it) was closed due to asbestos. We've since learned that was a lie. According to the original owner, the tower was closed because it wasn't making enough money to pay for its maintenance, because the distinctive angles had severe water leakage issues. Furthermore, the tower was built with no kitchen facilities and no back access to the kitchens in the other parts of the hotel, making the lounge at the top floor of the tower difficult to serve food in.
- The original owner was able to provide me with all kinds of photos of celebs from the 60s and 70s at the hotel, including prime ministers Trudeau and Pearson. He still has a special registry book that was used for celebrities.
All for now,
Andrew
Thanks to my friend Iain for pointing this forum and thread out to me.I am a self-declared fanatic about the Constellation Hotel. As slickpete (I know you from Facebook, right?) said, I used to be there every year for a convention, and we were there the weekend it was closing, so we went exploring... And found all kinds of cool passages and hidden hallways and whatnot. I started researching the history of the hotel, and even made contact with one of the original builder/owners, who is now retired and living in downtown Toronto. I put up a website on the old icomm isp - which, sadly, shut down all their free accounts without warning. And stupid me, I had no complete backup of the site. So I lost most of it. Though most of it can be found in the internet archive at http://web.archive.org/web/20050123095058/corsaont.icomm.ca/constellation/ - I just haven't had the time and enough free server space to put it all back together and online again. I really should though, given the new interest in the hotel coming from the new demolition activity.
As noted at my more recent "quick and dirty" site that I have up at http://guru.exrica.com/Regal/, I did attend the auction when the new owners were trying to raise money to fund the demolition, and I was able to obtain a sh*tload of hotel memorabilia, including a lot of the old photos and stuff that slickpete mentioned. The stuff is now taking up most of my basement.
What makes the site so amazing, to me, is that it's all based around a Motel that was built in the 1960s - and the base of the smallest tower is STILL the same building that was the core of that motel, while everything else (including the "cheese grater" tower") was built around it over the decades. So as you walk through the bowels of the hotel, you keep finding things that have been there since the 1960s, some unchanged, some "adapted". For example, one of the original restaurants was changed into the staff cafeteria. Another example is the "freight elevator to nowhere" near the wine cellar, that serves a loading dock that no longer has outside access.
To answer a few things that have been noted here:
- The HIG announcement is very obsolete. After that went out, HIG sold the property to another company, and that company ended up renegging on a lot of the signed contracts with the companies that were supposed to come into the hotel, including Wolfgang Puck's restaurant. They sued. There was lots of legal action - which, since the court records were all public, made everything easy to follow for a while. Finally, they reached a settlement, and then the new deal with Hyatt was signed.
- When I approached the heritage society about the hotel, I was basically told that it "wasn't old enough for anybody to care about it". The impression I got was that 1960s architecture - even something as unique as this (it is one of only 2 remaining buildings in the world by the architect in question, whose name escapes me now) was of no interest to them.
- We were told for years that the International Tower (aka the cheese grater tower - you guys call it the west tower, but in fact that's how they refer to the other tower next to it) was closed due to asbestos. We've since learned that was a lie. According to the original owner, the tower was closed because it wasn't making enough money to pay for its maintenance, because the distinctive angles had severe water leakage issues. Furthermore, the tower was built with no kitchen facilities and no back access to the kitchens in the other parts of the hotel, making the lounge at the top floor of the tower difficult to serve food in.
- The original owner was able to provide me with all kinds of photos of celebs from the 60s and 70s at the hotel, including prime ministers Trudeau and Pearson. He still has a special registry book that was used for celebrities.
All for now,
Andrew
