[Strange Advance]

This has been bothering me for a bit. Currently, these two facilities are located next to Mel Lastman Square, and have been for about 30 years. But I could swear, before Mel Lastman Square and the office tower were built at the corner of Yonge and Park Home were built, the library and swimming pool were in a low-rise building in the same location. I was a little kid at the time, so I'm not totally certain.

I'm picturing a long circular driveway going in from Yonge, kind of like the one at Vari Hall at York U. I'm picturing a building with peculiar artwork adorning the outside. As I recall, the pieces were sort of large, squarish tiles of different pale colours (orange, purple, green, etc.), and they had what looked sort of like Chinese characters on them, in white. The characters couldn't have been Chinese, but perhaps they were Inuit figures or something. Am I out of my mind, or does someone else remember this too? If anyone has pictures, that would be great. I Googled but came up empty.

 

[junctionist]

I've seen photos of the building at the Toronto Archives. You can probably find some photos in their online database. It was an interesting modern building.

 

[Strange Advance]

I'll take a look at the archives and see if I come up with anything. Thanks.

 

[Strange Advance]

Apparently it was called the Gladys Allison Library, but in the picture below it isn't really as I remember it. The surroundings were not nearly as desolate when I was a child, which would have been a couple of decades after the photo was taken. The multicoloured panels and circular driveway I remember seem to have been a figment of my imagination (yet they're quite vivid), but the strange art or calligraphy can be seen in the photo, which is the only one I could find. I'd love to see a colour one from the '70 or '80s.

 

[Edward Skira]

For some reason I remember a skating rink there. Or maybe my hockey coach lived in one of the houses behind the library. Now replaced by that apartment building.

 

[Strange Advance]

Well, there might very well have been a skating rink in the middle of that circular driveway, but now I'm not at all sure that driveway even existed. It's strange the things that stick in one's mind from childhood. Again, I'm not sure, but I think the solitary, modest building in the photo above was where the glass office building at 5140 Yonge is now. A stark reminder of how much North York has changed in 50 years.

 

[Anna]

Apparently it was called the Gladys Allison Library, but in the picture below it isn't really as I remember it. The surroundings were not nearly as desolate when I was a child, which would have been a couple of decades after the photo was taken. The multicoloured panels and circular driveway I remember seem to have been a figment of my imagination (yet they're quite vivid), but the strange art or calligraphy can be seen in the photo, which is the only one I could find. I'd love to see a colour one from the '70 or '80s.

This explains (and shows) the 'calligraphy' which was done by Harold Town.
http://torontopubliclibrary.typepad...t-at-the-library-the-harold-towne-frieze.html

 

[Anna]

The back of the Community Hall, Memorial Pool, and Central Library in 1959.

 

[Strange Advance]

Thanks for the further info and pic, Anna. I still have a memory of large dull-hued orange and green rounded-off square panels adorning a building, but I must be remembering a different place. I've been racking my brain trying to figure out what it could have been.