[LowPolygon]

the aerial shot shows the insane level of destruction of the original early Victorian city. the O'Keefe site looking east is surrounded by acres and acres of (empty) parking lots....

not the site proper--but you get a sense of the wholesale decimation underway in that era

 

[smuncky]

wow look at all those parking lots in the first picture! it's really got a present day detroit/buffalo feel to it.

thanks for posting these photos!

 

[ganjavih]

I've said it before, I'll say it again... what a horrible era.

 

[junctionist]

We also the completion of many great projects in that era.

 

[khris]

That first photo is really depressing. What event was happening in those photos? People allowed into a construction site? Wow, times have definitely changed!

 

[Urban Shocker]

It's so nice to see how much housing has been built downtown since the days of declining industry when those images were taken - to say nothing of all the new places to shop and be entertained. The whole city has come alive. The Esplanade, for instance, was a wasteland of railway tracks and disused factories when I arrived here in 1970. When I was at OCA in 1974 we did an environmental design project to create theoretical new uses for the empty former Consumer's Gas buildings at Berkeley and Front, which were then owned by a wrecking company, and I doubt if any of us students could have imagined the revival of fortunes that lay ahead for the downtown east side.

 

[LowPolygon]

It's so nice to see how much housing has been built downtown since the days of declining industry when those images were taken - to say nothing of all the new places to shop and be entertained. The whole city has come alive. The Esplanade, for instance, was a wasteland of railway tracks and disused factories when I arrived here in 1970. When I was at OCA in 1974 we did an environmental design project to create theoretical new uses for the empty former Consumer's Gas buildings at Berkeley and Front, which were then owned by a wrecking company, and I doubt if any of us students could have imagined the revival of fortunes that lay ahead for the downtown east side.

i agree that the Esplanade is a success story, and much as i might mourn the loss of some of the Victorian streetscape on the south side of Front, i do like St. Lawrence Centre.

for me though, i still find the destruction of the blocks to the north of there to be quite melancholia-inducing. the entire massive triangle behind the Flatiron building, all the way over the Yonge St, was not disused warehouses and factories, rather it was the elegant heart of Victorian Toronto.

the same goes for the entire block of buildings running north and east from Front and Church all the way over to the torn down North market at Jarvis.

i know the arguments for creative destruction, and i generally agree with them. i also believe Toronto is a far more interesting place than it used to be, but to be honest in the case of this particular neighbourhood, i think Toronto lost more than it gained.

 

[Urban Shocker]

Berczy Park and most of St James Park - both celebrated in another photo thread here - are the results of such demolition, which also permitted the architects of the EDS building to frame the Gooderham flat iron with a symmetrical, and similarly wedge-shaped backdrop - if that's any compensation.

 

[Filip]

Everything looks gloomy, decrepit and for lacking of a better word - shitty. I can't imagine how depressing life in Toronto must have been at the time. I was through that area today after seeing this thread last night and wondered how well built out it has become; I can't imagine it any way else.

 

[junctionist]

Everything looks gloomy, decrepit and for lacking of a better word - shitty. I can't imagine how depressing life in Toronto must have been at the time. I was through that area today after seeing this thread last night and wondered how well built out it has become; I can't imagine it any way else.

It's a matter of perspective I suppose. I see an era of unlimited optimism when anything seemed possible. Remember all the many megaprojects proposed in the era, including that of Buckminster Fuller, and extensive subway and expressway expansion. It was a prosperous time, after all; the city did not see the great social tensions of American cities of the time, and mayors of those cities only marveled the state of the city.

 

[ganjavih]

I see an era of unlimited optimism when anything seemed possible.

Yes, there was tremendous optimism and ambition, but with the benefit of hindsight, some of it was misguided. It was an era where progress meant megablocks, razing of old useless Victorian architecture, expressways, and unlimited surface parking lots for the all-important car. That stuff doesn't produce excitement and optimism anymore.

 

[LowPolygon]

when i look at the second photo, i imagine an older native Torontonian standing on the corner of Yonge and Wellington, circa 1960, looking east.
way way off in the distance is the back of the flatiron building--with nothing in between but a vast sea of concrete. then i imagine him walking towards St.Lawrence market, through the emptiness.
however we might feel about how Toronto turned out, there is something irredeemably bleak about that picture....

 

[Edward Skira]

Well the parking lots are empty so it must be a weekend. Think about what it would have been like during a business day. No PATH or Eaton Centre so Yonge and Wellington would have been a zoo with the narrow sidewalks and no plazas surrounding office towers. And most of those areas south and east of The Market were active industrial sites so plenty of truck and car traffic along with the trains.

Edit. The Market is closed so its a holiday or a Sunday. Imagine how busy the area would have been with it open.

 

[Filip]

I now realize what is so bleak about those pictures! Trees! There are none. No street trees, nothing, considering today those streets in the market are heavily green with great planters every few meters.

 

[thecharioteer]

Great thread guys!

An interesting archival photo shows that the O'Keefe actually started construction on the cusp of the wholesale demolition of the area:

As an architecture student in the early 70's, I remember one of my professors describing the area as "Berlin after the war". Too true.

Pre-Market Square mid-70's: