[Northern Light]

Hmmm, a proposal midway between Yonge and Church, on Maitland that will erase more of Toronto's history give or take the facades.........

This is what would exit:

The facades would be retained, more or less.........

We'll come back to that, but first the App:

Development Applications

City Planning COA Application Information Center

app.toronto.ca

From the Docs:

Looking North

* First two renders were reduced to fit, here's a closer look at both, broken into two (upper and lower)

Ground Floor Plan:

Coming back to the question of heritage.

While this proposal seeks to preserve or restore the south (primary) elevation of these buildings, for the most part, and retains some portion of other facades as well......the interiors would be lost to time.

This is what we lose: (From the Heritage Impact Statement)

A conspicuous fire door and a few other alterations detract a bit from the original, but still so much there to love.

 

[cd concept]

Very nice looking tower that blends in with the antique apartments below ! I love the bay windows and balconies that are held up with columns that portray an antique style porch I beam and trim per floor plate. Making this a very rich looking tower which I've haven't seen in hieght range in this city before lol! Just take a look in the photos up above!

 

[Koops65]

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

Hope they'll keep a lot of the historical trimmings as pict'd above in the facade to make this project less painful...

 

[xy3]

Love the Bay Window components of the tower. This is quite handsome and respectful of the heritage lo-rise apartment buildings.

It's in every way superior to the grubby utilitarian dreck that is the Charles on Church by AspenRidge.

I do get sweaty palms thinking of having a coffee on the 50th floor balcony, though.

 

[ushahid]

Existing buildings are amazing. Proposed one, not so much.

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

...yeah, I am now expressing doubts as the header architect was switched to Turner Fleischer. As they are usually rolled out when the developer is looking for something dull, soulless and patched together with materials of the lowest common denominator. /sigh

 

[Doppleganger]

What a pair of beautiful old buildings! It's a shame that 'heritage designation' in this city is essentially meaningless.

 

[syn]

Is there any other city where they drop giant towers on top of old heritage buildings to the degree that Toronto does?

These two buildings should be left alone.

 

[Garth Douglas]

I used to live in #36,. It was wonderful. I was told that the buildings were originally constructed to house provincial MLA's.
The apartments were generous in size My unit, on the second floor at the front had stained glass in the front windows that read " S Rioghal Mo Dhream" meaning “Royal is our race - I think it's Gaelic. There was stained glass in a window in the dining area as well.
I remember asking the super if I could sand the floors (they were pine) and he started to laugh and took me to the basement where he pointed out the floor above. It was built with 2 X 10's laid on end. You could have sanded forever.
I hope this building survives - the tower above will be an eyesore.

 

[Northern Light]

I used to live in #36,. It was wonderful. I was told that the buildings were originally constructed to house provincial MLA's.
The apartments were generous in size My unit, on the second floor at the front had stained glass in the front windows that read " S Rioghal Mo Dhream" meaning “Royal is our race - I think it's Gaelic. There was stained glass in a window in the dining area as well.
I remember asking the super if I could sand the floors (they were pine) and he started to laugh and took me to the basement where he pointed out the floor above. It was built with 2 X 10's laid on end. You could have sanded forever.
I hope this building survives - the tower above will be an eyesore.

Great first post!

I'm not sure I would go as far as eyesore for proposed tower, I too lament the (potential) loss of these.

I would strongly suggest you share your thoughts both with the local City Councillor and Heritage Preservation Services at your earliest convenience (as in with the next couple of weeks) so as to encourage a detailed review of the interiors here and consideration of that in any decisions made.

I suspect that stopping a tower here may be very challenging (though not impossible by any means); but at the very least, it should be possible to ensure preservation of many/most of the features you just noted in any redevelopment.

Even if some things have to be removed during construction; floors like that, or stained glass could be re-introduced. And perhaps a few meters more of the front interiors could be retained as well.

 

[NorthshoreCity]

Is there any other city where they drop giant towers on top of old heritage buildings to the degree that Toronto does?

These two buildings should be left alone.

In Boston buildings like these would just be torn down on the basis of "there is enough historical context in the city". Things might not be perfect in Toronto, but I appreciate that a decent level of effort is taken to preserve the original facades of buildings rather than full demolition jobs that I often see happen to gorgeous buildings here.

 

[syn]

In Boston buildings like these would just be torn down on the basis of "there is enough historical context in the city". Things might not be perfect in Toronto, but I appreciate that a decent level of effort is taken to preserve the original facades of buildings rather than full demolition jobs that I often see happen to gorgeous buildings here.

Is that really the case though?

Boston certainly has its share of questionable architecture, but I found there to be a sense of place and respect for history that doesn't exist to anywhere near the same degree in Toronto.

 

[Doppleganger]

In Boston buildings like these would just be torn down on the basis of "there is enough historical context in the city". Things might not be perfect in Toronto, but I appreciate that a decent level of effort is taken to preserve the original facades of buildings rather than full demolition jobs that I often see happen to gorgeous buildings here.

Interesting! I wonder how any city quantifies 'enough' historical context? Is it 25%, 30% etc. I believe every effort should be made to conserve what historical and architecturally significant buildings remain in our cities. Granted, not every old building is worthy of preservation, I get that, but surely every effort should be made to preserve, as much as possible in their entirety, the ones we've already deemed worthy of designation. We've already lost too much(Chorley Park, Moss Park, Walnut Hall, the Temple and Star buildings to name just a few.). The current trend of 'facadism' that we see masquerading as true preservation leaves nothing but an empty caricature of what was once there. It might make us momentarily 'feel good' walking past these facades, but just step inside and any link with our past immediately dissolves. Developing a culture of true preservation is possible, but it requires electing politicians who are committed to true preservation, who understand that designation must be paired with robust legislation, and it requires a city hall that works hand in glove with developers to provide incentives(tax incentives, height variances etc.) to retain and restore our old structures as well as exercising greater flexibility and innovation in planning.

 

[NorthshoreCity]

I certainly agree that more should be done to retain historical interiors but at the end of the day I would much rather have the building facade than nothing at all. Below are 3 examples in Boston that were recently demolished. Had these been in Toronto I'm sure that the facades would have been retained.

330 Boylston Street, demolished 2022.

258 Huntington Avenue. Built 1916, demolished 2022.

543 Commonwealth Avenue, demolished 2019.

By no means am I saying Boston doesn't care about historic preservation, the city has as much historical architecture as it does due to some of the measures in place. That said, when compared to Toronto, they're doing a pretty bad job by allowing developers to start with a clean slate on a large number of projects. Not much is changing either, these buildings were all approved for demolition this week too:

I'll refrain from going off on a further tangent but my point is that things might seem better elsewhere but those in Toronto should be thankful for the level of preservation that is considered for historic building facades.