At the end of the day, Sam's was just a freak'n, ultimately unsuccessful, business. Sure the signs were cool, but do they belong here? Nyet.

How about in Ryerson's "Image Arts" building? Or in a neon sign museum? Or a Music-themed museum?

Countless businesses have closed throughout the decades, many with "iconic" signage. What's so special about Sam the Record man? Sure, I bought records there, but really, it's time to move on.
 
Towered said:
^ Not yet.

On a related note - are wrecking balls ever used in demolition anymore? I can't remember the last time I ever saw one...
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I've seen pics of wrecking balls demolishing multi-floor buildings in Detroit in recent years. For mid to high rise buildings they are effective for levelling all but the support columns for brick or concrete clad buildings. Toronto has had very few mid-high ride buildings demolished in recent years. The old Toronto Police HQ is the last building I can think of of that size, though wrecking balls were not used then, but high-reach claws (which took over much, but not all, of the wrecking ball's niche). Improvements in implosion demolitions also reduced their use.
 
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UrbanFervour said:
"Iconic store"? Iconic to whom? It was a grubby dump that sold things people don't buy and nobody shopped there. That's why it folded.

Zanzibar and the Brass Rail are "as much a part of Yonge Street as anything else" too... as much as I love their signage, should their facades be incorporated into the buildings that will eventually replace them? No. Of course not.

How about Future Shop, Pizza Pizza, the head shop up the street or the scientology sign? How about the countless nail salons? Should their signage be preserved? NO!

The idea that signage promoting for-profit businesses deserves to be "honoured" by an institution of higher learning is, to me, absurd.

If the sign is 'incorporated' into the new building at all, I hope it will be hung on a wall as an objet d'art, & nothing more. I certainly hope that the new building's design will not be constrained and limited by this groan-worthy stipulation.
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Well, I know what you mean, if you're fearing a Sams-meets-Snohetta solution along these lines

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OTOH your peevishness of tone befits the kind of yuppie scum who thinks the gutting of the Ryrie building is a good thing. Like, while I, too, feel the neon iconicism of the Sam's sign is overrated...well, maybe as an urban panacea, so is the oh-wow starchitecture of Snohetta in its turn.

And besides, it isn't as if the loss of these lesser monuments of grubby-dump-adorning Roncy neon isn't rightly lamented, either...
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And may I suggest that a marriage doesn't even necessarily have to be Sams + Snohetta--for all I know, something as superficially banal and ridiculous as mounting the spinning disks upon Kerr Hall's modern-Georgian banality might be preferrable. (Well, it'd work better on Kerr than Jorgenson. And remember that Kerr pioneered the banal/ridiculous token-preservation gambit through the Normal School portico retention half a century ago.)
 
adma said:
And remember that Kerr pioneered the banal/ridiculous token-preservation gambit through the Normal School portico retention half a century ago.
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I think we're all forgetting the city's pioneering work of preservationism: St Lawrence Market.

Toronto_City_Hall_1868.jpg


St-Lawrence-Market+2009.jpg


Strictly speaking, it doesn't really work either. But that doesn't make it any less endearing.
 
I don't think I'll ever look at St. Lawrence market the same now... What a shame.
 
ShonTron said:
I've seen pics of wrecking balls demolishing multi-floor buildings in Detroit in recent years. For mid to high rise buildings they are effective for levelling all but the support columns for brick or concrete clad buildings. Toronto has had very few mid-high ride buildings demolished in recent years. The old Toronto Police HQ is the last building I can think of of that size, though wrecking balls were not used then, but high-reach claws (which took over much, but not all, of the wrecking ball's niche). Improvements in implosion demolitions also reduced their use.
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Also, these past few months, the twin Peter Dickinson apartments nr/St Clair West station.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
? What's your point?
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Not only is it too far distant from the present to be "shameful", it's been too much engrained for too long already that the old/new combo in toto is a landmark--which, in fact, motivated the 70s restoration (into the Market Gallery et al). And besides, it wasn't as if the original was a masterpiece--in fact, compared to St Lawrence Hall a few years later, it was but a clumsy Muddy York hangover. So, in a way, kudos to the city for keeping *any* vestige of the old, even as a father-of-all-facadism relic; otherwise, I doubt anyone with a shred of sensitivity would wish (except by way of computerized "Toronto Of Old" virtual reality) for sweeping away the South Market on behalf of a resurrected Old Old City Hall...
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
I don't think I'll ever look at St. Lawrence market the same now... What a shame.
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It looked good to you before, what is any different about the look now?
Toronto had no use for it after Old City Hall was built, but they still incorporated the facade into St Lawrence Market, long before facadism was popular or even done very often.
I have known about that as long as I've known about St. Lawrence Market, and in my opinion it makes it all the more interesting.
 
So what stops you from considering modifications made to buildings today as the creation of old/new combo landmarks for people 110 years from now? John Lyle's studio facade on One Bedford could even come to be seen as a gem for all we know.
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
I don't think I'll ever look at St. Lawrence market the same now... What a shame.
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This just means you've stopped looking through your eyes and have started looking through an ideology. The building still looks the same before you knew that; why should its appearance become "shameful"? Pre-modernism, *most* buildings were adapted, rebuilt and refurbished dozens of times before being replaced. History is an accretion of pieces, not a collection of one-off monuments.
 
UrbanFervour said:
So what stops you from considering modifications made to buildings today as the creation of old/new combo landmarks for people 110 years from now? John Lyle's studio facade on One Bedford could even come to be seen as a gem for all we know.
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It could be, but doubtful. I think it will look as ridiculous and stapled on in the future as it does now. History might look more kindly on the facade of the Bay Adelaide tower, tho.
 
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