Architecture of Toronto - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The architecture of Toronto is most marked by its being the financial and cultural capital of Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, as well as the political capital of Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

. Once an important port and manufacturing centre, today Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

's economy

Economy of Toronto

The economy of Toronto plays a vital role in Canada's economy and that of the world. Toronto is a commercial, distribution, financial and industrial centre. It is the banking and stock exchange centre of Canada, and is the country's primary wholesale and distribution point. Ontario's wealth of raw...

is dominated by the service sector.

Toronto has traditionally been a peripheral city in the architectural world, embracing the styles and ideas developed in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

with only limited local variation. However, many of the world's most prominent architects have done work in Toronto, including Toronto native Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry

Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...

, Daniel Libeskind

Daniel Libeskind

Daniel Libeskind, is an American architect, artist, and set designer of Polish-Jewish descent. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect...

, Norman Foster

Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank

Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM is a British architect whose company maintains an international design practice, Foster + Partners....

, Will Alsop

Will Alsop

Will Allen Alsop, OBE RA is a British architect based in London. He is responsible for several distinctive and controversial modernist buildings, most in the United Kingdom. Alsop's buildings are usually distinguished by their use of bright colour and unusual forms...

, I. M. Pei

I. M. Pei

Ieoh Ming Pei , commonly known as I. M. Pei, is a Chinese American architect, often called a master of modern architecture. Born in Canton, China and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou...

, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....

. A few unique styles of architecture have also developed in Toronto, such as the bay and gable

Bay-and-gable

A bay-and-gable is a distinct architectural style of house that is ubiquitous in the older parts of Toronto, Canada. The most prominent feature is the large bay window that usually covers more than half of the front of the house, surmounted by a gable roof...

house and The Annex style house.

Landscape

Toronto is built on the former lake bed of Lake Iroquois

Glacial Lake Iroquois

Glacial Lake Iroquois was a prehistoric proglacial lake that existed at the end of the last ice age approximately 13,000 years ago.The lake was essentially an enlargement of the present Lake Ontario that formed because the St. Lawrence River downstream from the lake was blocked by the ice sheet...

. This large flat expanse presents few natural limits to growth, and throughout its history, Toronto has sprawled outward and today has a ring of suburb

Suburb

The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...

s that spans hundreds of square kilometres. In 2005, the provincial government has attempted to place an artificial limit to this growth in the form of a Greenbelt

Greenbelt (Golden Horseshoe)

The Greenbelt is a permanently protected area of green space, farmland, forests, wetlands, and watersheds, located in Southern Ontario, Canada. It surrounds a significant portion of Canada's most populated and fastest-growing area - The Golden Horseshoe....

around the city.

Toronto was planned out on a grid system

Grid plan

The grid plan, grid street plan or gridiron plan is a type of city plan in which streets run at right angles to each other, forming a grid...

with the major streets forming wide avenues. Early in the city's history, major avenues were established running along each concession line

Concession road

In Upper and Lower Canada, concession roads were laid out by the colonial government through undeveloped land to define lots to be developed; the name comes from a Lower Canadian French term for a row of lots. Concession roads are straight, and follow an approximately square grid, usually oriented...

that separated rural landholdings. As the city spread outward, these routes have been maintained and even in the distant suburbs a very regular grid of avenues spaced about two kilometres apart continues. Within the suburbs built since the Second World War, the grid system has been abandoned in favour of networks of crescents and cul-de-sacs. In keeping with the dominant design ideas of the time, these are designed to reduce and slow traffic, with vehicles being redirected to the avenues.

These avenues run straight with few diversions for long stretches, and Toronto is notable for the considerable length of its major streets. Most of the avenues go from one side of town the to the other, and often continue deep into the neighbouring suburbs. Yonge Street

Yonge Street

Yonge Street is a major arterial route connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes. It was formerly listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest street in the world at , and the construction of Yonge Street is designated an "Event of...

, the city's most prominent thoroughfare, is by some measure the longest street in the world. These wide avenues that even run through the central city, have also made it easier for Toronto to retain a streetcar system

Toronto streetcar system

The Toronto streetcar system comprises eleven streetcar routes in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, operated by the Toronto Transit Commission , and is the largest such system in the Americas in terms of ridership, number of cars, and track length. The network is concentrated primarily in downtown and in...

, which was among the few North American cities to do so

General Motors streetcar conspiracy

The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to allegations and convictions in relation to a program by General Motors and a number of other companies to purchase and dismantle streetcars and electric trains in many cities across the United States and replace them with bus services; a program...

.

The most important obstacle to construction is Toronto's network of ravines

Toronto ravine system

The Toronto ravine system is one of the most distinctive features of the geography of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is a network of deep ravines that form a large urban forest that runs throughout much of the city...

. Historically, city planners filled in many of the ravines, and when this was not possible, planners mostly ignored them, though today the remaining ones are embraced for their natural beauty. Ravines have helped isolate some central neighbourhoods from the rest of the city, and have contributed to the exclusivity of certain neighbourhoods such as Rosedale

Rosedale, Toronto

Rosedale is an affluent neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which was formerly the estate of William Botsford Jarvis, and so named by his wife, granddaughter of William Dummer Powell, for the wild roses that grew there in abundance....

Building materials

Thanks to its vast hinterland, Toronto designers have had access to a wide array of raw materials for construction. Due to the clay sediments of the former lake bed that Toronto is built upon, brick

Brick

A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...

has been an especially cheap and available material for almost the city's entire history. Much of it was provided by the Don Valley Brick Works

Don Valley Brick Works

The Don Valley Brick Works also known as Evergreen Brickworks is a former quarry and industrial site located in the Don River valley in Toronto, Ontario. Currently the buildings sit mostly unused while the quarry has been converted into a city park which includes a series of naturalized ponds...

, whose output can still be found in thousands of structures across the city. Throughout the city most homes from all eras are made of brick. Commercial and industrial builders also long embraced brick, with the Distillery District being a prominent example, though today more efficient materials, such as cinder block

Cinder block

In the United States, a concrete masonry unit – also called concrete block, cement block, and foundation block – is a large rectangular brick used in construction. Concrete blocks are made from cast concrete, i.e. Portland cement and aggregate, usually sand and fine gravel for high-density blocks...

s, are more common for commercial projects. Prominent landmarks have also gone to greater expense and generally eschewed simple brick. Older banks and government buildings used stone, and modern attempts to marvel have embraced modern materials such as concrete and aluminum, in addition to extensive glazing. Even today, the overwhelming bulk of residential buildings constructed in Toronto are clad in brick.

Sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

was also historically a readily available building material, with large deposits quarried from the Credit River

Credit River

The Credit River is a river in southern Ontario which flows from headwaters above the Niagara Escarpment to empty into Lake Ontario at Port Credit, Mississauga. It drains an area of approximately 1,000 km²...

valley. More expensive than brick, but more ornate, it was used for many early landmarks such as the Ontario Legislature

Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The Legislative Assembly of Ontario , is the legislature of the Canadian province of Ontario, and is the second largest provincial legislature of Canada...

, Old City Hall

Old City Hall (Toronto)

Toronto's Old City Hall was home to its city council from 1899 to 1966 and remains one of the city's most prominent structures. The building is located at the corner of Queen and Bay Streets, across Bay Street from Nathan Phillips Square and the new City Hall in the centre of downtown Toronto...

, and Victoria College

Victoria University, Toronto

Victoria University is a constituent college of the University of Toronto, founded in 1836 and named for Queen Victoria. It is commonly called Victoria College, informally Vic, after the original academic component that now forms its undergraduate division...

. It is also the main material used in the unique Annex style house.

Industrial architecture

The city of Toronto originally formed as a result of its good harbour, and the port was the source of the city's prosperity for most of its early history. The oldest parts of the city are thus by the harbour, with newer growth spreading out in all directions possible. Around the harbour grew up a belt of industrial structures, especially just east and west of downtown. These included massive facilities such as Gooderham and Worts whiskey distillery and Massey Ferguson

Massey Ferguson

Massey Ferguson Limited was a major agricultural equipment manufacturer which was based in Canada before its purchase by AGCO. The company was formed by a merger between Massey Harris and the Ferguson tractor company in 1953, creating the company Massey Harris Ferguson. However in 1958 the name was...

's farm equipment factories. In the later half of the nineteenth century the railways

Rail transport

Rail transport is a means of conveyance of passengers and goods by way of wheeled vehicles running on rail tracks. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles merely run on a prepared surface, rail vehicles are also directionally guided by the tracks they run on...

became Toronto's main connection with the outside world, and further industrial areas grew up around the freight lines, in areas such as Weston and East York

East York

East York can refer to:*East York, Pennsylvania, United States*East York, Ontario, Canada...

.

In the 1970s, deindustrialization

Deindustrialization

Deindustrialization is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially heavy industry or manufacturing industry. It is an opposite of industrialization.- Multiple interpretations :There are multiple...

began to have a dramatic effect on Toronto. By the 1990s, almost all of the older factories by the waterfront were gone. Some of the newer facilities further north still remain, but are constantly disappearing. Many of the more historic industrial buildings have been converted into lofts and offices. Most have been demolished, and in their place dozens of condominium towers have been erected by the lake shore. There are also still large stretches of abandoned industrial land in the Port Lands

Port Lands

The Port Lands of Toronto, Ontario, Canada are an industrial and recreational neighbourhood located about 5 kilometres south-east of downtown, located on the former Don River delta and most of Ashbridge's Bay....

district and other parts of Toronto, awaiting a redevelopment plan.

Nineteenth century

Few structures survive from the earliest period of Toronto's history. Two of Toronto's oldest surviving houses are Campbell House

Campbell House (Toronto)

Campbell House is a historic house in downtown Toronto, Canada. It is the oldest remaining house from the original site of the Town of York and was built by Upper Canada Chief Justice Sir William Campbell and his wife Hannah in 1822...

and The Grange

The Grange (Toronto)

The Grange is a historic Georgian manor in downtown Toronto, Canada and was the first home of the Art Museum of Toronto. Today, it is part of the Art Gallery of Ontario. The structure was built in 1817, making it the 12th oldest surviving building in Toronto and the oldest remaining brick house...

. Both are brick structures built in the Georgian style

Georgian architecture

Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...

during the first half of the 19th century, reflecting the tastes of Toronto's elite in that era. The Georgian style had long been out of favour in the United States by this period, rejected because the Colonial style was considered too British for the newly independent nation. In the Loyalist dominated Upper Canada

Upper Canada

The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...

, the style was embraced with fervour in part because of its British connections. Incongruously it had also fallen out of fashion in Britain by this time, where it was considered outmoded, but in Toronto it remained popular until the 1850s. When the Colonial revival

Colonial Revival architecture

The Colonial Revival was a nationalistic architectural style, garden design, and interior design movement in the United States which sought to revive elements of Georgian architecture, part of a broader Colonial Revival Movement in the arts. In the early 1890s Americans began to value their own...

was embraced in the United States in the 1890s, Georgian architecture also returned to Toronto. Structures continue to be built in the style today. It has been especially popular with the city's elite and many Georgian manors can be found in wealthy neighbourhoods such as Rosedale

Rosedale, Toronto

and the Bridle Path

Bridle Path, Toronto

The Bridle Path upscale residential neighbourhood in the former city of North York, now part of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, that is characterized by large multi-million dollar mansions and two to four acre lot sizes. It is often referred to as "Millionaires' Row"...

.

The late nineteenth century Torontonians embraced Victorian architecture

Victorian architecture

The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...

and all of its diverse revival styles. Victorian-style housing dominates a number of the city's older neighbourhoods, most notably Parkdale

Parkdale, Toronto

Parkdale is a neighbourhood and former village in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, west of downtown. The neighbourhood is bounded on the west by Roncesvalles Avenue, on the north by Queen Street. It is bounded on the east by Dufferin Street from Queen Street south, and on the south by Lake Ontario...

, which has one of the largest collections of Victorian houses in North America. During this period Toronto also developed some unique styles of housing. The bay-and-gable

Bay-and-gable

house was a simple and cost effective design that also aped the elegance of Victorian mansions. Built of the abundant red brick, the design was also well suited to the narrow lots of Toronto. Mostly built in lower and middle class areas the style could be used both for town houses, semi-detached, and stand alone buildings. Hundreds of examples still survive in neighbourhoods such as Cabbagetown

Cabbagetown, Toronto

Cabbagetown is a neighbourhood located on the east side of downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It comprises "the largest continuous area of preserved Victorian housing in all of North America", according to the Cabbagetown Preservation Association....

and Parkdale. Also unique to Toronto is the Annex style house

The Annex

The Annex is a neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The traditional boundaries of the neighbourhood are north to Dupont Street, south to Bloor Street, west to Bathurst Street and east to Avenue Road...

. Built by the city's wealthy and mostly found in the neighbourhood they are named after, these houses contain diverse and eclectic elements borrowed from dozens of different styles. Built of a mix of brick and sandstone, turret

Turret

In architecture, a turret is a small tower that projects vertically from the wall of a building such as a medieval castle. Turrets were used to provide a projecting defensive position allowing covering fire to the adjacent wall in the days of military fortification...

s, dome

Dome

A dome is a structural element of architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a sphere. Dome structures made of various materials have a long architectural lineage extending into prehistory....

s, and other ornamentation abound.

Rise of the suburbs

The post war years and the rise of the personal automobile saw the rapid rise of the suburbs, as occurred across North America. The most important suburban development was that of Don Mills

Don Mills

Don Mills is a mixed-use neighbourhood in the North York district of Toronto, Canada. It was developed to be a self-supporting "new town" and was at the time located outside of Toronto proper. Consisting of residential, commercial and industrial sub-districts, it was planned and developed by...

in North York. Begun in 1952, it was the first planned community in Canada, and it initiated many practices that would become standard in Toronto suburbs. The Don Mills project put into practice many of the ideas of the Garden city movement

Garden city movement

The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts" , containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and...

, creating a multi-use community focused on distinct neighbourhoods.

The earliest suburbs in North York, Scarborough, and Etobicoke mostly consisted of small single family homes often bungalow

Bungalow

A bungalow is a type of house, with varying meanings across the world. Common features to many of these definitions include being detached, low-rise , and the use of verandahs...

s. Over time suburban houses have grown in size and moved away from the simplistic post-war designs embracing the neo-eclectic style

Neo-eclectic architecture

Neo-eclectic architecture is a name for the architectural style that has dominated residential building construction in North America in the later part of the 20th century and early part of the 21st...

. Suburban growth has continues to this day, with new projects in far flung regions such as Milton

Milton, Ontario

Milton is a town in Southern Ontario, Canada, and part of the Halton Region in the Greater Toronto Area. Milton received a tremendous amount of awareness following the release of the results of the 2006 Census, which indicated that Milton is the fastest growing municipality in the Greater Golden...

. The Toronto suburbs are far vaster than those of other Canadian cities, with Mississauga, the largest of its suburbs, itself being one of Canada's largest cities.

Toronto never experienced the inner city

Inner city

The inner city is the central area of a major city or metropolis. In the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland, the term is often applied to the lower-income residential districts in the city centre and nearby areas...

collapse that affected many American cities, although some neighbourhoods have become lower income. Many of the mansions of the Annex were subdivided into apartments, and in the 1950s the area became home to a mix of Hungarian immigrants and students from the nearby university

University of Toronto

The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

. Parkdale also switched from a largely upper middle class to a poorer population. Many central neighbourhoods did also remain popular and prosperous, such as Riverdale

Riverdale, Toronto

Riverdale is a large neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is bounded by the Don River Valley to the west, Danforth Avenue and Greektown to the north, Jones Avenue, the CN/GO tracks, and Leslieville to the east, and Lake Shore Boulevard to the south....

and Yonge and Eglinton

Yonge and Eglinton

Yonge and Eglinton, also known as Yonge-Eglinton or Uptown, is a neighbourhood in Midtown-Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which was once a part of the old Town of North Toronto....

.

Toronto suburbs are different in character than those of other North American cities. During the 1960s and 1970s, city planners tried to curb sprawl by encouraging high population density in the suburbs, with small lots and many apartment buildings placed in areas far from the downtown core. This has had mixed results. Toronto is considerably denser than most other North American cities, which has reduced sprawl and made it easier to provide city services such as mass transit. At the same time planners avoided creating mixed-use

Mixed-use development

Mixed-use development is the use of a building, set of buildings, or neighborhood for more than one purpose. Since the 1920s, zoning in some countries has required uses to be separated. However, when jobs, housing, and commercial activities are located close together, a community's transportation...

areas, forcing suburban residents to work and shop elsewhere. As these suburban districts have aged the housing stock has declined and certain areas of suburban Toronto have stagnated and experienced higher crime rates, such as Jane and Finch

Jane and Finch

Jane and Finch is a neighbourhood located in northwestern North York, a district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The area is roughly bounded by Highway 400 to the west, Driftwood Avenue to the east, Grandravine Drive to the south, and Shoreham Drive to the north...

, Rexdale

Rexdale

Rexdale is a neighbourhood located in the north-west corner of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It covers the northern section of Etobicoke, which was an independent city until it merged with five other municipalities and a regional government to form the new City of Toronto in 1998. Rexdale was named...

, and Malvern

Malvern, Toronto

Malvern is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with a population of 44,315. It is located in the northeast corner of the city, in the district of Scarborough. Scarborough was merged with five other municipalities and a regional government to form the new City of Toronto in 1998...

. Modern planners have been trying to adjust this, and several Toronto suburbs have been working to build their own central business districts and move beyond being bedroom suburbs to also being centres of business and industry.

Apartments and condominiums

The postwar years also saw the rise of apartment style housing. In the 1960s and 1970s, this kind of housing was mostly focused on low to middle income residents. Beginning in the 1950s, the city bulldozed older lower income neighbourhoods, replacing them with housing projects, ultimately destroying large sections of Victorian housing. The earliest and most notorious example of such projects was Regent Park

Regent Park

Regent Park is a neighbourhood located in Old Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Regent Park is Canada's oldest and largest social housing project; built in the late 1940s. Formerly the centre of the Cabbagetown neighbourhood, it is bounded by Gerrard Street East to the north, River Street to the east,...

. It replaced a large portion of Cabbagetown with a series of low-rise and high-rise buildings that quickly became crime-ridden and even more depressed than the neighbourhood it replaced. In later years, similar projects such as Moss Park and Alexandra Park were less disastrous, but also far from successful. Canada's densest community, St. James Town was built in this era as a high-rise community of private and public housing in separate towers, also replacing a Victorian neighbourhood. These patterns changed dramatically beginning in the 1970s and gentrification

Gentrification

Gentrification and urban gentrification refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with movement. Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size...

began transforming once poor neighbourhoods, such as Cabbagetown, into some of the city's most popular and expensive real estate.

Outside of the core, even new neighbourhoods experienced significant high-rise apartment building construction, as builders embraced the "towers in the park" design, invented by Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...

. The towers were built further from the sidewalk, leaving room on the property around the edifice for parking, lawns, trees, and other landscaping. They are typically simple, brick-clad high-rise buildings with rectangular footprints and little ornamentation other than repeating series of balconies

Balcony

Balcony , a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade.-Types:The traditional Maltese balcony is a wooden closed balcony projecting from a...

for each apartment. However, some apartment buildings from this era utilize less conventional designs in the "tower in the park" format, such as the Prince Arthur Towers, Jane-Exbury Towers and 44 Walmer Road designed by Uno Prii

Uno Prii

Uno Prii was an Estonian-born Canadian architect. He designed approximately 250 buildings, many in Toronto, but also around southern Ontario and the United States....

.

In 1972, the Canadian tax code was radically altered making rental housing much less attractive to investors. At the same time, deindustrialization

Deindustrialization

opened a number of new areas to residential development. The new projects took the form of condominium

Condominium

A condominium, or condo, is the form of housing tenure and other real property where a specified part of a piece of real estate is individually owned while use of and access to common facilities in the piece such as hallways, heating system, elevators, exterior areas is executed under legal rights...

s. This form of housing was introduced in the province's Condominium Act in the 1960s, but it was not until the 1980s that condos become very popular. An initial condo boom started in 1986, but the market collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s recession, and many investors were badly mauled. In 1995, condo prices were still 30% below the earlier highs. That year, a new boom began in Toronto that has continued to this day. An unprecedented number of new projects have been built in Toronto. In 2000, Condo Life magazine listed 152 separate projects underway within the city of Toronto. By 2007, the number of projects in the GTA had reached 247.

This development has been concentrated in the downtown core, especially in the former industrial areas just outside of the central business district. The largest such project is CityPlace

CityPlace, Toronto

CityPlace is the name given to a large section of former railway land in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada that has been redeveloped for multi-use purpose. The term has been more recently used for a large up-scale multi-tower condo development in the Harbourfront district. When completed, this area...

, a cluster of condo towers on former railway lands by the lake shore. This $2 billion project will eventually consist of 20 different towers housing some 12,000 people. Transit-oriented development

Transit-oriented development

A transit-oriented development is a mixed-use residential or commercial area designed to maximize access to public transport, and often incorporates features to encourage transit ridership...

s are also common in Toronto, such as at North York Centre

North York Centre

North York Centre is a town centre in North York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Prior to the Amalgamation of Toronto in 1998, it was considered the central business district of the former city of North York...

and Sheppard East along the namesake subway line and Sheppard West along the subway line's westward extension.

Financial district

Toronto is the commercial centre of Canada. Many of the country's largest firms are based there, and most others keep a major presence in the city. Among Canada's oldest and most prominent firms are the Big Five banks and the banks have erected many of Toronto's most prominent buildings. The Financial District

Financial District, Toronto

The Financial District is a business district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, within the downtown core. It was originally planned as New Town in 1796 as an extension of the Town of York . It is the main financial district in Toronto, and is the financial heart of Canada...

is centred on the intersection of Bay

Bay Street

Bay Street, originally known as Bear Street, is a major thoroughfare in Downtown Toronto. It is the centre of Toronto's Financial District and is often used by metonymy to refer to Canada's financial industry since succeeding Montreal's St. James Street in that role in the 1970s...

and King in the heart of downtown. The blocks at each corner of this intersection are home to office towers for the major banks. This cluster includes four of Canada's five tallest buildings.

At the southwest of Bay and King is Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....

's Toronto-Dominion Centre

Toronto-Dominion Centre

The Toronto-Dominion Centre, or Centre, is a cluster of buildings in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, consisting of six towers and a pavilion covered in bronze-tinted glass and black painted steel. It serves as the global headquarters of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, as well as providing office and...

. It is a black International Style

International style (architecture)

The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...

modernist complex of six imposing towers. Its tallest tower was the tallest building in Canada from 1967 to 1972. On the southeast is CIBC's

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is one of Canada's chartered banks, fifth largest by deposits. The bank is headquartered at Commerce Court in Toronto, Ontario. CIBC's Institution Number is 010, and its SWIFT code is CIBCCATT....

Commerce Court

Commerce Court is a complex of four office buildings on King- and Bay-streets in the financial district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, The main tenant is the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce...

complex. It is a cluster of four office buildings. The first building, now known as Commerce Court North, was built in 1930 as the headquarters. Designed by the firm Pearson and Darling

Pearson and Darling

Pearson and Darling was an architectural firm based in Toronto from 1897 through 1923, a key player in shaping the urban look of the city and the rest of Canada in the first half of the 20th century.-Formation:...

, the 34-storey tower was the tallest building in the British Empire

British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...

/Commonwealth of Nations

Commonwealth of Nations

The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...

until 1962. In 1972, three other buildings were erected, thus creating the Commerce Court complex: Commerce Court West designed by I. M. Pei

I. M. Pei

(the tallest building in the complex, at 57 storeys, and the tallest building in Canada from 1972-1976), Commerce Court East (14 storeys), and Commerce Court South (5 storeys). Across the intersection on the northwestern corner is First Canadian Place

First Canadian Place

First Canadian Place is a skyscraper in the financial district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, at the northwest corner of King and Bay streets, and is the location of the Toronto headquarters of the Bank of Montreal. At , it is Canada's tallest skyscraper and the 15th tallest building in North America...

, housing the main Toronto offices of the Bank of Montreal

Bank of Montreal

The Bank of Montreal , , or BMO Financial Group, is the fourth largest bank in Canada by deposits. The Bank of Montreal was founded on June 23, 1817 by John Richardson and eight merchants in a rented house in Montreal, Quebec. On May 19, 1817 the Articles of Association were adopted, making it...

. It was designed by Edward Durell Stone

Edward Durell Stone

Edward Durell Stone was a twentieth century American architect who worked primarily in the Modernist style.-Early life:...

and originally clad in Carrara marble. Since 1975 it has held the title of Canada's tallest office building with a height of 298 metres. Scotia Plaza

Scotia Plaza

Scotia Plaza is a Postmodern commercial office complex in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The complex is situated in the financial district of the downtown core, and is generally bordered by Yonge Street on the east, King Street West on the south, Bay Street on the west, and Adelaide Street...

, headquarters of Scotiabank

Scotiabank

The Bank of Nova Scotia , commonly known as Scotiabank , is the third largest bank in Canada by deposits and market capitalization. It serves some 18.6 million customers in more than 50 countries around the world and offers a broad range of products and services including personal, commercial,...

, is the second tallest building in Canada and is the newest of the Bay and King office towers having been completed in 1988. Just beyond Bay and King a number of other towers are found. To the south is the Royal Bank Plaza

Royal Bank Plaza

Royal Bank Plaza in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is the de facto headquarters of the Royal Bank of Canada. The building shares with the Fairmont Royal York Hotel the block in Toronto's financial district bordered by Bay, Front, York, and Wellington streets....

, the Royal Bank of Canada

Royal Bank of Canada

The Royal Bank of Canada or RBC Financial Group is the largest financial institution in Canada, as measured by deposits, revenues, and market capitalization. The bank serves seventeen million clients and has 80,100 employees worldwide. The company corporate headquarters are located in Toronto,...

's main building in Toronto. At Bay and Wellington is TD Canada Trust Tower, the third tallest building in Canada, and its mate the Bay Wellington Tower.

Hotels

The hospitality industry is among Toronto's most important industries. One of Toronto's best known hotel is the Fairmont Royal York

Fairmont Royal York

The Fairmont Royal York Hotel, formerly the Royal York Hotel and still often so called, is a large and historic hotel in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, at 100 Front Street West. Opened on June 11, 1929, the Royal York was designed by Ross and Macdonald and built by the Canadian Pacific Railway...

hotel.

Main Streets

A widely implemented and important concept in the Toronto cityscape is that of the Main Street

Main Street

Main Street is the metonym for a generic street name of the primary retail street of a village, town, or small city in many parts of the world...

(not to be confused with the street actually named Main Street

East Toronto

East Toronto, Ontario was an incorporated community in what is today a part of the city of Toronto, Canada. It covered much of what is today the Upper Beaches neighbourhood, stretching up to Danforth Avenue in the north. The central street in the community was Main Street, running south from...

, which is not the city's "main" street), which entails a streetscape which is

"characterized by buildings on small lots (frontages less than 12.5 metres) ranging in height from 2 to 5 storeys. These buildings have street-related retail uses at grade and residential uses above. Typically, they are built to the lot line and span the width of the lot. These characteristics produce the familiar retail strip in which there is a continuous wall of retail activity and there is a direct relationship between the main entrance of a store and the public sidewalk."

The Main Street is the concept of small avenues and store frontages on busy roads which maintain the vitality of communities and the continuity of the streetscape.

Shopping centres

Eberhard Zeidler

Eberhard Heinrich Zeidler, OC, O.Ont is a Canadian architect.he studied at the Technische Hochschule, Karlsruhe, Germany....

, the Eaton Centre

Toronto Eaton Centre

The Toronto Eaton Centre is a large shopping mall and office complex in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, named after the now-defunct Eaton's department store chain that once anchored it. In terms of the number of visitors, the shopping mall is Toronto's top tourist attraction, with around one...

represented one of North America's first downtown shopping malls. It was designed as a multi-levelled, vaulted glass-ceiling galleria, modelled after the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a double arcade in the center of Milan, Italy. The structure is formed by two glass-vaulted arcades intersecting in an octagon covering the street connecting Piazza del Duomo to Piazza della Scala....

in Milan, Italy. At the time of its opening in 1977, the interior design of the Eaton Centre was considered quite revolutionary and influenced shopping centre architecture throughout North America. Plans originally called for the demolition of Old City Hall, but these were eventually dropped after a public outcry. Ultimately, Terauley Street, Louisa Street, Downey's Lane and Albert Lane were closed and disappeared from the city street grid to make way for the new office and retail complex.

Large, sprawling retail centres are common in suburban Toronto. Of the more notable is Yorkdale Shopping Centre

Yorkdale Shopping Centre

Yorkdale Shopping Centre is a large shopping mall in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It contains over 250 stores and is located in the community of Downsview, in North York. It is the fifth largest shopping mall in Canada and also enjoys the highest sales per square foot of any mall in Canada, with...

, which opened in 1964 as the then world's largest mall. The mall was constructed with a novel system for its retailers to receive merchandise. Most shopping centres have their receiving doors located at the back side, while Yorkdale was constructed with a one-way, two-laned road for trucks running beneath the centre that leads directly to retailers' basement storages.

Government

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario. The Romanesque

Romanesque Revival architecture

Romanesque Revival is a style of building employed beginning in the mid 19th century inspired by the 11th and 12th century Romanesque architecture...

Ontario Legislature

Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The Legislative Assembly of Ontario , is the legislature of the Canadian province of Ontario, and is the second largest provincial legislature of Canada...

is one of the most prominent monuments in the city, forming a terminating vista

Terminating vista

In urban design, a terminating vista is a building or monument that stands at the end or in the middle of a road, so that when one is looking up the street the view ends with the site....

at the end of University Avenue

University Avenue (Toronto)

University Avenue is a major north-south road in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. At its north end, University Avenue is the site of the Ontario Legislative Building. The eight-lane wide street is the location for several hospitals, numerous office buildings, Osgoode Hall and the Four Seasons...

. To the east of the legislature are a number of governmental buildings, with the best known being the Whitney Block

Whitney Block

The Whitney Block is an important provincial office building located in Toronto, Ontario. It is located across the street from the Ontario Legislature, and contains the offices of the Premier of Ontario and most cabinet ministers...

. Constructed over many decades, they embrace a number of different styles. The provincial government have been unwilling to pay for structures as lavish as those of the private sector, and few of the provincial buildings are of much prominence.

Two of the most distinct and well known structures in downtown Toronto are the old and current city halls. The Old City Hall

Old City Hall (Toronto)

was built in 1899 and is a prominent example of a the late Victorian Romanesque Revival

Romanesque Revival architecture

Romanesque Revival is a style of building employed beginning in the mid 19th century inspired by the 11th and 12th century Romanesque architecture...

style. Across the street is the starkly different new Toronto City Hall

Toronto City Hall

The City Hall of Toronto, Ontario, Canada is the home of the city's municipal government and one of its most distinctive landmarks. Designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell and landscape architect Richard Strong, and engineered by Hannskarl Bandel, the building opened in 1965...

built in 1966. This brashly modernist

Modern architecture

Modern architecture is generally characterized by simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. It is a term applied to an overarching movement, with its exact definition and scope varying widely...

structure was designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell

Viljo Revell

Viljo Revell was a Finnish architect of the functionalist school. Internationally Revell is best known for designing the Toronto City Hall....

. It fronts Nathan Phillips Square

Nathan Phillips Square

Nathan Phillips Square is an urban plaza that forms the forecourt to Toronto City Hall, or New City Hall, at the intersection of Queen Street West and Bay Street, and named for Nathan Phillips, mayor of Toronto from 1955 to 1962. The square opened in 1965, and, as with the City Hall, the square was...

, which was also designed by Revell. Today, both buildings are considered symbols of the city.

Universities

The University of Toronto (U of T) has embraced dramatic design and monumentalism, and its prominent location at the centre of the city has given its structures a wide impact. Built up over almost two centuries, the university's buildings cover a wide range of styles. The Collegiate Gothic

Collegiate Gothic in North America

Collegiate Gothic is an architectural genre, a subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture.-History:The beginnings of Collegiate Gothic in North America date back to 1894 when Cope & Stewardson completed Pembroke Hall on the campus of Bryn Mawr College...

style was embraced for many of the earliest buildings, such as Hart House, Trinity College

University of Trinity College

The University of Trinity College, informally referred to as Trin, is a college of the University of Toronto, founded in 1851 by Bishop John Strachan. Trinity was intended by Strachan as a college of strong Anglican alignment, after the University of Toronto severed its ties with the Church of...

, and Burwash Hall

Burwash Hall

Burwash Hall is the second oldest of the residence buildings at Toronto's Victoria College. Construction began in 1911 and was completed in 1913. It was named after Nathanael Burwash, a former president of Victoria. The building is an extravagant Neo-Gothic work with turrets, gargoyles, and...

, but there are also examples of almost all the Victorian revival styles on campus. In recent decades, the university has built examples of modernism, such as McLennan Physical Laboratories; brutalism

Brutalist architecture

Brutalist architecture is a style of architecture which flourished from the 1950s to the mid 1970s, spawned from the modernist architectural movement.-The term "brutalism":...

, such as Robarts Library

Robarts Library

The John P. Robarts Research Library, commonly referred to as Robarts Library, is the main humanities and social sciences library of the University of Toronto Libraries and the largest individual library in the university...

; and postmodernism, such as the graduate house

University of Toronto Graduate House

Graduate House at the University of Toronto is a student residence specifically for graduate students, designed by Thom Mayne. It is located at 60 Harbord Street, Toronto.-History:...

by Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Thom Mayne

Thom Mayne

Thom Mayne is a Los Angeles-based architect. Educated at University of Southern California and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1978, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 1972, where he is a trustee...

. Sir Norman Foster

Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank

Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM is a British architect whose company maintains an international design practice, Foster + Partners....

designed the University of Toronto's Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building

Leslie L. Dan Pharmacy Building

The Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy is a pharmacy school and an academic division of the University of Toronto. The faculty is located on the northwestern corner of College Street and University Avenue, placing it across from the Ontario Legislative Building and at the entrance to Queen's Park station...

, which is home to the largest pharmacy faculty in Canada. It was completed in 2006.

The other two major universities, York

York University

York University is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, Ontario's second-largest graduate school, and Canada's leading interdisciplinary university....

and Ryerson

Ryerson University

Ryerson University is a public research university located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its urban campus is adjacent to Yonge-Dundas Square located at the busiest intersection in Downtown Toronto. The majority of its buildings are in the blocks northeast of the square in Toronto's Garden...

Universities, have largely been built in more recent years and have fewer architectural monuments. Ryerson was long mostly hidden within the downtown streetscape, but since the 1990s, an unprecedented building project has greatly expanded the campus and made it much more visible. York, like many of the universities that largely came into being in the 1950s and 1960s, has mostly eschewed monumentalism in pursuit of less dramatic, but more egalitarian architecture, particularly brutalist architecture.

The Ontario College of Art and Design, for many years confined to a series of comparatively unprepossessing buildings in the western part of downtown, was transformed in 2004 by the addition of the Will Alsop

Will Alsop

's Sharp Centre of Design. It consists of a black and white speckled box suspended four storeys off the ground and supported by a series of multi-coloured pillars at different angles.

Museums

Toronto is home to a variety of museums of varied styles. The Hockey Hall of Fame

Hockey Hall of Fame

The Hockey Hall of Fame is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dedicated to the history of ice hockey, it is both a museum and a hall of fame. It holds exhibits about players, teams, National Hockey League records, memorabilia and NHL trophies, including the Stanley Cup...

is housed in a Beaux-Arts building designed by Frank Darling

Frank Fraser Darling

Sir Frank Fraser Darling was an English ecologist, ornithologist, farmer, conservationist and author, who is strongly associated with the highlands and islands of Scotland.-Early life:...

. Several of Canada's most prominent museums are located in Toronto and recent years have seen a number of architecturally bold expansions. The Gardiner Museum

Gardiner Museum

The Gardiner Museum is the only museum in Canada devoted exclusively to ceramic art. It is located on Queen’s Park just south of Bloor Street in Toronto, opposite the Royal Ontario Museum. The nearest subway station is Museum.-History:...

recently commissioned KPMB Architects for a renovation and expansion, which was completed in 2006. The design consists of strongly pronounced rectangular and square windows, with various asymmetrical setbacks. The Royal Ontario Museum

Royal Ontario Museum

The Royal Ontario Museum is a museum of world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. With its main entrance facing Bloor Street in Downtown Toronto, the museum is situated north of Queen's Park and east of Philosopher's Walk in the University of Toronto...

is Canada's largest. In 2007, Daniel Libeskind

Daniel Libeskind

's expansion arrived, giving the museum a series of enormous "crystals" that rise dramatically five storeys from the street surface. These crystals are named after Michael Lee-Chin

Michael Lee-Chin

The Honourable Michael Lee-Chin, OJ is a Jamaican-Canadian investor. He is the founder and Chairman of Portland Holdings Inc., a privately held investment company which owns a collection of diversified operating companies in sectors that include media, tourism, health care telecommunications and...

, who funded a significant proportion of the façade. Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry

Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...

's redesign of the Art Gallery of Ontario

Art Gallery of Ontario

Under the direction of its CEO Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO embarked on a $254 million redevelopment plan by architect Frank Gehry in 2004, called Transformation AGO. The new addition would require demolition of the 1992 Post-Modernist wing by Barton Myers and Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg...

, completed in November 2008, completely altered the museum inside and out. The new front façade of the gallery became an exercise in transparency, with the upper level transformed into a new sculpture court.

Houses of worship

One of the most common institutions in Toronto are the large number of churches and other houses of worship. In the 19th and early 20th century Toronto was home to a wide array of Christian denominations, each of which erected a wide array of churches in what is today central Toronto. Over time the decrease in population in the core and the move away from mainline denominations has seen many of these churches disappear. Many still remain, and they are some of the more notable buildings in the city. While some very early churches were in the Georgian style

Georgian architecture

, Gothic Revival

Gothic Revival architecture

The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...

became the dominant. Gothic Revival was used for essentially all major Protestant churches in Toronto up until about 1950. Roman Catholic churches were also most often Gothic, though Italianate

Italianate architecture

The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. In the Italianate style, the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture, which had served as inspiration for both Palladianism and...

and Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

churches were also erected. The coming of modernism caused churches of all denominations to move away from the Gothic, and embrace modernist architecture with a wide array of designs. These are the typical church style found in the suburbs that were created after the Second World War.

Toronto has had an important Jewish community since the late 19th century. Originally, several synagogues were erected in the downtown, and a handful survive today. After the Second World War the Jewish community recentred upon the Bathurst Street

Bathurst Street (Toronto)

Bathurst Street is a main north-south thoroughfare in Toronto. It begins at the Lake Ontario shoreline and continues north to the Toronto boundary of Steeles Avenue...

corridor. In more recent decades a wide number of other religious groups have grown to considerable numbers in Toronto and constructed traditional religious structures in the city. Several mosque

Mosque

A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...

s, and Buddhist and Hindu temples have been built. One of the most notable is the Hindu BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Toronto

BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Toronto

BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Toronto is a Hindu temple in Toronto, Ontario, opened on July 22, 2007 by Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the spiritual leader of BAPS. Also in attendance at the ceremony were Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, Federal Opposition Leader...

opened in the northwest of the city in 2007.

Landmarks

The most prominent landmark in Toronto, and its best known symbol, is the CN Tower

CN Tower

The CN Tower is a communications and observation tower in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Standing tall, it was completed in 1976, becoming the world's tallest free-standing structure and world's tallest tower at the time. It held both records for 34 years until the completion of the Burj...

. It was the world's tallest free-standing structure for 31 years, from its completion in 1975 until Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...

surpassed it in 2007; it remains the world's tallest free-standing tower. The CN Tower

CN Tower

is used as an observation tower, as well as a communications tower.

In June 2006, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts

Four Seasons Centre

The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts is a 2,071-seat theatre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada which had its grand opening Wednesday, June 14, 2006. The first actual performance however, commenced in September 2006 with the first Canadian production of Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen...

opened as the new home of the Canadian Opera Company

Canadian Opera Company

The Canadian Opera Company is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and the third largest producer of opera in North America. The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.-History:For 40 years until...

and The National Ballet of Canada

National Ballet of Canada

The National Ballet of Canada is Canada's largest ballet troupe. It was founded by Celia Franca in 1951 and is based in Toronto, Ontario. Based upon the unity of Canadian trained dancers in the tradition and style of England's Royal Ballet, The National is regarded as one of the premier classical...

. Designed by Diamond + Schmitt

Diamond and Schmitt Architects

Diamond and Schmitt Architects Incorporated is an architectural practice founded in 1975 and located in Toronto, Ontario Canada. The firm currently employs 137 people.-History:...

, the 2,000 seat opera house has a European-style tiered horseshoe-shaped auditorium. It is the first structure in Canada specifically designed to house both opera and ballet with customized acoustics.

External links

Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada, – biographies of Canadian architects and lists of their buildings from 1800 to 1950.
Cultural renaissance projects

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