Toronto's Edwardian Skyscraper
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REPORTS | RAPPORTS TORONTO’S EDWARDIAN SKYSCRAPER ROW DAVID WINTERTON is a graduate of the University > DAVID E. WINTERTON of Toronto and McGill University. He is currently a Senior Associate at Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) in New York. Previously he worked at the Toronto heritage architecture firm ERA Architects where he deepened his knowledge and admiration his paper will investigate exem- of the architectural history of Toronto and of his Tplars of commercial architecture birthplace, southwestern Ontario. He continues from Toronto’s prolific early twentieth- century building period (1900 to 1916), to cultivate that interest and focuses his ongoing often referred to stylistically in Canada research on the rich material culture of the early as Edwardian,1 through two lenses. The twentieth century in the Great Lakes region. introduction of the skyscraper—that most American of built form—to Toronto’s flourishing new banking district is the first lens. That story aims to unravel the influ- ences on Toronto architecture emanating from Chicago (through technological advances in commercial architecture), New York (where Beaux-Arts rules were stretched to compose tall building façades), and London (through adher- ence to Imperial architectural taste). The second lens considers two contemporary, competing architectural practices that succeeded in tall building design: Carrère and Hastings of New York (in association with their Canadian alumni) and Darling and Pearson of Toronto. Toronto’s first modern skyscraper2 ensem- ble appears at the intersection of King and Yonge streets in the years after the Great Fire of 1904. These new buildings inalter- ably changed the skyline image of the city3 and were erected in spite of pervasive health and engineering concerns,4 not to mention aesthetic ones. Indeed with the completion of the Traders’ Bank Building by Carrère and Hastings in 1906—the first in the ensemble—the editors of Canadian Architect and Builder petulantly sniffed: “we cannot regard the arrival of the tall building with entire satisfaction.”5 If genu- inely unsatisfied with their arrival, then the editors and the general public were nevertheless fascinated by these impos- sible-to-ignore giant architectural forms. FIG. 1. AERIAL PHOTOGRAPH OF SKYSCRAPER ROW, C. 1920. | CITY OF TORONTO ARCHIVES. JSSAC | JSÉAC 40 > No 2 > 2015 > 77-99 77 DAVID E. WINTERTON > REPORTS | RAPPORTS that had evolved since Confederation, or that had sprung anew in lockstep with the modern, post-Victorian age. They served to incubate initiatives for the new nation. Those that focused on the civic scale (York and Toronto clubs for instance)7 promoted Toronto business at a time of unpreced- ented expansion of both the city and the Dominion, counting as members the male elites of business, government, and the arts. Many architects, like Edmund Burke, Frank Darling, and his partner John Pearson, were members of these establish- ment clubs.8 Other architects at the van- guard of practice like Eden Smith formed clubs to further the art of architecture, often focussed on reforming architec- FIG. 2. TORONTO CITY HALL AND COURTS, C. 1910. | POSTCARD, AUTHOR’S COLLECTION. tural education. The Toronto Architectural Eighteen Club (1899)—to be discussed later on—was one such club. The list of The introductory narrative on context will was assured by the established yet ever turn-of-the-century politico-business clubs outline the linkages between Edwardian multiplying “club system,” of both the and their members is long. For our pur- Toronto’s commercial, civic, and architec- business and cultural varieties. poses however it is illuminating to note tural culture; that is, the forces that con- the chronology of those clubs and soci- joined to erect this building ensemble. This TORONTO’S EMERGING eties formed to promote both the profes- grouping marked the intersection of the ARCHITECTURAL CULTURE sion and the art of architecture9: Toronto imperial outpost’s new cardo and deca- Society of Architects (1887); Ontario manus upon its rising skyline. The architec- It is important to sketch an outline of the Association of Architects (1889); University tural narrative then follows the buildings’ early twentieth-century Anglo-Canadian of Toronto School of Architecture (1890); dates of completion: Traders’ Bank Building establishment’s search for an autono- Toronto Guild of Civic Art (1897); Toronto (1906), Lumsden Building (1910), Canadian mous culture and economy specific to the Architectural Eighteen Club (1899); Royal Pacific Railway Building (1913), Dominion relatively new idea of the confederated Architectural Institute of Canada (1907); Bank Building (1914), and the Royal Bank Dominion of Canada. Could an authen- Arts and Letters Club (1908); Toronto Civic Building (1916). The Richardsonian land- tic Canadian culture develop that was Improvement Committee (1911); University marks of the Old City Hall (1899) and the nourished as much by the brash energy of Toronto Architectural Club (1911). Independent Order of Foresters’ Temple exploiting the hinterland of the quickly Building (1897) will also be analyzed in modernizing country as by the cultural TORONTO’S HYBRID MODERN order to illustrate the earlier adoption of and professional ties to Great Britain, ARCHITECTURE American precedents (fig. 1). and less overtly to the United States? The genesis and mission of the Group of Seven This paper will also consider Toronto The shrewd and wealthy barons of Painters is a clear analog in the fine arts, architecture of the Edwardian period10 as Toronto and Montreal, observing the about whom much has already been writ- a New World hybrid: balancing an adher- successes of their peers in Chicago and ten.6 Indeed many of the Group of Seven ence to the progress of Imperial Great New York, had come to understand the were “club men,” instrumental in direct- Britain with its geographical situation on value of sky-scraping landmark buildings ing the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. the shores of Lake Ontario, an optimistic that also generated high rental incomes Manifestos and grand ideas were formed and observant neighbour to the commer- across multiple storeys. Connecting ambi- by these gatherings of men in the pleth- cially fecund and populous cities of the tious architects to these baron patrons ora of other clubs, societies, and unions United Sates. Of the influences operating 78 JSSAC | JSÉAC 40 > No 2 > 2015 DAVID E. WINTERTON > REPORTS | RAPPORTS FIG. 3. INDEPENDENT ORDER OF FORESTERS’ TEMPLE FIG. 4. ROOKERY BUILDING, CHICAGO, 1888. | LANTERN SLIDE COLLECTION, HARVARD UNIVERSITY GRADUATE BUILDING, C. 1910. | POSTCARD, AUTHOR’S COLLECTION. SCHOOL OF DESIGN, FRANCES LOEB LIBRARY. THIS IMAGE FROM THE AMERICAN MEMORY COLLECTIONS IS AVAILABLE FROM THE UNITED STATES LIBRARY OF CONGRESS’S NATIONAL DIGITAL LIBRARY PROGRAM (MHSALAD.250063). on Toronto’s architectural and material architectural press, through periodic- sound planning and building forms, artis- culture its outlier position on the tight als such as The Architectural Record, tic and decorative trends, or material and network of rapidly developing, innovat- Architecture, Inland Architect, and the technological advances. Toronto archi- ing, and prosperous American Great Lakes Toronto-based Canadian Architect and tects would also have been confronted cities is rarely explored. Connections to Builder and Construction. The magazines with proven new organizational methods Montreal of course were historically strong, published generously the pertinent and applied to architectural practice itself, but this regional, lacustrine aspect is worth novel developments of modern architec- methods that streamlined modern build- exploring in more depth. At the turn of ture, as well as opinion pieces and essays. ing production through the hierarchical the century, Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland, Newly founded architectural societies division of architectural expertise and and Detroit, the cities closest and most also published illustrated annuals and construction document production, not accessible from Toronto, were absorbing exhibited their members’ works to the to mention the increasing specialization great waves of new citizens and develop- interested public. Architectural publi- of the role of construction manager to ing a boisterous, inventive, and corporate cations certainly expanded the know- oversee complex projects.14 One could say wealth. The urban expansion revealed itself ledge horizons of the regions’ architects. that by the year 1900, the modern archi- in the growth and complexity of industrial Additionally, extensive railway and Great tectural practice’s advanced structure and and business structures, and was reflected Lakes passenger steamer networks lit- work flow, employed to oversee the con- in novel contemporary architecture, most erally expanded their horizons, so that struction of modern building types, was notably in industrial buildings—like those Toronto architects could easily visit to a large measure due to the methods of Albert Kahn of Detroit—and in the (sumptuously too, when it came to the learned by the legions of American archi- remarkable new heights and organiza- waterborne steamships12) the nearby sis- tects who attended—if not matriculated tions of office buildings. The concomitant ter cities to study successful precedents from—the famous École des Beaux-Arts in explosion of architecturally delightful bank and incorporate their lessons into projects Paris, coupled with new, American busi- buildings