In front of the condo The Gloucester on Yonge at 3 Gloucester Street (corner of Yonge Street and Gloucester Street), there is a fairly new sculpture entitled Cloaked Presence.
Created by American artist Albert Paley in 2021, the piece was commissioned by the developer Concord Adex as part of its Percent for Public Art Program for Private Development. In Toronto, this “percent for public art policy” states that 1% of capital project costs on private development projects go towards public art. A fantastic concept, I think, and it really gets new art and sculpture out front of most of the new condos.
Here’s a short video showing how the piece was assembled in front of its new home at The Gloucester on Yonge condo:
So, I don’t know if shots from 2014 qualify for inclusion in my so-called series From The Vaults (i.e. old shots of Toronto). I found these the other day while browsing and thought I’d post them as they are a bit of a blast from the past, so to speak.
Some of the shots are slightly “arty”; I was experimenting at the time with capturing urban life using a slow shutter speed, hence the intentional motion blur.
The Bay at Queen and Yonge
The original Bay store at Yonge and Queen Streets only partially exists since Saks Fifth Avenue took over the entire east half of the building in 2016. These shots are prior to the merge and remodel of the building.
The Bay’s southeast entrance on to Yonge Street. This entrance is long gone; in its place is a trendoid coffee bar/resto, which is part of Saks Fifth Avenue.Pay phones!!?? Remember those? In the lobby of The Bay’s southeast entrance.The Bay sales floor, ground levelRiding The Bay’s escalatorsMore people moversGround level sales floor, Women’s jewellery (note Ivanka Trump’s jewellery line, far right – that dates it!)
In The Old Queen Street Bridge
I shot these while crossing over from The Bay to the Eaton Centre in the old pedestrian bridge spanning Queen Street West. This bridge has long disappeared and been replaced with a new one (check out my Eaton Centre bridge post here).
Above Queen Street during a rainstormThe old Eaton Centre pedestrian bridge
Inside the Eaton Centre
Another busy Saturday afternoon in the Eaton Centre
Located at the very foot of Yonge Street at Queen’s Quay East/Lake Ontario sits a curious sculpture entitled Between The Eyes. Established in 1990 by the artist Richard Deacon, this enormous piece resembles a mangled egg beater on steroids. Its gentle curves and angles make for an inspired photoshoot; the structure looks interesting from any direction.
The sculpture is called Between the Eyes. The idea for it developed after my preliminary site visit at which point the site was just an empty lot. I don’t know if they even started breaking ground yet. And there were a couple of things that kind of struck me kind of forcefully at the time. The one was the location at either the beginning or the terminus of the longest street in Canada – Yonge Street – which goes for two thousand miles as an old fur trading route. And, also across from the square is the departure point for the ferries going out to the Islands. So, the site had an implicit kind of focus to it. And the title of the sculpture, Between the Eyes, is somehow reflected ideas about centrality, about distance travel as you came down Yonge Street with your sled load of beaver furs ready to raise trade.
Richard Deacon, Sculptor
The sculpture’s huge but I hadn’t wanted to make a huge lump. So that’s why it’s a skeletal structure, to lighten it, to make it something you can look through rather than it always being something you look at. And the seed of the idea was probably as much to do with just some idea about walking as anything else. The sculpture was intended to look itinerant on the site – that it had arrived and could depart or was going somewhere or had just arrived from somewhere. And that seemed to be the essence of the place, that it was a point of arrival and departure.
What do you do with an abandoned old train station? Why, turn it into a high-end LCBO of course!
Located just off Yonge Street near Summerhill Avenue, this structure used to be the North Toronto Railway Station. It was in service from 1916 to 1930, and closed in 1931 after Union Station opened downtown.
In 1916, architects Frank Darling and John Pearson were assigned the task of creating a new North Toronto rail station. The centrepiece of their plan was a 140-foot clock tower inspired by the Campanile in St. Mark’s Square in Venice. Built by the P. Lyall & Sons Construction Company, the station went on to service the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) line running across Toronto.
Globe, September 10, 1915
This station was the first building in the city to be constructed of Tyndall limestone from Manitoba, supplied by The Wallace Sandstone Quarries.
When then-Mayor Tommy Church laid the cornerstone on September 9, 1915, he praised the CPR for being the first railway company to give Toronto proper recognition. He hoped the station would be the first of a series of railway gateways to the city, improving inter-city commuting. When passenger service began on June 4, 1916, destinations included Lindsay, Owen Sound, and Ottawa. The most popular route was Montreal, which attracted wealthy businessmen who lived nearby.
Globe, June 15, 1916
When Union Station opened in 1927 and the Great Depression followed shortly thereafter, the North Toronto Railway Station, which served smaller towns in Ontario and was originally meant to augment the bigger station, began to suffer. The last paying passengers filed through the station on September 27, 1930. Brewers’ Retail moved into the northern portion of the terminal building in 1931.
Ticket area, circa 1916 City of Toronto Archives
The station was re-opened, briefly, at 10:30AM on May 22, 1939, when King George VI and his consort, Queen Elizabeth (mother of Queen Elizabeth II), arrived for their first visit to Toronto. This was the first visit to Canada by a reigning British monarch. The King was also officially the Canadian monarch, marking the first visit by one to the city. The royal couple departed Toronto through Union Station. Shortly after World War II, returning soldiers passed through the North Toronto station; they were its last rail passengers.
The building has been protected under Part IV of the Ontario Heritage Act since October 13, 1976.
Inside The Building…
You want booze? There’s nothing you can’t find here – champagne, wine, beer, vodka, gin, whisky, scotch, tequila – you name it, they have that and a lot more. They also carry extensive vintage and imported liquor.
Staying true to the building’s roots, aisles and signs echo its past life
The station has a much, much longer history than I’ve noted, so if you’re interested in reading a more in-depth article, click here for the wiki.
The Alexander Muir Memorial Gardens are located at 2901 Yonge Street, on the east side of Yonge below Lawrence Avenue. The park was created in 1933 by public subscription to honour Alexander Muir, who composed the song The Maple Leaf Forever. Landscape architect Edwin Kay designed the park using the maple leaf as a theme.
Garden Dedication
The Gardens were originally located opposite Mount Pleasant Cemetery on Yonge Street, but were moved to its present location in 1951 to make way for construction of the Yonge subway line. The park at its present location was formally dedicated on May 28, 1952. Edwin Kay’s formal, symmetrical design of the original gardens was replicated at the new location.
The Gardens are a favourite location for wedding photographers. There were a couple of wedding parties and photographers onsite the day I visited.
It’s very peaceful here; a great place to unwind and take refuge from the city.
The Blessed Sacrament is a Catholic Church located at 24 Cheritan Avenue, which is on Yonge Street just south of Lawrence Avenue. Construction of this church began in the spring of 1929 at the (then) cost of $180,000.00. In June 1930 the church was opened and dedicated.
The Blessed Sacrament is one of the largest church structures in the Archdiocese of Toronto. It’s architect, J. Gibb Morton, based his look for the building on two periods of medieval Gothic architecture.
Sitting in front of the 76-storey tower One Bloor East (1 Bloor Street East) is a sculpture everyone calls “the oil cans”, and it’s easy to see why. Designed by Israeli-born, UK-based designer and architect Ron Arad, the installation is actually called Safe Hands. It stems from the City’s One Percent for Public Art Program, which mandates that 1% of project costs of building a condo/new highrise must go towards public art that is clearly visible at all times from publicly accessible areas.
The sculpture consists of a pair of intertwined stainless steel multi-jointed fingers with ruffled surfaces in spots, and flashes of bright yellow and red where sections end. Rising 88 feet high, the sculpture was designed by Ron Arad, and produced locally by Stephen Richards of Streamliner Fabrication Inc.
Originally planned as a dynamic sculpture with moving upper sections, the piece was redesigned as static when logistics proved too onerous (and likely too expensive to fix should it have broken at some point). The piece evokes a feeling of motion, which I’m sure was the intent of the sculptor’s design.
A little wandering around on a Saturday afternoon…
Bike Locks & Handcuffs An odd combination found on Jarvis StreetUnder The Scaffold Somewhere on Jarvis StreetMetropolitan United Church 56 Queen Street EastSt. Michael’s Hospital 30 Bond StreetSt. Michael’s Skywalk Spanning Shuter StreetMassey Hall 178 Victoria StreetYonge & Dundas Yonge Dundas Square with the SAMS sign atop 77 Victoria Street20 Edward Street Who remembers The World’s Biggest Bookstore? This is the site where it used to stand; now there’s a high-rise condo. The World’s Biggest Bookstore operated from 1980 until 2014. The 3-storey store covered 64,000 square feet and was noted for its bright lights and over 20 kilometres of bookshelves. I still miss it.The Shop Is Closed Somewhere on Yonge Street, north of Edward Street
It was a beautiful day today, so naturally I went for a photowalk with my trusty camera. I wandered down to the Esplanade then back, capturing the city on a Saturday afternoon. Here’s a few shots from earlier today.
[Note: this is an older blog post from July 2021 which I’ve brought over from my general blog site, Ramblings. I’ve posted it here on TOcityscapes as it’s in keeping with this blog’s topic.]
St. James Cathedral Centre Event Venue 65 Church Street
Market Street St. Lawrence Market
“Dream Ballet” by Harley Valentine Outside Meridian Hall, southeast corner of Front and Yonge Streets
Part of “Dream Ballet” (left) and surrounding towers
Leonard chills out, promoting Canada Post’s new stamp
Yonge Street and Wellington Street West
Chess at Yonge-Dundas Square
Yonge Street Music History Murals – Part II On south-facing building at 423 Yonge Street
Today I swing through College Park, walk down Yonge Street to catch the tail end of OpenStreetsTO, visit the Panamerican Food & Music Festival at Yonge-Dundas Square, and finish up on Dundas Street East where I checked out some urban scrawl.
Frogs and Lily Pads at College Park
Four years after the Aura condo tower at College Park wrapped up construction, the long-awaited revitalization of the College Park public space was completed. The old park was completed removed because the parking garage underneath required a new waterproof membrane on its roof. And… we have now have frogs!
Walking Down Yonge Street…
Yonge Street south of Gerrard Street
Packing up after OpenStreetsTO at Yonge and Dundas Streets
Panamerican Food & Music Festival at Yonge-Dundas Square
The Panamerican Food & Music Festival is Canada’s largest annual festival of its kind. It celebrates the rich diversity of cuisine, music and art from North, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. The theme this year is Celebrating 10 Years of Flavour & Fun – Panamerican Style.
Then on to some street art…
Mural at the corner of Victoria Street and Dundas Street East
I gave always loved Richmond Street. It encompasses Industrial, commercial and residential. So many lovely buildings as it winds its…