111 Richmond St. W

[Marko]

And that's always the crux of these problems, isn't it? How to describe an aesthetic?

I'm not even sure that's the crux of this particular problem - you're at least willing to try and made a great effort in doing so. The problem was the rude and dismissive treatment from the other unnamed poster who has a habit of boosting his own ego by putting down others. I guess that's necessary if you're going to effectively pass yourself of a snob, but it doesn't go over well online when people are actually trying to engage in a civil discussion.

Still, one can appreciate what went into these buildings while at the same time questioning whether they're genuinely heritage worthy.

 

[Northern Light]

Now it's your turn, Northern Light! What, pray, is the aesthetic appeal of the Board of Trade building? To my eye, it's a grab bag of "more is more" applied ornament grafted onto a big curved frontage, trying reely, reely hard to make a reely reely big statement. When built, it served a similar boosterish, "iconic" purpose for the city as Ford's proposed giant Ferris Wheel would, located within a stone's throw of the lake at the foot of Yonge, and I find it as vulgar and inelegant as Toronto's Trump tower is today. There's also massive timidity ( like the Residences of College Park towers ... ) to it: instead of being dynamic form ( like the Confederation Life Building at Yonge and Richmond of more or less the same date, for instance ) it's skin-deep and superficial. I prefer the American Hotel that was on the site before the Board building was built, and the earlier Georgian Bank of Montreal across the street to the later version you admire. Heck, I prefer most of Georgian Toronto, which was built to Classical proportions, to these big Husky Boy late Victorian pseudo Goth / Richardsonian Romanesque commercial buildings.

Fair enough request.

Hmmm,

First, let me say I hadn't been aware of the building preceding the BOT building on this site, and was aware of the BOT building through the many discussions of it here at UT and elsewhere, generally lamenting its loss.

So my endorsement of it, really compares it to its successor above all else (everything being relative)

In the spirit of the above, before really addressing the BOT building, I have to say that what's there now is ...not terrible, but humdrum at best, the gold'ish windows/curtain wall is not exceptional, at the very least, at worst its just, well, plain. A single treatment, more or less (above the retail level) that doesn't offer much.

The retail level has also always failed to work as well as it might, though in fairness there are far worse offenders, in Toronto on that score.

Finally, the current building sticks out badly to me as I sit in Berczy Park and look at the lovely old retail buildings along Front, the Flat Iron building and the nicer old efforts on Wellington too. At a distance, even Market Square makes some effort to blend in the area, albeit w/less than flawless success.

But the standouts are that 1 office tower on Wellington, the St. Lawrence Centre, The Sony Centre and the current BOT replacement.

And I don't mean standout in a good way.

They disrespect context without adding anything back. (I see being told over saying that about the Sony/O'Keefe....but I just never did like it, and still don't)

I'm certainly not opposed to 'modern' buildings; I can list several I like; but to me that area really benefits from a 'victorian' context, which few areas in our city offer; and if you must interrupt it, I at least want something truly flattering, and not imposing, to join up with the area's pre-existing feel.

****

On to the BOT itself.


While I wouldn't call it a 'great' building, I do like it.

First off, for the round 'corner' facing Front/Yonge. (you may notice I appreciated this design choice is some of the modernist works as well). Can't tell you exactly why, but it just works for me over the more square mode of a sharp corner. Though I would hardly oppose sharp corners on many a building; I just have an appreciation of that rounded/arc'ish quality.

Second, I like the way the building is broken up into 3 sections (4 if you include the roof). The 2 storey 'podium' for lack of a better descriptor, with the 3-storey torso and then the 'penthouse' or ultimate level, on its own, with pronounced windows that both say 'this is the top' loud and clear, and make one imagine the view of the Lake that might have been had from them at the time the building was new.

I know, US you are not a fan of flourish (too much detail/decoration), nor am I, though I'm fairly confident, my 'too much' is a little more involved/elaborate than yours would be.

I enjoy the detailing around the upper windows and in the divisions between building sections.

I do have a preference for brick as well, as a material, as opposed to concrete/precast in particular, or to banal uses of glass/stone.

I do enjoy glass and stone when used to what I feel are their best uses, but I don't see enough examples, and I think brick holds up better aesthetically in most applications, even with more mundane buildings (not that it saves 1-storey strip plazas)

In the end, I suppose, its mostly about context at that site; but it is also a preference for buildings which to me evoke some forethought, some effort to be individual, but also to be a mark of pride for both their architect and their occupant/owner.

The BOT conveyed that at some level to me, in a way I don't see with the current site occupant.

 

[adma]

Though honestly, I think US is overshooting with the knocks on BoT, even if he has "points"--after all, had it lasted 15 or 20 years longer, its demolition would have been all but untenable, and we'd now be seeing something like a boutique-hotel conversion on premises instead. And, the "ugly piece of arriviste Victoriana" argument was no longer tenable as well--in a way, such architecture came to transcend its hitherto-deemed pitfalls. Much as, today, Uno Prii apartments--deemed arriviste Miami Beach cheese in their day--have transcended *their* hitherto-stigma. (And perhaps in some former-Soviet-Bloc circles, the built product of the Cold War is slowly shedding its "Communist" stigma.)

I know that a lot of people tend to over-sentimentalize the BoT's loss; but let's face it--it was lost when it was plausible for it to be lost. It wouldn't be plausible now, Yonge + Gould fire notwithstanding. And *maybe* (or maybe not) Urban Shocker may beg to differ; but it isn't as if we'd be poorer for its retention. Just "different".

I think the point here is to keep an egalitarian, yet principled scope of what's noteworthy/cherishable/potentially-heritage out there. Keeping in mind, too, that in recent times there've emerged "green" arguments for building retention that, in their way, kind of automatically generate an appreciation of "what's extant"--whatever it is. Love and understand your horizontal layer cakes as a prerequisite for maintaining them and preventing unnecessary demolition--the "heritage" and "retention" arguments can be symbiotic.

And when it comes to "egalitarian": sometimes, it's too easy to overthink, as it seems to me that Northern Light is doing, struggling with rather circumscribed painterly-brushstroke notions of "beauty" and "worth". But at the same time, it's too easy to overembrace and make mountains out of molehills--f'rinstance, while I'm not blithely *embracing* the demolition of the ex-RCMP at 90 Harbour, it's also not one of those monumental catastrophes that'd be unthinkable elsewhere, either. Perspective is everything.

Though as for Marco's

Still, one can appreciate what went into these buildings while at the same time questioning whether they're genuinely heritage worthy.

At this point, if you, Marco, are still questioning whether 111 Richmond is heritage worthy, maybe that's the moment when the preservationist window should be slammed down on your hands. Severed fingers? Big deal.

 

[thecharioteer]

Now it's your turn, Northern Light! What, pray, is the aesthetic appeal of the Board of Trade building? To my eye, it's a grab bag of "more is more" applied ornament grafted onto a big curved frontage, trying reely, reely hard to make a reely reely big statement. When built, it served a similar boosterish, "iconic" purpose for the city as Ford's proposed giant Ferris Wheel would, located within a stone's throw of the lake at the foot of Yonge, and I find it as vulgar and inelegant as Toronto's Trump tower is today. There's also massive timidity ( like the Residences of College Park towers ... ) to it: instead of being dynamic form ( like the Confederation Life Building at Yonge and Richmond of more or less the same date, for instance ) it's skin-deep and superficial. I prefer the American Hotel that was on the site before the Board building was built, and the earlier Georgian Bank of Montreal across the street to the later version you admire. Heck, I prefer most of Georgian Toronto, which was built to Classical proportions, to these big Husky Boy late Victorian pseudo Goth / Richardsonian Romanesque commercial buildings.

And yet, U.S., to reduce the Board of Trade Building to merely a decorated shed is to ignore the intellectual and artistic underpinnings of the style, and to ignore the Ruskin/Morris/Arts and Crafts/Pre-Raphaelite connections:


There were several reasons for the change of direction from Neoclassicism to the Gothic Revival, but three stand out as, by far, the most important. The first, sparked by the general Romantic revolution, was the literary interest in medieval times that produced Gothic tales and romances. By setting their stories in medieval times, authors such as Walpole and especially Sir Walter Scott helped to create a sense of nostalgia and a taste for that period. The ruins of medieval castles and abbeys depicted in landscape paintings were another manifestation of this spirit. The second was the writing of the architectural theorists who were interested, as part of church reform, in transferring the liturgical significance of Gothic architecture to their own times. The third, which strengthened this religious and moral impetus, was the writings of John Ruskin, whose Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and Stones of Venice (1853) were widely read and respected. Ruskin stated that the quality of medieval craftsmanship reflected the morally superior way of life of the medieval world and urged a return to the conditions operative in the earlier period.

from: http://www.all-art.org/history392.html

I believe that late Victorian Torontonians would have "got" the connections, and perhaps that's why the Romanesque style was so popular in both residential and non-residential architecture. It wasn't just about "heft" and "Husky Boy" boosterism. There was an emotional connection to the style based on many of the allusions referred to in the quote above.

From an interesting article in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddes.../2011/mar/29/aesthetic-movement-john-ruskin):

In his book The Stones of Venice, Ruskin – equally at home with art and architecture – celebrates the buildings of medieval Venice. In this 19th-century literary and intellectual masterpiece, Ruskin goes into raptures over the facade of the Doge's Palace. He argues that gothic design is superb because it rejoices in nature, and because it is the "honest" work of true craftsmen who worked anonymously and cared more for the glory of God than the glory of artistic fame.

For Ruskin, gothic Venice stood for an organic, communal way of life, and the beauty of its buildings reflects a wholesome social order. All his social reform projects, which included getting Oxford students to build a road as an exercise in honest toil, can be understood through The Stones of Venice. The Renaissance, Ruskin claims, was a decay, a decline, from the true golden age of Venice. In place of the natural complexity of all things gothic, it imposed a chilly classical order. It led to what he saw as the heartless architecture of modern classical buildings such as the Bank of England. Where medieval art was communal, Renaissance art was selfish – the plaything of plutocrats.

In this context, (especially for a "communal" Board of Trade; almost like a Guild?), the Venetian allusions are not accidental:

Ruskin sketches from Venice: