1950's Toronto modern--original subway

[LowPolygon]

beautiful shots of original subway line, early-mid fifities....

love that Vitrolite!

there's not a scrap of it left, (maybe at Queen St.?) since they decided to go all country kitchen in the 70's-80's with the ceramics...

 

[299 bloor call control.]

there's not a scrap of it left, (maybe at Queen St.?) since they decided to go all country kitchen in the 70's-80's with the ceramics...

Queen Station has retained its vitrolite tiles along the blue band at the top of the walls.

Eglinton Station has retained virtually all of its original tiling, and any replacement white tiles have come from the Queen Station revamp.

 

[Earlscourt_Lad]

Nice post!

If you built that today, it would still seem modern despite being a 60 year old design.

 

[LowPolygon]

oh, that's right--i forgot about Eglinton....

its too bad it breaks so easily, it was such a beautiful material but impossible to replace apparently...

 

[Jayomatic]

Wow, Gorgeous. If only we could find a new material thats close to Vitrolite and renovate these stations back to their former glory.

 

[Edward]

The ceilings are lame but the rest looks quite nice. But then old black and white photos have a tendency to make things look nice.

 

[CDL.TO]

I find the black and white makes the system look cold and soulless. Colour photos showing the colours of the tiles look much better, IMO.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

Here's Osgoode Station during construction from Transit Toronto. I thought they had a bunch of photos earlier with more colour photos of the original-tiled stations? They seem to be missing now.

 

[rpgr]

Moral of the story?

All the "scummy TTC" problems would disappear if the stations would have been just black and white instead of "piss yellow" and "puke green"?

 

[Mustapha]

The lack of advertising posters makes for a nice clean 'civic' look.

There is at present a maintenance room door on the southbound Queen platform. It was the entrance to the old Eaton store. You took an escalator up to the basement floor of Eatons - to their fresh foods sales area.

-Moose

 

[299 bloor call control.]

Mustapha: all these photos are prior to opening, and ads were placed from day one.. I actually like having sporadic advertising, though I'd prefer keeping the platform walls clear and advertising only trackside.

 

[LowPolygon]

I find the black and white makes the system look cold and soulless. Colour photos showing the colours of the tiles look much better, IMO.

but i thought cold and soulless was the non plus ultra of high modernism?

 

[Towered]

Three of the washrooms at my parent's house have gorgeous vitrolite tiles all over the walls. I made sure to tell them to never renovate those rooms!

oh, that's right--i forgot about Eglinton....

its too bad it breaks so easily, it was such a beautiful material but impossible to replace apparently...

So what's the story on this stuff? Why was it impossible to replace? Why is it no longer produced?

 

[LowPolygon]

Three of the washrooms at my parent's house have gorgeous vitrolite tiles all over the walls. I made sure to tell them to never renovate those rooms!

wow! lucky them...the vast majority of shops and homes had it removed decades ago. i remember seeing a gorgeous shoe store on Bloor West that had an immaculate moderne facade using red, green and black vitrolite panels--one day i was walking by and they were drilling into it. within a week it was covered in beige 12x12 ceramic tiles. heartbreaking...

So what's the story on this stuff? Why was it impossible to replace? Why is it no longer produced?

here are a few great backgrounders on the rise and fall of "structured pigmented glass"--i.e. trade name Vitrolite...


http://www.nps.gov/history/hps/tps/briefs/brief12.htm

http://crm.cr.nps.gov/archive/18-8/18-8-5.pdf

 

[adma]

Queen Station has retained its vitrolite tiles along the blue band at the top of the walls.

It retains only the blue band--the Vitrolite tiles were junked in the late 90s...