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Interesting article from EYEWEEKLY.com
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY
Yonge-Dundas Square
Dundas: our most famous regular street
BY SHAWN MICALLEF
May 26, 2009 13:05
Few street names conjure up “Toronto†as does Dundas — yet for all its iconic name recognition it’s never an A-List superstar (in civic terms) like Queen, College, Yonge or Spadina. Rather, it’s a street that snakes through many neighbourhoods, a street mostly for Torontonians rather than tourist brochures. In the east, it begins as a residential street that’s a quick route downtown for cars and bikes (along one of the longest stretches of continuous bike lane in the city). At Broadview it picks up its steel backbone of streetcar rails and crosses the Don Valley.
Once past the Don River and the Mercedes dealership where David Cronenberg filmed scenes for Crash, Dundas is changing fast. The rebuilding of Regent Park has altered the streetscape dramatically, with residential glass buildings that meet the sidewalk replacing the old brick and dour Regent Park blocks that were set back behind poor landscaping and made the street feel dark and neglected.
After Parliament, Dundas passes through the downtown eastside along the top of what was once the Moss Park estate, curving around the exceptional neon of Fillmore’s adult entertainment facility, the kind of building Toronto should have more of (in shape and size, if not décor and services). Dundas has many quick and sharp curves like this — often awkwardly tossing the streetcars in a new direction as their tail ends swing around as if trying to catch up — as it is an amalgamation of a number of streets that were eventually joined together. It breaks up Toronto’s usual grid and makes for interesting intersections and the mystery that is created when you can’t see the end of the street.
At night, after passing Jarvis, the glow from Yonge-Dundas Square — especially when it’s humid or raining — is like coming into an electric cloud. For some people, Torontonians or otherwise, this is the crossroads of the city, but the first western block of Dundas is perhaps its most boring, dominated by the Atrium on Bay on the north side and the Eaton Centre and Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management on the south side. Canadian Tire, whose store design commits some of the most grievous assaults against urbanity, does try to be somewhat urban here, with windows that almost seem like a traditional retail strip. Still, it’s clear the inner big-box is trying to come out of the closet.
Kitty corner is 600 Bay, another building type of which Toronto should have more. It’s about as film-noir as this city gets, the kind of place where you might expect Sam Spade to have an office on one of the upper floors, his name written on the window in arched lettering. Dusty, wide-gauge venetian blinds still hang in some windows, suggesting the sensibility of the office behind them is retro without the chic. Behind it, running off Bay, a narrow alley leads to a dirt courtyard and the rear doors of other Dundas buildings, a reminder of what the area was like when it was known as The Ward, the slum that was cleared out when New City Hall was built. Next door, the bus terminal still maintains a similar noirish cinematic quality.
The destruction of The Ward also pushed out Toronto’s original Chinatown, but some traces remain between Bay and University. At Elizabeth is One City Hall, a 15-storey condo behind the back of the real City Hall, which, when viewed from Dundas, looks like a giant is hunched over concentrating on something (perhaps by design, it invites us to walk around and look for ourselves). The condo, by Toronto firm Hariri Pontarini Architects, bucks the trend of all-glass towers for a low-rise building with horizontal glass and concrete lines rather than vertical ones. It’s a contrast to City Hall — likely one of the hardest landmarks to build adjacent to in Toronto — but it works, and One City Hall breathes life (and soon, a supermarket) into the old Ward, a neighbourhood that has evolved into our most institutional of areas.
A block past University is Toronto Police Services 52 Division, a white glass-block fortress that is our homage to the Miami Vice–style of police station design. Out front, a concrete plaza has the potential to be a great people place but is being used as an inappropriate parking lot for both police vehicles and ones that quite obviously aren’t (unless Pontiac Sunfires are now part of the fleet). This was a problem during the Fantino era, but the cars coincidentally disappeared when a corruption scandal broke at 52 Division in 2004. That the cars have returned under the rule of kinder, gentler Chief Bill Blair seems like a needless PR — and urban — blunder.
Around another quick curve the bulge of Frank Gehry’s AGO addition dominates Dundas. The Galleria Italia, as the bulge is known, allows nearly the entire block of Dundas to be walked indoors and upstairs, giving a bird-like pedestrian experience and second-story view of the Victorians across the street. At Berkeley, the visual chaos of Chinatown is an abrupt shift from the austere front of the AGO, but they, too, work well together, a good example of how Toronto can accommodate such radically different spaces so close to each other.
The wonderful chaos quiets down past Spadina, where the forgotten bottom of Kensington meets the Alexandra Park neighbourhood, marked by a long, black, six-foot-high iron fence that suggest somebody is either being kept out, or kept in. It’s a useless separation, more psychological than practical, and the phrase “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this fence†comes to mind. It would be a simple act, but it would encourage much more interaction between neighbourhoods. Another strange illusion of safety are signs that say “Premises subject to VIDEO SURVEILLANCE — Warning: Video Surveillance not intended to be an emergency response system.â€
Another bend by Toronto Western Hospital brings Dundas to Bathurst, where the street becomes a mix of small retail and residential homes, eventually curving north of Bloor and into Etobocoke and beyond. Here, Dundas is like the kid sibling of Queen and College as it has only recently experienced the pressures of gentrification. Hip coffee shops and stores open near old school places like the Caldenese Bakery, Café Braziliano and even places like 760 Dundas, a strange long-closed shop with a funereal window display of flowers, coffin-satin, a peacock statue and even a fish tank castle. How much longer a curiously like this can survive is not clear, but at the moment this part of Dundas seems like the perfect blend of old and new. It’s a temporary state, but for now Dundas can accommodate the Toronto that was alongside the one it’s becoming.
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY
Yonge-Dundas Square
Dundas: our most famous regular street
BY SHAWN MICALLEF
May 26, 2009 13:05
Few street names conjure up “Toronto†as does Dundas — yet for all its iconic name recognition it’s never an A-List superstar (in civic terms) like Queen, College, Yonge or Spadina. Rather, it’s a street that snakes through many neighbourhoods, a street mostly for Torontonians rather than tourist brochures. In the east, it begins as a residential street that’s a quick route downtown for cars and bikes (along one of the longest stretches of continuous bike lane in the city). At Broadview it picks up its steel backbone of streetcar rails and crosses the Don Valley.
Once past the Don River and the Mercedes dealership where David Cronenberg filmed scenes for Crash, Dundas is changing fast. The rebuilding of Regent Park has altered the streetscape dramatically, with residential glass buildings that meet the sidewalk replacing the old brick and dour Regent Park blocks that were set back behind poor landscaping and made the street feel dark and neglected.
After Parliament, Dundas passes through the downtown eastside along the top of what was once the Moss Park estate, curving around the exceptional neon of Fillmore’s adult entertainment facility, the kind of building Toronto should have more of (in shape and size, if not décor and services). Dundas has many quick and sharp curves like this — often awkwardly tossing the streetcars in a new direction as their tail ends swing around as if trying to catch up — as it is an amalgamation of a number of streets that were eventually joined together. It breaks up Toronto’s usual grid and makes for interesting intersections and the mystery that is created when you can’t see the end of the street.
At night, after passing Jarvis, the glow from Yonge-Dundas Square — especially when it’s humid or raining — is like coming into an electric cloud. For some people, Torontonians or otherwise, this is the crossroads of the city, but the first western block of Dundas is perhaps its most boring, dominated by the Atrium on Bay on the north side and the Eaton Centre and Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management on the south side. Canadian Tire, whose store design commits some of the most grievous assaults against urbanity, does try to be somewhat urban here, with windows that almost seem like a traditional retail strip. Still, it’s clear the inner big-box is trying to come out of the closet.
Kitty corner is 600 Bay, another building type of which Toronto should have more. It’s about as film-noir as this city gets, the kind of place where you might expect Sam Spade to have an office on one of the upper floors, his name written on the window in arched lettering. Dusty, wide-gauge venetian blinds still hang in some windows, suggesting the sensibility of the office behind them is retro without the chic. Behind it, running off Bay, a narrow alley leads to a dirt courtyard and the rear doors of other Dundas buildings, a reminder of what the area was like when it was known as The Ward, the slum that was cleared out when New City Hall was built. Next door, the bus terminal still maintains a similar noirish cinematic quality.
The destruction of The Ward also pushed out Toronto’s original Chinatown, but some traces remain between Bay and University. At Elizabeth is One City Hall, a 15-storey condo behind the back of the real City Hall, which, when viewed from Dundas, looks like a giant is hunched over concentrating on something (perhaps by design, it invites us to walk around and look for ourselves). The condo, by Toronto firm Hariri Pontarini Architects, bucks the trend of all-glass towers for a low-rise building with horizontal glass and concrete lines rather than vertical ones. It’s a contrast to City Hall — likely one of the hardest landmarks to build adjacent to in Toronto — but it works, and One City Hall breathes life (and soon, a supermarket) into the old Ward, a neighbourhood that has evolved into our most institutional of areas.
A block past University is Toronto Police Services 52 Division, a white glass-block fortress that is our homage to the Miami Vice–style of police station design. Out front, a concrete plaza has the potential to be a great people place but is being used as an inappropriate parking lot for both police vehicles and ones that quite obviously aren’t (unless Pontiac Sunfires are now part of the fleet). This was a problem during the Fantino era, but the cars coincidentally disappeared when a corruption scandal broke at 52 Division in 2004. That the cars have returned under the rule of kinder, gentler Chief Bill Blair seems like a needless PR — and urban — blunder.
Around another quick curve the bulge of Frank Gehry’s AGO addition dominates Dundas. The Galleria Italia, as the bulge is known, allows nearly the entire block of Dundas to be walked indoors and upstairs, giving a bird-like pedestrian experience and second-story view of the Victorians across the street. At Berkeley, the visual chaos of Chinatown is an abrupt shift from the austere front of the AGO, but they, too, work well together, a good example of how Toronto can accommodate such radically different spaces so close to each other.
The wonderful chaos quiets down past Spadina, where the forgotten bottom of Kensington meets the Alexandra Park neighbourhood, marked by a long, black, six-foot-high iron fence that suggest somebody is either being kept out, or kept in. It’s a useless separation, more psychological than practical, and the phrase “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this fence†comes to mind. It would be a simple act, but it would encourage much more interaction between neighbourhoods. Another strange illusion of safety are signs that say “Premises subject to VIDEO SURVEILLANCE — Warning: Video Surveillance not intended to be an emergency response system.â€
Another bend by Toronto Western Hospital brings Dundas to Bathurst, where the street becomes a mix of small retail and residential homes, eventually curving north of Bloor and into Etobocoke and beyond. Here, Dundas is like the kid sibling of Queen and College as it has only recently experienced the pressures of gentrification. Hip coffee shops and stores open near old school places like the Caldenese Bakery, Café Braziliano and even places like 760 Dundas, a strange long-closed shop with a funereal window display of flowers, coffin-satin, a peacock statue and even a fish tank castle. How much longer a curiously like this can survive is not clear, but at the moment this part of Dundas seems like the perfect blend of old and new. It’s a temporary state, but for now Dundas can accommodate the Toronto that was alongside the one it’s becoming.
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