adma
Superstar
People like me huh? Thst post wins my personal award for most judgmental of this young year for sure. Where did I ever express a remote hostility to all heritage properties? This block is hardly akin to a row of Victorians in Cabbagetown afterall nor is the streetscape worth salvaging much in my opinion.
Ah, but you're still speaking from an untutored, underconditioned standpoint. Maybe not re *all* heritage properties (after all, my original "McMansion-mentality" barbs were directed more the obtuse Borat-enciagas who *would* dispense w/said Cabbagetown Victorians)--but in the end, aside from degrees of gentility and gentrification (look: it's a workhorse commercial row, not a residential street), not to mention the whole "real estate pressure" thing, what *is* so different or significantly more dispensible here compared to Cabbagetown?
As I see it, this blockfront might, as a unity, actually be the *most* salvage-worthy of all along Yonge. And it's because...miraculously, and in a strategically *very* prominent location, it all still exists. Yeah, well-worn, a little frayed or retrofitted in spots; but even through its disparate increments, solid and consistent in overall effect. True, none of it (except for the Second Empire flamboyance of Frogleys/Cookbook Store at the N end) really ventures far from a High-Late Victorian Italianate/Romanesque commercial-row paradigm--but why should it? It's about the sum rather than the parts here.
And what makes it even more interesting is that it's by far the major surviving element of the commercial heart of the old Village of Yorkville (whose municipal offices were half a block north, remember). As such, maybe it really shouldn't be thought of in terms of "just another humdrum Victorian block on Yonge"; but more akin to the grand Ontario-heartland commercial rows in places like Milton or Mount Forest. One might even invoke the row's "cultural undercurrent" (including in more recent times, the Issacs and Carmen Lamanna galleries) on its behalf.
It's a very rich, interesting, powerful row--and a powerful urban foil for Moriyama's Library across the way. The trouble is that common Toronto affliction of mercenary historical amnesia--as with so many recognizing-our-heritage listing gestures in 70s Toronto (cf. the Reynolds Block), the story and stories here have become mute over the years. And while the fact that nothing much has been done to the block over the succeeding four decades hasn't hurt, from a drawing-attention standpoint it hasn't helped, either. It isn't that it's looked at w/hostility as a dispensible old crock (no matter what the Balenciagas would tell you); rather, it's been taken for granted. But at this juncture, it deserves more. (And I wouldn't just say that about any old/aged Yonge row--I'm more of a fence-sitter re some of those threatened further south, Isabella, Dundonald, etc.)
Though of course, advancing such a case here might, at least to the development-fanboy crowd, be like shouting in vain across a municipal committee room.
Most notably though, I can hear and appreciate your (incredibly self righteous) opinions without insulting you. Perhaps you should try a little tenderness sometime. It would go much farther in the virtual & the physical realms.
Well, the "self righteousness" doesn't come without foundation. So may I offer that you should try a little tenderness in the way you regard and approach Toronto's existing built fabric.
And, read this article.
http://spacingtoronto.ca/2013/01/10/no-mean-city-ada-louise-huxtable-and-building-for-the-future/
Though if you never heard of her, much less read her work, before now, it says plenty. (Well, maybe you're more likely than Balenciaga...)